the green gal

Has Spring sprung?

I think the answer is most likely no, but at least we had a preview of it today! The sun shining, daffodils swaying in the breeze and reports of the first lambs of the year being born, really makes me want to put the winter coat away and declare it's time for a change of wardrobe! Like I have enough clothes to do that anyway.

With having my own garden for the first time and a tangle of wisteria branches clinging to the house's front wall, I'm itching to get pruning and planting. But it's February, so it's too early, isn't it? With no Gardener's World to seek advice from (what are the BBC thinking with the scheduling) I have to assume that there's still a risk of frost. Camping in snowy Lincolnshire last April is still vivid enough in my memory to know that the lovely British weather can throw up plenty of surprises before it's time to plant the tubers. 

Guess I'll keep my secateurs holstered for the moment...

Forget food miles, what about wine miles?!

There's been much publicity about food miles and how it's better for the food, CO2 emissions and British businesses for us all to buy food, where possible, that's been grown or produced in the UK rather than flown from a faraway country. (As bananas don't grow too well in the UK you can feel good about buying Fairtrade bananas.)

But what about the glass of vino you wash down your delicious locally-sourced meal with? A bottle of Australian sauvignon blanc seems a little incongruous now, doesn't it?

Well, without suggesting the UK abandon all New World wines, how about replacing the odd bottle in your shopping basket with one produced a little closer to home? Europe has been making fine wines for many a year before the trend for Antipodean plonk really took off. Or how about wine made from grapes grown on this very isle? The horror stories of English table wine are a distant memory, I'm pleased to tell you. Vineyards in England and Wales are producing some top wines that are really worth you tasting. 

According to English-wine.com, there are 400 commercial vineyards in England and Wales. Only a few miles from me is Denbies Wine Estate in Surrey, the largest vineyard in England. Among the wines they produce is a delicious fruity white – Surrey Gold – as well as three sparkling wines and three red. The Estate offers a tour of the vineyards, tasting sessions and 

a guide to how the wine is produced, plus a well stocked shop of course. Just a walk around the vines themselves is free and a pretty lovely way to spend an hour or two. 

Although the local supermarkets, farm shops and off licences sell Denbies wine, I don't know if their distribution reaches the far corners of the country. But with so many producers in the country there is bound to be a bottle or two on your local shop's booze shelves. Try it for a change, you might be pleasantly surprised!

For more info on Denbies Wine Estate go to www.denbiesvineyard.co.uk. For a list of English and Welsh wineyards go to www.english-wine.com

Time to go a-chitting

No, I didn't make it up, it is a real word. Getting your seed potatoes ready to plant in the ground is called chitting. And now is the time to do it!

Take yourself off to your local garden centre or farm shop, and look for their bags of seed potatoes (also known as tubers). You can choose from first earlies, second earlies and main crop. They're planted in that order so that you get potatoes over time for maximum tatties enjoyment! Earlies will give you smaller new potatoes and maincrop will give you the bigger baking type lovelies. The bags tell you what each particular variety of potato is good for.

Now, take an empty egg carton and put one seed potato in each little compartment. Look for any little sprouty bits and have them pointing upwards. Place the eggbox in a light, cool but frost-free place and leave them alone! Over the next several weeks they'll grow sticky-out sprouty bits and it's from those that your potato plants will grow! But more on that later.

Happy chitting!