Slip Sliding Away & Sorting Seeds

We headed into town today to do the monthly shop, just out side the village we came across this landslide, it looked liked it had just happened,

Rocks and Shale a bit further up the road the rock embankment have been reinforced with cages,

I guess they thought this bit was stable enough.

Before heading into town, I went through the fridge and freezers,

 made up a pot of soup with bits and bobs

Some Chicken stock from the freezer, half a cabbage, sweet potatoes, carrot, leek and some chicken from the fridge, some Oca and Onion from the stores.

It was cooked up and ready to warm through when we got home.

A trip into town takes up so much time, Monthly shop done £23.09, 

Milk, Butter, Sugar, Cereal, a couple of packs of crumpets reduced to 19p (now in the freezer) new nail brush for scrubbing veg, my old one disintegrated, new bath sponge.

We picked up a bag of goat feed a bone for Sol, filled my car up with fuel,

Popped into the garden centre, bought some Pink Fir potatoes, Horseradish root and peanuts for the birds, I used my gift card for those bits and they gave me a voucher for £4 off my next visit.

That's that all done for the month.

This afternoon I started the big seed sort out

 These are the unopened packets from the Seeds of the Month club, I get 4 packets of seeds sent to me each month, they come from America all GMO free and heirloom variety's, which means I can save seed from them, they send out a mixture of herbs fruit and vegetables, different variety's to what we can get in the UK, I have been a member for a couple of years now, I am always impressed with the quality, if you want to know more there is a link on my side bar.

 some of the saved seed from last, the little dish in the front is the lentils I saved from growing some last year, I want to see how well they will germinate.

 Flower seeds, all these packets have either come with my Amateur gardening magazine, subscription due to run out this month wont be re-newed, or they have come free from other sources.

You have to have flowers in the garden to attract insects that are beneficial also they help with pollination.

 These are all the opened unfinished packets of vegetable seeds, I need to go through to see what is still viable.

 These are from the real seed company again heirloom, GMO free and organic so once again I can save seed from them.

 These are still unopened James Wong seeds I will have to get round to using these this year.

This mixed bunch of unopened packets, a few of the packs I have bought again heirloom ones, 

the F1 hybrids have been free from various sources, I really don't like growing F1 hybrids, you cant save seed from them, they tend to all want harvesting at the same time, the taste is very much supermarket samey, the veg doesn't seem to store so well either.

The thing about saving seed for me is, if I can save seed to grow food and not have to buy them then its one more step towards self sufficiency, its also interesting to do. 

As well as all of that I am growing some of my own stored, shallots, garlic and potatoes, Sutton's let me down last year over the sweet potatoes and promised me some free slips this year, we will see if they follow through, Oca I will grow from some of my own

I was asked about cooking with Oca, I don't have any recipes specifically for them, I use them instead of potatoes sometimes, they can be fried, roasted, boiled, eaten raw, they don't need peeling just wash scrub and use, I added some to soup today the other day we had some stir fried with other veg, they store well and are easy to grow, if any one is interested in giving them a go I will send half a dozen tubers for £2.50 that includes p&p for you to grow on, they can be grown in pots or in the ground. I will include some instructions. You can contact me through the link on my side bar.

Well that's about if for today, next on my list is planning what to grow and were to grow this year.