My Little Organic Vegetable Patch

Eleven weeks ago, April 10th. Mum and I went to a garden center, bought 4 strawberry plants and a big raspberry plant which we split up and spread along the edge of the vegetable patch. We also bought a small rhubarb plant to go next to the strawberries. Mum had a few old strawberry plants which in previous years the birds had got to before us, unfortunately. So we moved them into our vegetable patch and so far the birds haven't got them. Some of the strawberries have little green strawberries coming from the center of the flowers and others have white flowers and are creating new shoots that will spread out and grow into more strawberry plants.

We also have two types of peas and a sweet pea flower that grows up bamboo sticks. The sweet pea's have very nice white flowers with the exception of a tiny little red flower. The flowers with the green stripes on are the peas and you can see pods starting to grow if you look closely. There are four bamboo sticks  that are secured with gardeners string to form a strong structure that the peas and sweet peas will grow up, they also add some interesting height to the garden as well as saving us some space in our small 6 by 10 foot vegetable patch.

These lovely, "Oriental Spicy Leaves" were gifted to Mum after they were won in a raffle but were not wanted. Same goes with the Cabbage that you can see in the boxes in the picture below this. One of Mum's birthday presents this year was a personalised grow your own salad box. The gift contained all that you needed to grow a variety of different salads; one of them being the oriental spicy leaves. Mum planted them on the 30th May but despite the packets of seeds saying they would .take 3 weeks to grow, well ours haven't. Although they shouldn't be far off as she planted them just about 1 month ago.

Aubergine, Leek, Garlic, Spinach and Sage are the newer additions to the vegetable patch and theylook as if they are doing quite well. The garlic was added because we had found a clove of garlic in the cupboard that had started to grow a shoot. Mum also said it is quite an easy plant to grow. We separated the leeks into a line next to the peas. Aubergine was added a few weeks ago after we had been unsuccessful with 3 courgettes plants that died. Not exactly sure why but if anyone knows feel free to comment. One of the second things we bought was Lemon Balm and Sage. I chose Sage so we could use it in our cooking and Lemon Balm well not for any reason in particular just because it smelt nice at the garden center.

Have you ever grown your own fruit or vegetables?

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Healthy Food Ideas

Brown Pasta, Passata, Tomato Puree, Basil and Avocado = A very nice

Cook the pasta, 10 minutes in boiling water, add the other ingredients. If it cools down to quickly microwave the pasta for 2 minutes (I recommend you do this because then the avocado tastes so good, but you dont have to).

1 and a 1/2 cups of Almond Milk, 3/4 cups of Organic Porridge Oats, 4 teaspoons of Cashew Butter, 4 teaspoons of Honey, a handful of Almonds, a handful of Raspberries and a swirl of honey = Yummy Almond Porridge.

A tip if you want sweet food, add fruit, honey or maple syrup. You can add agave syrup or frozen fruit but these are slightly harder to find in supermarkets. Agave syrup is a bit like honey and is often substituted for honey. You can find Agave syrup in Tesco for £2.50.

Frozen fruit is good too, its usually about £2.00 for a box of fruit. Some supermarkets have boxes of frozen fruit for £3 but watch out because they tend to be the same size as the £2 box. Most supermarkets will do frozen fruit boxes with raspberries in and the other type they do is mixed fruit. Although yesterday in Tesco I found a large variety of frozen fruit, so its best to look around your local supermarkets and see which ones you like best. If you want organic fruit its probably best to buy it fresh and freeze it because I'm yet to find organic frozen fruit, maybe I'm just not looking in the right places though.

Fresh and tinned fruit is good as well. Fresh fruit is best in season and tinned fruit is good all year round. The best tinned fruit in my opinion is peaches, they come chopped and in fruit juice. Strawberries and raspberries are really nice in season, at the moment the strawberries are huge and very sweet. I can't wait for later on in the summer when my fruits have finished growing. Ill keep you posted on my vegetable garden.

Sweet potato chips are a very nice snack to have if your craving chips. Just chop up 2 sweet potatoes into chip shapes, you don't need to peel them. Add a teaspoon of olive olive oil and some fresh herbs (you can use dried herbs if you don't have fresh herbs) then place the chips into a 200 degrees oven for 20 mins or until they have browned a bit and gone crispy.

What's your favourite fruit?

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Photography Inspiration

I wasn't quite sure what to post this week but I did a Photo shoot for school and needed some inspiration.

Check out Kate's Instagram

Kate has recently changed her theme and it looks great.

Carin Olsson's blog,Paris in Four Months, is wonderful. She lives in Paris as a photographer. Her photo's are really nice and the text is great. This is one of the photo's from her Exquisite Delights post. She was photographing Cartier's latest collection "Paris Nouvelle Vague".

 

Amy Spencer's blog, The Little Magpie, is colourful and filled with lovely pictures. She is from Scotland but this photo was from a wonderful hotel in Greece. The post is A Stay at the Blue Palace its a very blue post with pretty dresses, tasty looking food and lovely pictures of the hotel.

Who is your inspiration?

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Exploring Caernarfon, Wales

Caernarfon

On Wednesday we traveled to Wales with my family for a few nights away. It was a long journey, about 3 hours because of traffic and stopping for coffee breaks to stay awake. That was the longest that we had traveled in our new car though. We set off at 9:00 am so that we could get to Caernarfon for 12:00 o'clock.

At about 11:25 am we stopped at a service station because my sister hadn't had any breakfast and that meant we could get out of the car and walk around, which was a nice.

We arrived at Blaenau Ffestiniog at 12:00 and had our picnic on a bench that was sheltered from the wind. After lunch we were going to go on one of the fast boat rides but we decided that, although it was open, we would give it a miss. So instead we walked along the beach and look and the life boats that were near the beach. 

When we were driving through Blaenau Ffestiniog we spotted the multi-coloured buildings and shops and after our little walk on the beach we went to the shops to check them out.

It was quite windy and cold in Blaenau Ffestiniog so we went to Caernarfon to check in to our Premier Inn. Once we got to our hotel it had started raining and the wind was even stronger. So after a short look in the local shops and a walk round the harbour. We went back to our rooms, watched tv and read magazines.

The next day it was Mum's birthday so after waking up and giving her presents to her we went downstairs to breakfast. It was a lovely day the sun was out. So we went to check out the town where Zip World Titan was because we were going there in the afternoon. 

After we had a look round Blaenau Ffestiniog, where the zip wire was we went to the beach. It was a bit windy so the waves were quite big. We had a walk along the beach to pass the time before going down the zip wire at 2:00 o'clock.

The first zip wire was 1 km long and the longest of the three zip wires, the wind was stronger by this point so it slowed us down a bit. The second zip wire was above a quarry so it was very interesting when you looked down. The third zip wire was a bit of a walk away but it was worth it because the wind was now behind us so we went down really fast this time.

A few hours after we finished the zip wires we went back to Caernarfon and went out for a meal at the Black Boy Inn, I had a baked aubergine with sweet potato chips it was really nice and after the meal we slowly walked back to our Premier Inn to see the harbour and the rest of the sea.

Where is your favorite place to go on holiday?

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