10 May 2014

Growing Mushrooms and a Birthday

A Couple of weeks ago, it was my youngest daughter's 21st birthday ........ how old does that make me feel!! Ancient I can tell you. My daughter, being the efficient person that she is had sent me a recipe for a cake that she wanted me to make for her birthday, it was a three layer Victoria sponge with a strawberry butter cream icing. The icing was delicious and led to a massive sugar rush as I was icing the cake because I couldn't resist eating the leftover stuff that was in the bowl! The icing is made using strawberry milkshake powder mixed into the butter cream and is really lovely. Topped off with some home made cake bunting and some shimmery princess baubles and she was delighted with her birthday cake.

Sorry about the fuzzy picture, my camera battery was dead so I used my iPad and I think the lens was a bit grubby, despite me giving it a good wipe because, earlier that day, I was trying to get a picture of one of my dogs and every time I went near him with the iPad he licked it!  :-)



For Easter, along with some delicious choccie eggs I got a cute little mushroom growing kit and this week I finally got around to getting it started although, I couldn't resist showing you a picture of the Easter eggs, you see the feather and the straw ....... it's edible! It's made from rice paper and you can eat it, how cute is that :-)


Anyway, I got the mushroom kit planted and now I have a box of soil mixed with mushroom compost hidden in the airing cupboard and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some lovely mushrooms. 



I also have some progress to report on my tomato plants. I have some teeny tiny tomatoes on them. I love watching things grow and produce food, it never fails to make me smile.


You can just about make out the tomatoes in the picture above. They are about the size of peas but they are growing really fast and it's now time to start feeding them. It's a pity it's not warm enough yet to put them outside but the weather has been awful. Wet and windy and not very warm at all so, for now, they are on my kitchen windowsill being cossetted and kept warm and yesterday, I bought one of those plastic mini greenhouse thingies from the supermarket, a bargain at £6. It's specifically for tomatoes, although, when I bought it I didn't realise how big it actually is. It's 1.5m tall which is almost as tall than I am!! A bit of a shock when I put it together this morning but, once it stops raining, I will take it outside and find somewhere sheltered to put it and then as soon as I have potted on the tomato plants into bigger pots, they can go and live outside in their own special greenhouse. Oh to have a proper greenhouse but, hopefully, not long now until I can afford one so, fingers crossed :-)

4 comments:

  1. A little tip about that mini-greenhouse: find a couple of hefty rocks and sit them on the lowest cross bars of the frame. I had the slightly bigger version (4-tier mini-greenhouse) and despite tethering it with 2 nylon ropes and 4 heavy duty wooden ground pegs, it got blown across my garden - twice! And it was in a sheltered corner of my little plot, too. All my strawberry plants & fruit were bashed out of their troughs and destroyed. :(

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  2. Thanks I will do that, I'm considering jamming a couple of growbags in there to plant the tomatoes in, hopefully that will hold it down as well as the bricks :-)

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  3. Congratulations to your daughter on her 21st she is nine months younger than my daughter, so I know how you feel about feeling old! Her cake looks wonderful. We once had a similar greenhouse, it worked well but as Rambler mentioned it did take a battering from the wind. Sarah x

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  4. I feel ancient too though I do have my twelve year old to keep me feeling younger! The cake looks wonderful as do your chocolate eggs. Mine are all gone now. Good luck with your mushroom kit, it will be interesting to see how you get on with it and look at you with tomatoes, my dad always managed to get early ones, mine are weeks & weeks off yet. Well done!

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