Ac Baker

I use rolled oats, no further processing, roughly double the volume of tap water to float them, a small spoon of live yoghurt stirred in, and cover with a cloth for about five days.

Not very precise at all!

Last weekend has just gone, or was before the week that just ended.

This weekend is just coming - the end of this week - or happening current ly.

Next weekend is the end of next week or the week about to start.   Of course, you have to agree on what days of the week are the weekend days too!

But yes, days of the weekend and dates of the month plus year to really avoid ambiguity. Little endian with three letter day name abbreviation to help with real-life planning, because the day of the week is highly significant to most people.

Hence, Gregorian style ..

Sun 7 Dec 2025

My second batch was also successful!  My house isn't cool by blackhouse standards, but probably cooler than average for today.  Again I let the ferment continue for five days.  I didn't detect any "off" odours, flavours, colours, nor textures.

The swats, or liquid, was more like rice milk to look at, but a lovely tangy, oaty flavour.

I had the sowan raw with a heaped teaspoon of cooked Japanese quince puree which enhanced the tanginess and was very tasty.

I now feel confident at trying a batch with the ferment from my own sowan with live soya yogurt starter, to see if that works.

Always glad to avoid waste! I was brought up to revel in hand-me-downs, repairs, and rescues.

My most recent big rescue has been a slightly damaged small polytunnel cover (do some people call these "hoop houses"?) that will fit our existing bird net frame.

But I'm always "foraging" for such wins, and there's are fair bit to find in our suburb.

From what I've read, sunchokes may slowly reduce in inulin content as the winter goes on, with a larger drop as they start the budding and sprouting process in late winter right up until they start photosynthesizing again.

So the flavour will likely change a bit in the process.

But yes, I think we can gradually dig up sunchokes as we need them, for a nice winter harvest.

Otherwise, if you don't know where plants were under the show, some regular shovelling may well be needed

Many thanks for the update.  We also had record drought over here in the Midlands of England.  Even our normally reliable sunchokes barely reached half the height the plants normally achieved, I harvested less weight of potatoes than I planted, and the yacón only survived rather than thriving.

I hope you won't be disheartened, "there is always next year" is gardeners yearly refrain.

Your conditions look quite challenging: there is minimal beneficial ecosystem in the near vicinity of your growing beds.

Plus you have done all this hard work improving the growing conditions this year, giving you a head start for the new year.

So I'm hoping you are starting to think positive thoughts about what your next steps might be.

One question: I've read that different varieties of winter squash may not come true to type due to cross pollination if grown within 250m of one another.  How do your eating pumpkins taste?

Good luck!

The so-called "United" States of "America", and the so-called "United" Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK can be confused with e.g. Ukraine), are probably both problematic abbreviations then.

I live in the Midlands of England, distinct in climate, history, culture, language, governance, law and more from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland.  

I guess more accurate and precise locations are helpful!

I grew up, and live, in England. Foraging was part of my upbringing. My father tells tales of being sent by his mother to the spot just outside the village where, as a child, she always found the best early dewberries.

I remember picking elderflowers, elderberries, blackberries and sloes for wine, crumbles & infusion into gin, respectively. And my late Mum remembered when they picked enough cowslips from their own land for wine, too.

I've never had enough training to recognise the harmful mushrooms (toadstools, as we call them, but that's not a scientific name!) so I just admire fungi and grow at home from certified spores!

These days, my grandmother's village has grown very large and I'm too sad to return. Meanwhile, I live in a city, and mostly only harvest blackberries from our nearby mini-park.

But I'm also involved in our 'Fruit & Nut Village' project in the city: https://www.fruitandnutvillage.org.uk/.  This year alone, they plan to plant over 150 fruit & nut trees - apple, pear, plum, damson, mulberry, almond and more - across spots in the city parks and green spaces. They also plant forest gardens with vegetables.  They have about 80 sites now, with I think over 500 trees, planted since 2018 so coming into fruit for the first time successively.

One key aim is to make foraging for fruit & veg more accessible to the million city residents, who (like the UK as a whole) typically don't eat even the Government recommend minimum fruit & veg intake of 5 portions.

Frost finally arrived about ten days ago.  We've moved the half-hardy fuscias in pots into the community plot shed.

Another lovely donation has arrived, this time from someone who has been contracting for our local Council for decades to tend the gardens around tower blocks, whom I shall call P.  I was lucky enough to be there when P as passing the site gates, and stopped to ask if anyone still wanted free, clean autumn leaves, as the people to whom P used to deliver them had sadly passed away of old age.  

Here is our roughly 6 m3 heap, which we're using to winterise our vegetable beds.  And P may have one more load before the end of the season which we can baggsy!

Heap of mostly oak, but with some sycamore and possibly common lime, leaves.