Tag: gardening

No idea how they got here but it looks like I've got some barley randomly growing in my garden! I'm kind of wondering whether to preserve the seeds and sow them in a small patch next year, then do the same till I get enough to malt for a batch of beer. Commercial yield is about 600g/m2, so I'd need 10m2 to even think about it. Anybody got a bit of allotment space free in a few years?!

Holy hell batman that's a lot of dandelion root! Pull this up from my neglected "wild flower" lawn the last few days, question is whether it's worth bothering to clean and process for er, what? Anybody used this for coffee, tea, wine? Is it gonna be worth an hour of my time?!

Chard processing day. Lots of stuff in the garden to do this time of year. Unfortunately being away for a month meant I missed the ideal time to harvest the chard that was growing through the winter. All was not lost and I managed to get a decent enough harvest. Clean, remove snails, steam, put into small moulds, squeeze out some water, then freeze for later use.

Autumn harvest time. Bit later than usual as I've been away for a few weeks. Have some now 7-8 yr old hop plants that are doing pretty well. It's a bit of a process but you basically take them down, chop them up, strip, dry, vac pack and freeze them. I get about a 1-1.5kg of dry hops from them, enough for 100 litres or so of beer.