I know it's a bit of an odd title for a Journal entry, but I'll get to the point in a moment, or two.
I woke early and wandered in to the kitchen to make coffee. A flash of colour outside the window caught my attention and my eyes fell upon a Greater Spotted Woodpecker searching for insects on the trunk of the Birch tree. We have several woodpeckers in and around the garden and they are always a delight to see and hear.
As I watched it searching for food, a movement on the ground distracted me and I saw another quite large bird. It took me a moment to realise that it was a juvenile Green Woodpecker here in the garden. We often hear these shy birds calling in the surrounding fields, but it was a rare treat to see one only a few yards from the kitchen window.
So that was how my day started, coffee and a rarely seen avian dinosaur.
Now on to celeriac and whether it can be frozen. Both 30% and I love this versatile vegetable hence I have twenty plants doing quite nicely out in the veg patch. They are slow to germinate and grow, but I should have a decent crop by the end of the Autumn.
I have grown them previously and the limited information available suggested that they could be left in the ground and simply lifted, as required, over the course of the Winter. I found out the hard way that this advice was complete bollocks, as they turned to a revolting mush after the first couple of frosts.
I was therefore interested in finding a way to effectively store this vegetable to avoid another wasted crop. Research on the internet had indicated that it could be blanched and frozen, so that is what I tried this morning.
The celeriac bulb was peeled, cut in to 2cm cubes and added to a pan of boiling water. Once the water had returned to the boil, it was left to simmer for two and a half minutes before being drained and plunged in to iced water. After chilling, the cubes of celeriac were patted dry with a fresh tea towel and then frozen loose on a tray. They will be bagged up tomorrow and then left for a month or two, before I thaw them out and see if it is an effective method of preservation.
The alternative is to simply lift them out of the ground, clean them off and store them in a box of peat in a cool, dry, frost free place. My only concern is that the bloody mice will be at them before I shut the door on the store room.
The rest of the day saw me mostly out and about in the garden. I finally got the BMW hooked up to the battery optimiser and it is now neatly covered in the car port. 30% and I gave the dogs a short walk and finally got the Azure Rush Geraniums and Lemon Popsicle Kniphofia planted after they had sat patiently in pots for far too long a good while.
The big job of the afternoon was to prepare space in the garden for 30%'s recently acquired Pineapple Tree (Cytisus battandieri). The chosen spot was a very overgrown bed to the rear of the vegetable garden up against the orchard fence. The bed was home to a monstrous, tangled privet, a healthy crop of stinging nettles and a red currant that had last cropped when I was a child. It is fair to say that clearing the bed was a bit of a job and, by the end of the afternoon, several barrow loads of greenery had been piled in the orchard for burning at a later date.
We haven't finished the clearance yet, but we can see that we now have a bed that is about 5' x 8' and it should be perfect for the Pineapple Tree ... once I get those bloody roots out!
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* I must jot down the celeriac soup recipe I use. It is a fabulous rich creamy soup that must be good for you, it has vegetables in it.**
** Yes Bad Man, it also has six ounces of butter and half a pint of double cream too!
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