Pottery Class...continued

It's been two weeks since the last pottery class and I was so looking forward to be back. We delayed going last week in order to avoid Manx Grand Prix traffic so it seems like ages since we've met up. This time around, we were shown how to make pitchers but I think it's generally been a class consensus that we work on whatever we'd like. So far I've only had the chance to make two mugs and a spoon-rest so I wanted to make a few smaller things this time around. But I needed to get cracking since next week is our last class, and we'll be glazing everything we've made on that day.

Faye was a bit late for class and I was just wondering if she'd forgotten us when she showed up with a little orphan in tow. Her studio is at the back of a barn on her family's property, which is a working sheep farm. Lambs are generally born in early spring so at 6-weeks old he's definitely late! And being that he was lost and alone in the pastures for some time, he's also very tiny for his age. His poor mother died due to complications of the birth and he only survived by weaning himself on to grass very early on. Now that he's been found, Faye has been trying to feed him milk in the hope that he'll grow bigger and stronger. Poor little guy, I hope he makes it! His fleece is so soft and he's just the most darling little thing.

Faye with orphan lamb 'Lala'

In the last couple of classes we've had, one of the girls has been using textured wallpaper to imprint a pattern into her clay. Though I thought it was interesting I wasn't planning on trying it myself until randomly finding a roll of textured wallpaper last week. I was down at the local amenity site hunting for demi-johns and there it was, with a lovely Victorian inspired pattern. During last night's class I cut one of the pattered stripes from the roll and used it as a simple, but I think elegant, pattern at the base of a vase.

Vase with imprint from textured wallpaper

I also wanted to make a few small objects as well after seeing a friend make some medallions in the last class. Rummaging around in one of my kitchen drawers I found a few cookie cutters and had the idea of using them to make Christmas ornaments. Using leftover bits of clay I simply stamped out a couple angels and a bell and as an afterthought made a small spiral pendant as well. I wanted the design of the ornaments to be simple but I did press the imprint of some leaves into the bell for an abstract texture.

Christmas ornaments and pendant

Though we spent most of last night's class working with clay, we also had the chance to glaze one of our pieces so that next week we could all have examples of what the final colours will look like. We're limited to Faye's own colour palette which includes blue, green and violet and dark brown. I chose blue for my experimental glaze since it's the thickest and might hide some of the flaws in my highly patterned spoon-rest. This was the first clay I worked with and it's been highly experimented on with patterns of flowers, lace and shells - in other words, it's a mess. But I sandpapered some of the sharp bits down and I hope that it'll be nicer to look at after it has a smooth, shiny surface.

The future spoon-rest

Glazing involves gripping your pre-fired ceramic in tongs and lowering it into a bucket of glaze for about six seconds and then lifting it out to dry matte, which only takes a minute or so. I was the only person who chose blue so also had the joy of mixing the glaze up in the bucket. It was like sticking your hand and arm into a bucket of thick, wet mud and stirring it around for ages. Quite relaxing actually...

After the glaze dried, I was instructed to smooth the holes left by the tongs and then chip away any glaze from the bottom surface where the ceramic will touch the kiln floor. It came off easily and in flakes, which fell back down into the bucket where it can be used again. It was dark by the time we left the class and I'm sure that every one of us went home looking forward to next week and seeing what their piece looks like - I certainly am.

Chocolate & Beetroot Cupcakes

Sounds pretty weird doesn't it? But after one taste, you won't even remember a time when you couldn't use chocolate and beetroot in the same sentence! Just like the carrots used in carrot cake, the beetroot in this recipe adds sweetness as well as rich moist texture. It's also a great way to use up spare beetroots coming in from the garden this time of year.

Chocolate & Beetroot Cupcakes
Makes about 16

200g Plain Flour
150g White Caster Sugar
100g Dark Brown Sugar
100g Cocoa Powder
1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda)
1/4 tsp fine Sea Salt
175g Beetroot, trimmed and peeled - about one medium
160g Vegetable oil
2tsp Vanilla essence
3 Eggs

Icing
120g Cream Cheese (Philadelphia)
40g Butter, softened
1 tsp Milk
1/2 tsp Vanilla essence
2 cups Icing Sugar (Powdered Sugar)

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C Fan)

2. Dice the beetroot as small as you can and then use a food processor or stick blender to break it down even further. You should have what looks like a coarse paste at the end.

3. Place all the dry ingredients needed for the cake into a bowl and stir well.

4. Mix in the wet ingredients, including the beetroot, and keep stirring until the batter is smooth and a deep red-brown.

5. Distribute the batter into a cupcake pan, filling each pre-greased compartment about half full, and place in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

To make the icing simply sift your icing sugar into a bowl and then add in the cream cheese, butter, vanilla and milk. Beat it until it's smooth and creamy and then spread onto your cupcakes when they're fully cooled. Grate some dark chocolate over the top and enjoy!

Chocolate and beetroot cake batter

Distributing the batter into the cupcake tin

Bringing back the Harvest

It's that time of the year when you're not bringing home a handful of this or that from the allotment but literally bucket loads. I went up this afternoon with the intention of digging up a few spuds but then got caught up in finding other goodies lurking about the plot. I have no idea where the cauliflower came from by the way; I must have bunged in an extra seedling at the bottom of the plot and forgot about it! No matter, it's going to make a delicious curry tonight along with the swiss chard and perpetual spinach.

Other pickings include both the edible: lettuce, spring onions, mange-tout, cucumber, yellow and green courgettes/marrows and a heap of potatoes.

...and the non-edible: sweet peas, which I place in a jar on my bedside table to wake up to first thing in the morning, and a few plants and flowers I use in my soap making including goldenrod, plantain and calendula.

I love gardening and making my allotment a beautiful place, but for me this is really what it's all about. Bringing home self-grown produce and creating wonderful and fresh meals with it makes a person proud and all the hard work well worth it :)

Calendula Soap

Calendula petals are one of the only botanicals you can blend into cold-process soap and still hope to retain a nice colour during the saponification process. Others such as lavender will turn greenish-brown and rose petals will change from vibrant red and pink to an unattractive rusty brown. Another reason for using calendula in soap, and other skin care products, is that it's genuinely good for you. Natural components found in this flower have been used by herbalists for generations to treat skin conditions such as eczema and piles, as well as in the healing of wounds and burns.

I use calendula in soap in two ways: as an infusion and by embedding parts of the flower petals in the soap itself. The orange petals infused in water will give an overall golden colour to your soap and help to transmute the healing properties of the flower throughout the bar. I also use oats in this soap due to its anti-inflammatory properties, which help relieve irritation and soothe the skin.

If you look in the above image you will notice that the two bars of soap are slightly different colours. This is due not to having different ingredients but by allowing one of the soaps to reach gel-phase and one not. Gel-phase is when your soaps begin super-heating after you pour it into the mould and will result in a soap that is slightly darker and also slightly translucent. Some would say that its aesthetic preference as to whether you choose one method or the other but my hunch is that soaps which harden at cooler temperatures will retain more of its ingredients' beneficial properties.

I keep stopping by by soaps to catch a whiff from time to time - they just smell wonderful. Three types of essential oils have been blended to fragrance this batch and the sweet scent of Melissa Balm mixed with the sunshine smell of Citronella and the woodsy base of Cedar work together harmoniously. All three work as natural deodorants and the overall fragrance is refreshing and calming. I'm really looking forward to trying these out :)

Infusion of oats and calendula

Kitten Louis helps harvest Caldendula flowers

Grow your Own Lemongrass

Lemongrass is one of my favourite tasting herbs, and one that I never thought I would grow at home. I use it when cooking Thai dishes and it's just divine in a Tom Yum Soup served with a side of jasmine rice. Its lemony-ginger taste is also delicious as a refreshing tea, a cup of which I'm enjoying at the moment :)

Lemongrass is commonly grown from seed in the UK, and you can buy a packet of them for around £1.50. However the seeds are quite small and fiddly and the germination rate can take up to 40 days, which is a lot of time for most people to keep a small tray of soil moist and in the correct temperature. A quicker way to grow lemongrass at home is from bulbs, either purchased in a garden centre or in the supermarket. When I say supermarket, I mean the lemongrass that's sold for consumption opposed to growing as plants. Lemongrass in the shop will run you about 99p for a small bundle and if it's not wilted or too brown/dried-out, it's possible to grow a new Lemongrass plant from each stalk!

Most of these look great for propagation

To get started, go shopping and buy the firmest, least dried out bunch of lemongrass you can find. Take it home and then peel back the first layer or two and a good part of the upper leaves, especially the ones which are dried out.

Then fill a glass with plain water, put your trimmed lemongrass stalks in and place the whole thing into a warm window sill. The water should completely cover the bulbous bit at the bottom of the stalks. Within a week or two, roots will start to appear and possibly some leaves. When the roots are about 1-2 inches long, you can trim back the original stalk a bit more and then plant each stalk into its own small pot of compost. Gently cover all the roots and quite a bit of the bulbous part at the bottom if you can. One of my stalks sprouted some baby leaves though so that one I just made sure to cover the roots and a bit of the bottom of the bulb. As soon as the leaves are bigger, I'll add more compost to the pot.

Trimmed Lemongrass stalks in water

Planting Lemongrass into small pots

These small pots of lemongrass should be grown on in a warm place until they have plenty of leaves and the roots need a bigger pot. At this point, you can harden them off over a week and then plant outside in a sunny, warm and moist spot 12 inches apart. You can also re-pot them on into larger containers to keep indoors or in a greenhouse. Fully grown, the plant is fairly bushy with long thin leaves and numerous stalks emerging from the original one. Though they can grow to large sizes if they have the space, a container or pot will constrict their roots enough to make it a lovely house plant.

To harvest, just select the stalks you want and simply break them off the main plant at the base. The bulb is the bit you mainly use in cooking and it is actually the only part you can eat. The leafy bits can be used as well but you'll need to pick these out at the end of the cooking time. Better yet, pop them into the freezer and use them when you want to have a nice cup of tea.

Lemongrass requires a minimum of 7°C/45°F so if you plant it outside, make sure to lift them in the autumn and bring them into a greenhouse or conservatory. And with a little luck your plant will look just as great when you plant it back out the following year :)

Lemongrass growing outside

Time for a Catch-up

It's been a very busy and fun weekend (is it Wednesday already?) and I only now have a chance to catch up on blogging. We had family arrive on the ferry last Thursday and the house has been alive and bouncing with excited little ones up to the beginning of this week. Over the visit we took my mother-in-law and the kids bowling, to the beach, up to the allotment and to the Royal Manx Agricultural show as well. They all had a blast :)

Elderflower and White Grape Jelly wins at the Royal Manx :)

I did have time to put together a few entries for the Royal Manx cookery competition though and came back in the end with a happy first prize for 'Best Light Jelly'! Am very pleased especially since many of the competitors are older than me and have much more experience under their belts. It was also really cute when I got a congratulations on my win at the supermarket a few hours after leaving the show - it seems jelly making is something that you pay attention to on the island! I think next year I'll be putting in a few more entries - and especially in the wine category. Unfortunately we've pretty much drank up all the wine I put down last autumn and the winter wines are still aging away. I'm determined to save some for next year's competition though.

Isle of Man Beekeepers tent

The kids had a great time at the show as well with sunny skies, farm animals and classic cars to ogle at. And in between an ice-cream and a bouncy castle we got to take them in to the Isle of Man Beekeepers tent to show them some honey-bees! Though there was a bit of trepidation at first, they quite enjoyed watching the bees after they figured out they couldn't get out of the case. And my nephew was so excited after he received two stickers for helping find the Queen bee :)

Laxey in Bloom 2011 - Best Allotment

I also entered my plot at the allotment into the 'Laxey in Bloom' competition a few weeks ago - I enjoy a bit of healthy competition and it also gave me the incentive to get my butt up there and finish my stone pathways. I was really pleased to receive a letter in the mail last week letting me know that I'd won :) It's only the first year that the competition has included a 'Best Allotment' category and I hope that I can get more people at our site involved in it next year. The point of having allotment is to grow your own fruit and vegetables, but events like this can be a fun and social way to encourage more people to get involved!

Korat kitties in clay

The second night of my pottery class was last night and it was just as fun as the first! I made a second mug, this one for my husband, with an impression of our two Korat kitties on it. Both the first mug and the second will dry and harden up a bit and in the next class we'll begin glazing them. I think I'm also going to try to get a hold of some extra clay to work at home so I can make some other items - am thinking a necklace pendant and cream and sugar bowls. Everyone is having such a great time and we're all so excited about pottery. Faye even got out the wheel last night and one of the gals working on it was laughing and giggling the entire time. I'd say that the class is not only great for making your own beautiful and functional art but also for stress therapy. You walk in maybe a bit tense and flustered after your work day and leave relaxed and smiling. It's wonderful to see :)

Ellerslie Farm

Faye's studio is located at the back of the above barn on Ellerslie Farm, which has been owned by her family for generations. It's an amazing place and the farm was build as a smaller model of the Villa Marina complex in Douglas by internment camp prisoners during WWI. Though I knew that German prisoners of war were kept on the island during WWII, I did not know that the UK rounded up Germans and other suspicious individuals and sent them to the Isle of Man during the first world war. Anyhow, I hope they got some kind of pay for their hard work!

I also started a new batch of wine with pears and apples I found on the discount shelf at Shoprite. I really love that our store puts out little discount shelves in each section of the store for items that are near their expiry date. In this economy you find that anything on those shelves gets snapped up in a hurry and the store doesn't have to throw anything away.

Pear-Apple Wine - second stage of fermentation

The wine was made with several pounds of fruit that were over-ripe for eating but perfect for wine. It's been fermenting with a single packet of white wine yeast, raisins, a few other ingredients in a large bucket since last Wednesday. Today I filtered and funneled into a demi-john and fit it with an airlock for its second stage of fermentation. I made the mistake one time of putting the juice and yeast directly into the demi-john without first letting the yeast go crazy in a more open container. The yeast and juice foam rose right through the airlock and made a messy puddle on the counter. Not pretty! This demi-john I'll probably let age and clear up for close to a year and it will make a light summer wine perfect for picnics or Saturday afternoon catch-ups with the girls. And just maybe it'll win me another first prize at the Royal Manx next year :)

Well I think that's all so enjoy the sunshine everyone and see you soon!

Pottery Class with Faye Christian

Last night was my first night in a 4-week pottery course being taught by Faye Christian - and I'm so excited for the next! Five friends of mine and I are in her very first class, which is being held in her cute little studio in Crosby.

The aim of the class is to introduce us to clay and to build a tea set composed of at least two mugs and a pitcher which we will be able to take home at the end of the month. I like that Faye has kept it fairly flexible so that you can create other pieces of pottery rather than just these three pieces and already one of the girls has made a tea-light and another, who is a textile artist, is planning out a ceramic quilt.

We began the class by rolling out the clay with rolling pins, much like you would do with a pie crust. We then began experimenting with pressing different flowers, buttons, lace and shells into the clay and then cutting out a square and draping it over a wooden cube. I forgot to take pictures at this stage but hopefully will be able to show our work in a future post!

After that little introduction, we rolled clay out again, made more impressions and then wrapped the clay around Styrofoam cylinders to form the sides of a mug. Afterwards we added a bottom piece and then formed handles and attached them on the side.

Though I expected that we'd be playing around with clay on the first night, I did not expect that we'd be making a pretty much completed mug - granted they're not glazed and fired yet but they will be. My mug, shown without the handle, is below with the branch of leaves that I used to make the impression.

A friend's mug is below and shows bits of Crocosmia flowers still pressed into the clay. These will completely burn away when the mug is fired and all that will be left will be perfect impressions of the blossoms.

It was a great first class - THANKS FAYE! :)

Honey, Oats and Beeswax Soap

Soaping stands with gardening and cooking as one of my favourite hobbies. In a way it is like making bread with all the many ingredients, precise measurements and steps, as well as the waiting to see what it's going to come out like. Bread and soap are similar in many things actually - you can buy commercial brands of both cheaply at the average supermarket though both are most likely filled with all kinds of nasties. And both are a luxuriant treat when made by an artisan, or indeed yourself. Like baking a loaf of homemade bread, making soap is one of the most satisfying and practical home crafts one can do.

Soap is made of two basic ingredients: oil and lye. The combination of these two at certain temperatures will result in soap. Easy enough, right? But it gets a bit trickier to create a bar of soap that you actually will want to use on your skin. Different oils contain different properties - some make a bar hard, some are better at cleansing, some create lather and some condition the skin. The right proportion of different oils as well as the correct proportion of oils to lye can make all the difference between a dud and a winner.

There are also other ingredients that should be used in soap other than oil and lye. Though using just the first two will result in soap, it may go rancid if you've chosen to superfat (lye-discount) it - this is when you put extra amounts of oils in the recipe for moisturising purposes. If you choose to do this, as I strongly recommend you do, then make sure to use some additives which serve as natural anti-oxidants such as grapefruit seed extract or vitamin E oil. There are also countless herbs, natural pigments and fragrances that you can use in creating a natural bar of soap. It's fun to experiment! :)

I made a batch of soap yesterday and my recipe and process are below. It's a fairly simple recipe but uses beeswax as one of its oils, which beginner soap-makers might have trouble with due to its much higher melting point than that of other oils. But I thought I'd share this recipe because with beekeeping being all the rage these days, it's one of the only oils that the average person can 'make' at home. The other oil which the self-sufficient folks might have ready access to is rendered animal fat, otherwise known as tallow. Tallow is an excellent oil when used in combination with other oils but on its own it makes a bar that isn't the best cleaner. Tallow isn't used in this recipe but I instead use palm oil, which is called the vegetarian tallow due to its similar properties.

Honey, Oats and Beeswax Soap

97g Lye (chemical name: NaOH
266g Spring water
210g Coconut oil - Makes a bar that cleanses well
280g Olive oil - Probably the best oil for soap making and very nourishing
105g Castor oil - Creates a conditions, bubbly and creamy bar
70g Palm oil - Creates a hard bar with creamy lather
35g Beeswax - Creates a hard, creamy bar and has anti-bacterial properties
1 Tbsp Honey - Adds a light honey fragrance and has natural anti-biotic properties
1 Tbsp Oats - both whole rolled oats and finely chopped
10 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract

1. Make sure there are no kids running around and that all pets are locked out of your work area. Lye can be very dangerous if it's spilled on the skin, splashed into the eyes or is accidentally ingested. Put on your safety goggles, apron and plastic gloves to continue.

2. Measure all your oils into a pan and your water into a heat resistant, tall container.

3. Begin heating up the oils on the hob - you want to bring them to 60°C/140°F as this is the low end of the beeswax melting point. Normally, oils and lye are mixed together at around 95°-110°F.

4. While the oils are heating up, measure the lye into the water in a well ventilated area, stir well and try not to breathe the fumes. The mixture will get very hot and may even begin boiling at this point so keep your face well away and if you can. You can then place the container of lye in a tub of water to help it cool down a bit but keep an eye on its temperature every couple of minutes to make sure it doesn't get too cold.

5. When both the oil and lye are around 60°C/140°F you can mix them together. It's okay if the lye is a few degrees cooler than the oil but the oil must be spot on. Start by pouring in about two tablespoons of lye into the oil and stir well before pouring in the rest. Stir well again and then dip your stick blender into the mixture at an angle, so as to not get air into your soap. You will need to alternate short blasts of whizzing with stirring the mixture gently until you reach a light trace. Trace is when the oil and lye are less a liquid consistency and more like a light pudding. To make sure it's traced, take a little of the mixture up in a spoon and dribble it on the top. If your dribble holds its form and doesn't immediately sink down into the soap then it's ready. Using beeswax in a soap recipe does cause trace to happen quite quickly so you might only need to whizz and stir in as little as 30 seconds to a minute.

6. Now pour the honey and grapefruit seed extract in and mix very well - you don't want lumps of honey in your soap. When that's all mixed in, add in your oats, stir well and then pour the soap into your moulds and cover with plastic wrap. Try to make sure that the plastic wrap gets into all the corners of the mould since these are the areas that soap ash is likely to occur. Soap ash is a powdery white substance that can sometimes form on soap as it cools - it's completely harmless but looks awful.

7. Don't insulate your soap since it's got honey in it - this superheats the soap after you pour it into the mould and you don't want it to get overheated since this can cause it to crack or unattractive halos to appear. Just cover larger moulds with a cookie sheet and smaller ones with a bowl if you'd like it to go through gel phase. If you don't cover the smaller moulds at all, it will not go through gel-phase and will result in a more opaque and lighter soap which is just as nice.

8. Wait at least 24 hours before unmoulding and if the soap doesn't come out of the mould easily, just pop it in the freezer for 45 minutes and try again. After unmoulding you can press more oat flakes into your soap for a nice effect.

For those interested in taking soap further, I'd suggest investing in a good introductory book such as 'Soap Making, Self-Sufficiency by Sarah Ade'. It provides information on different ingredients, processes, safety precautions as well as some decent recipes. Have fun and I'd love to hear how you do :)

Soap Making, Self-Sufficiency by Sarah Ade

Homemade Vanilla Extract

I'm sure the sales of artificial vanilla flavouring would plummet if more people knew how easy it is to make real vanilla extract at home. It's really as simple as two ingredients: about 110ml of vodka and 1 vanilla bean.

To make, simply split your vanilla bean lengthwise, flatten it a bit and then insert it into a dark coloured bottle. Fill the bottle up with vodka, screw on the top, give it a good shake and set it in a warm window that you'll come to on a daily basis. This is because you need to give the bottle a shake everyday for two weeks. By the end of the two weeks the vodka will have gone brown and will taste of vanilla extract. But put it in a dark cupboard after the first two weeks and let it sit a couple more before using it and it will be even better.

The bottle I use to make my vanilla extract in comes from back in the day when I actually used to buy the stuff. The 118ml(4oz) bottle of 'Pure Vanilla Extract' I used buy is priced £5.73 at a leading UK supermarket. That's crazy when you think that making this same stuff at home costs only around £1.60!

And if you end up buying two vanilla beans, split the second bean the same way you did for the first and pop it into the vodka bottle. Put it away in a dark place for about a month and you now have vanilla vodka. It even makes the cheapest of vodkas taste great :)

Gardening Monthly - August

After a few sunny days, today brings with it a timely spell of cloud and rain. Both my allotment and I love this intermittent weather - the crops bask in plenty of sunshine but never get too thirsty and I don’t have to bother running the hose down to water them. Bliss! But while lately the weather has been gracious to gardening, I can’t say the same for the early part of the summer.

They say that each harvest will never be the same as the last year’s, and for me 2011 has held no contradiction. May and June were pretty much washouts with what seems like all of the UK’s rain pouring down on our little isle and leaving the rest in drought. Thanks to this, many of the sun loving plants that I optimistically planted out early really suffered and I feared that some wouldn’t even make it. It’s hard to believe that this time last year I was beginning to harvest sweet corn and we were in the middle of a courgette glut. Sadly, my sweet corn has only hit about two feet in height this summer and the courgettes and cucumbers are only now beginning to produce. On the other hand, anything moisture loving has been coming on beautifully. We’ve been feasting on early potatoes, mushrooms, pak choi, spinach and peas and my lettuces and rocket are championing an onslaught of fresh salads.

A recent day's harvest

Aside from all the greens, another positive part of gardening this year is that it’s much less work than last. No more double-digging or clods of turf to contend with and there’s much less strimming to be done now that we’ve used stones dug up from the ground to create paths between the beds. While the weeding is ever present, I have to say that I’ve found some extra time to dedicate to other things this year, such as visiting other people’s gardens.

There are nine allotments on the Isle of Man and it’s my goal to visit all of them eventually. Not only is it fun to check out what everyone is growing but it’s a great opportunity to see local gardening techniques and gather new ideas. So when I was recently invited to visit the Port St Mary Allotment by a member of their committee, I jumped at the chance. On the day of our visit, Anthony Murphy picked my husband and me up and gave us a personal tour of their lovely site. With green rolling hills as a backdrop and distant views of the sea to the front, I’m sure that everyone who gardens there has only to look up from their labours to be instantly inspired.

Port St Mary Allotment

Port St Mary is a slightly larger allotment than ours in Laxey and by the look of many of its plots it seems to have been around for a few more years than us as well. Neat grass paths and vegetable beds are interspersed with garden furniture, fruit cages and compost piles. Steel cisterns are set regularly around the borders of the site and provide a steady yet controlled source of water. It was also interesting to see how different personalities manifest themselves into growing spaces. While one plot might have ordered rows and strict planting schedules, another might have a more random planting but be just as lush and bountiful. There were some quite interesting and novel uses of scrap materials to be seen as well. I was particularly interested in the use of roofing tiles as a path surface and wooden pallets being used as a compost pile - a couple of stray strawberry plants popping out of the bottom inspired me to plan a similar structure and planting it up completely with strawberries.

Wooden pallets as compost pile

Roofing tiles as foot-paths

But not everyone who grows their own is an allotmenteer and another opportunity to check out the work of other local green thumbs arose with the ‘Hidden Gardens of Castletown’ event. I’ve been very curious about how gardeners cope with the wind that seems to always be whipping through the south part of the island and this seemed the perfect opportunity to find out. Touring with a friend, we started the day at the harbour and walked our way around to both private homes and public sites set around the town. Peeping into both the most bijoux and grand of spaces, some of the prettiest and productive gardens were to be found. One listed on the map as Bagnio House on Arbory Street had a humble entrance through a garage. Then it was into a walled garden peppered with beautiful trees, ornamental flowers and low box hedging surrounding soft fruit beds. The warm stone walls not only serve as a foundation to grow rambling roses and trees against but also effectively breaks the wind - no doubt creating a small micro-climate.

Bagnio House on Arbory Street

But my favourite garden, hands down, was the ‘Back of 11-17 Queen Street’ which runs along the beach. Not a metre away from the high tide line, Phil and Helen Lesley and their neighbours have carted in bags of compost to create a charming stretch of garden sandwiched tightly between their homes and the sea. In a hostile environment of salty water and sometimes gale-force winds, tender lettuces grow alongside broad beans and potatoes and manx cats warm themselves on sun-warmed flagstones. It’s surreal to think that not long ago a severe storm completely destroyed this garden and it had to be rebuilt from scratch. How heartbreaking that must have been to walk out the morning after to see your garden completely destroyed and swallowed up by the waves.

Back of 11-17 Queen Street

In the middle of the growing season, weeding and harvesting keep the average gardener busy and holidays might also cut back on time dedicated to cultivating veg. So while it might not be on the agenda to spend time pottering around in someone else’s garden, I can attest that getting yourself ‘out of your own backyard’ can be really inspiring and might even give you some good ideas to take home. And if you’re like me and you feel a bit disappointed with how your garden is going this year, it’s encouraging to know that there are others out there working successfully with more challenging factors than a bit of mucky weather. You never know for sure what the harvest will bring so when you’re rewarded with late season peas rather than sweet corn, make sure to count your luck and savour every last bit of Mother Nature’s unexpected bounty.