Category: Uncategorised
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Another year draws to an end
This has been a busy year. In the plot, I have grown a few new crops: oca, achocha, shark fin melon, salsify, scorzonera. And the year I tried seaweed meal as a soil conditioner and cardboard mulch in autumn. The year I planted more fruit bushes because I think perennials are much less effort and…
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Food price, at what cost?
wondering about increasing food prices, why people eat crappy food thinking it’s ok for them, and figuring out how much it cost me to have an organic meal last night (with recipe) The British, as portrayed in the media, are facing food poverty, or “nutrition recession” as the Guardian put it. Now, this is the…
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The how and whys of making yogurt
I should be writing about crop rotation, so why I’m posting on making yogurt instead? It is a truth universally acknowledged that growing your own affects the way you cook and eat. In my case, it has affected the way I think more broadly, for example about reuse and recycle. On the plot I reuse…
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Seedy penpals
I must have written before that I have a collector streak in me, and it comes out with seeds. Every winter I get all the packets out from the recesses of my shed and take stock: I usually end up with some 150-300 species on my database (they have grown over the years both with…
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Have you ever cooked artichokes?
After 4 years of toiling on the artichoke patch, this first week of summer yielded the first three edible ones: pride and joy! I love artichokes, and it is quite difficult to find them here in the UK… a few years ago, when staying at Bangors Organic in Cornwall, Gill served them for dinner: whole, just steamed…
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What can you do with lemon balm? And other plants
There are plants that I introduced once on the plot and now grow largely unasked. Their weedy behaviour means they multiply and tend happily to survive slug attack. They are usually loved by pollinators. It’s a pity to weed them out, given their success, so I have decided to find a use for them. I…
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Totally undeserved yet humbly accepted Liebster Blog Award
My lovely friend Carl Legge, truly generous as he is, did think about my ailing blog when making nominations for the Liebster Blog Award, in an attempt to encourage me to write more. Thank you Carl, I am honoured by the nomination and humbled – would love to blog more, even though at the moment…
About Me
M.Paola Andreoni
I got the first allotment in 2007 (in the UK) and started growing my own food for the first time. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied some horticulture. I am striving to abide by organic principles. Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, and two new plots by a nature reserve.
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