The Impulsive Gardener

One thing I really love about Suffolk is the number of wild or escaped hops I see everywhere. In towns and gardens whole hedges seem to be quickly dissappearing under twining blankets of prickily hop vines.


Much to my delight, something similiar is happening on a little corner of the shed in my garden. Despite having been hastily crammed into an old wooden wine crate (poor things. I'd previously shoved them into a too-small pot, in the haste of moving and my frantic attempts to take the whole garden with me), my home grown hops, sown late last year, are quickly devouring the lengths of twine they've been allocated and are growing at a hugely impressive rate up, along - and in cases where I'm not watchful enough - over our quaint 3-bay shed. I say qaint, read 'holey'. Some bricks are conspicously absent in key places, and there are some interesting gaps and leanings between walls, which seem to be much appreciated by the bats and swallows seen flitting in and out of them. Not that I mind. Like freckles and little tooth-gaps, theres a sort of pied beauty there to be appreciated.

Growing my own hops has little and less to do with any real love of beer or ales. In the pub, I'm firmly a cider drinker ( ooo-arrr, Wurzles song now playing relentlessly in head. Here, lemme get you too). The Adnams tour in Southwold is a great day out, but the tasting was more or less wasted on me as one after another, I made faces and said 'Oo. It's bitter.'
However ale swiller or not, I'm enjoying having my own hops and watching them scramble up the crumbling brickwork sides of the shed and walls.

Beautiful deep red flowers of strawberry 'F1 Tarpan'

Despite all the rain, slugs and depressing lack of sunny days, each the strawberry plants are bulking up and each has set dozens of little green strawberrylets. Fingers crossed, for strawberries and cream, Eaton mess and most importantly PIMMS!


While pottering around and oogling my potential haul, I noticed little green strawberry runners shooting off in all directions from almost every plant. Some I snipped off, if the main plants were a little on the small side but others I potted up to grow into whole new strawberry plants. These will grow until next year when they'll start producing -modestly at first, but soon enough they'll get going and I'll be happily overwhelmed with strawberries.

Strawberries are one of the easiest things in the world to grow. They'll happily live in almost anything you care to put them in ( boots, boxes, I have some in an old colander), there are lots of different varieties, and you can choose different sorts to keep you in fruit for longer. Almost all are self fertile so you can get away with just having one plant and even from that you can still easily end up with half a dozen by the end of the year because around mid to late June many varieties start throwing out runners. Runners look a bit like a long stem running from the middle of the plant and depending on how developed they are, might few little leaves on the tip or even have already started to grow roots.

Little roots have grown where my pineberry runner was pegged down. Make sure that the point where the leaves are is the bit that you've buried, as roots don't just grow anywhere.

To make new plants from runners:

Dig a small hole next to the parent plant and pop a small pot in. Fill the pot with dirt or good quality compost and peg down or lightly bury the runners on the surface of the soil in the pot where they are showing leaves.
In a few weeks, when the plants have rooted and established in their pots and have several leaves, snip the connection between the parent plant and the new one and pry up the pot. Ouila! New plants! More strawberries! Omnomnomnomnom

It's worth giving each plant plenty of space. While most should be replaced after three to four years, they'll get surprisingly large in that time and if you want to make the most of their potential, be sure to give them at least a foot and a half in between plants and feed regularly with tomato feed once they've started flowering to give them that little boost and encourage good fruit production.

Maybe something to consider when the hens are being over generous.

The principles of pickling eggs are pretty similar to pickling anything else. Vinegar + spices/seasoning + item to be pickled = pickled item. Cucumber, beetroot, cabbage, eggs - even pigs feet can be and are pickled. With eggs, be a bit more careful about sterilising the jar and you do have the option of waffling over what sort of vinegar to use. I bought pickling vinegar, which essentially just means that they did the smelly bit for me and I didn't have to boil the spices in the vinegar to get the flavours to mix. IF (big 'if') pickled eggs turn out to be a new tasty treat that I love, I'll feel better about stinking out the kitchen with vinegar fumes and re-write a recipe to illustrate how to do it totally from scratch.

Pickled red cabbage, don't knock it till you try it.

This recipe is pretty tiny. Sincere apologies if I'm failing to meet expectations but from basing public demand for pickled eggs on the age of the specimen I sampled at that pub, I felt pretty safe by starting small. If you are a pickled produce fiend, feel free to get a bigger jar and cram in as many eggs in as you like, just also add more flavourings and such.

You'll need:
A sterilised jar large
Enough vinegar to cover the eggs- about 400 ml
2-3 Eggs, hard boiled, depending on size.
Spices, seasonings and herbs of your choice. I used:
 a bunch of dill
1 clove garlic
a crushed chili
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp mustard seeds and a dash of black pepper

Place the eggs in the jar and sprinkle over your seasonings then add the vinegar and put in the fridge for anything from one day to 3 weeks. Some recipes I read said that you could get away with storing the pickled eggs out of the fridge but for now I'll stick with the good old fridge. Baby steps.


Do be advised that these things kick up a bit. Friends, lovers, -even dogs will fail to be impressed with the pungent eggy fumes when you bite into one of these. Keep breath mints in hand and avoid at all costs when eating out, unless the you're looking for an eccentric means to end a date very very badly. This is all based solely on that previous pub egg. The jury's out on just how potent these will be. I'll let you know after this weekend.

.....Or sooner.



I couldn't take it anymore and just went ahead and tried one. I can't say they looked particularly tempting, but my impulsive nature took over and with only enough sense to open a few windows, I dived in and fished one out. What followed is best summed up in an excerpt from the email I send to a friend last night:

'Erm, pickled eggs... Unlike the pub one, my homemade version had some teeth to it and was a total vinegar bomb. Ick. I only thought it might be something good because a. they are in like, every pub are they not? and b. because I love pickled onions so much. I thought that maybe this was a sort of sick but natural step forward from those.'

So yes. My honest opinion is not the most surprising; pickled eggs are not especially tasty. I might try another recipe, perhaps using a more mellow vinegar when my egg basket next overfloweth, but until then, I'll stick to the crisps.

Oh yuck you say, and for now, I might actually be with you.


Last Saturday saw OH and I tucked contentedly into our local pub, befriending other people's dogs and playing darts to made-up rules. At some point someone noticed a large jar resting on the bar and in the spirit of adventure, two of it's occupants were fished out and found themselves being curiously poked and prodded in a bag of crisps. Having faced other notorious English fare (thank you James Herriot, the man who took the mystery out of scary sounding things like 'clotted cream'-delicious actually- and 'black pudding'- also yummy) and loved almost all of it, I tried my first slightly battered pickled egg (pint close to hand in case it all backfired).


Underwhelming is probably the best way to put it. I was braced for deep vinegar impact (think nasal passage burn reminiscent of wasabi or like when you boil vinegar and hastily take off the lid. You have half a second to retreat somewhere safe or you and all your kitchen windows will be streaming) and had prepared myself for overwhelming eggyness. However, despite having been bathed in the murky depths of that jar for goodness knows how long, the taste of crisp crumbs was more the most noticeable taste. 'Huh' we all said and turned back to the darts.



However, I'm not content to let smelly, stinking dogs lie and today I went and added another obscure ingredient to my pantry; pickling vinegar. In hindsight, the vinegar brewers or whatever they are saw me coming, as you can use any vinegar to pickle your eggs, but I got a little carried away and anyway, the jars sold as vinegar especially for pickling happened to be the biggest anyway. Which is great. I might just love pickled eggs and want to make loads, so more left for later.

Recipe to follow.  In the meantime, get some vinegar; malt, cider, white- it dosen't matter though malt vinegar will have the stongest flavour. Also to have on hand are a few teaspoons of sugar, various spices and herbs like dill, cumin, mustard seeds and garlic. Oh, and a jar.

 It seems like geraniums are everywhere in the little roadside stalls of plants that dot the streets and lanes in Suffolk. Having been indifferent before, they're winning me over.


Looking a little worse for wear but still well jazzy, my impulse buy from the teensy florists shop in Saxmundham are pretty punchy little things. If I'm clever, I'll take cuttings and pot them on before bringing the plants in for winter to torporize (n.r.w. - not a real word) on top of the fridge.