Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

Cheery_Daff

I am one of the Peak District folk, and can confirm a good couple of inches so far, with no sign of it stopping yet... ☃️

foxgloves

I haven't grown 'Minibelle', @EssexHebridean, but I know from experience that the other two you mention are usually nicely productive. We had a couple of years up here where blight struck big-time. The worst year was when I opened the greenhouse door & was just hit by the horrible smell of it. I picked all the tomatoes which looked OK & binned the plants, but of course it was already in some of the fruits & I had to check them daily in my ripening bowl to get rid of the affected ones. We also had it in our potatoes during those years. So that was when we started growing only blight-resistant varieties. For many years, this was 'Ferline', which although were not completely impervious to blight, wouldn't start showing signs until very late in the season, when most of the fruits had pretty much been picked, & eve then, it would usually only advance extremely slowly, so we really liked growing those, & good tomatoes too. A couple of years ago, 'Ferline' disappeared from the market, I understand because there are now better blight-resistant varieties around, so I swapped to 'Oh happy day', which also turned out to be good fruits as well as other resistant & non-resistant varieties.
Oh, it's snowing again....we have just had a break but it is back. Mr F sent a photo of the car park he uses for work & our car had a distinct white coating - he's further north in the county than here though.
F x

foxgloves

Ah, you have more than us then @Cheery_Daff. It was settling a little on the lawn earlier but it is too wet to lay. I have been watching the TV weather map all week & have seen the snow area shrink back each day until this morning, it was pretty much your area. Despite our snow forecast having turned to one of rain over the week, we have had snow this morning, more in the far north of the county where Mr F works, but it is snowing here too - sleety at the moment, so I expect it has warmed up sufficiently for it to turn entirely to rain before too long.
Hope it is looking pretty - it always does before the slush stage!
F x

Makingabobor2

Sorry you have snow up there. We have just had heavy non stop rain all morning, but it is very, very cold.  

How do you make your home made tomato ketchup? Sounds interesting. 

foxgloves

Just used a recipe from a general preserving book @Makingabobor2. Not difficult to make & plenty of recipes around for various sauces.
F

foxgloves

Had to laugh today. Received a ping from Mr F at work, to say he was "full of Christmas dinner".....then I remembered he'd taken one of the freezer containers he filled with festive leftovers. It contained a bit of everything apparently, including, sprouts, bread sauce, redcurrant jelly & stuffing!
And he requested a home made rice pudding tonight. My Mum used to tell him he'd got "hollow legs"!
But good use of leftovers.
F x

DawnW

No snow here in the SW. Just heavy rain, cold and dark. Yuck!

Makingabobor2

This came up on my FB news feed & I thought of you  FG. X 

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Oh, that's lovely. She doesn't look like me but that's defo my life at this time of year! Wish our shed was that tidy!
F x

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

@Makingabobor2 - Oh, that's lovely. She doesn't look like me but that's defo my life at this time of year! Wish our shed was that tidy!
F x

Me too. I have just found somewhere that actually has Black Russian seeds in stock, and having recommended them to a beekeeping pal I have ordered some for him too. They are my favourite for making my tomato sauces in jars. I recently liberated 2 shelves of my commercial catering sized home produce freezer by making up last year's batch (I had to wait for enough jars to be emptied!) - it worked better than previously because I thoroughly defrosted and strained the frozen fruits and rather than faff with skins, I used my liquidiser to get the right texture before re-heating and bottling. The flavour is fantastic, compared to tinned and a complete taste of summer.

I may have grown over 30 plants in 2022 and apart from a bit of bottom end rot on the Italian costaluto field varieties, after leaving DS in charge while we were away for a few days, that worked well. Although 54 jars might have been a tad OTT for two of us, hence the late processing of last year's crop.

I did get my seed potatoes and onion sets yesterday from the local garden centre, but was reasonably controlled in the seed aisle. I bought rainbow chard seeds (DH pulled out and composted the see plant as it was outside the bed and I failed to tell him to leave it  ) and instead of kale, I have gone for kalettes (sounds like a Phil Spectre group from the 1960s!) for the first time, to try.  

Too cold for me at the moment but I must finish my seed audit of wild flowers and this weekend I will plant my chillies and tomato seeds, all being well - the forecast is warmer if not dry