It’s been a busy few days as we’re spending every spare moment outside in the countdown to the Garden Safari. The entrance to our property is through a gate in a mixed hedge at the top of the garden (we are on a slope). It’s an unprepossessing entry so we decided to give the hedge a good cut back, clear the area underneath it which runs beside the path and plant it with something pretty to look at. This is a job that has needed doing for some time…
As well as tackling this area, we’ve also started on project ‘Rebuild the Compost Heaps’…
The plan is to have three compost bays, each roughly 1.2m square, so we can use one to turn each heap to aerate it. I’ve read about all kinds of interesting ingredients and that it’s important not to have too much nitrogen-rich material. It’ll be so great to have home-made compost – it feels as though this is ‘proper’ gardening now. Does anyone have any composting tips?
In other news… Our eldest finished his qualifying silver Duke of Edinburgh expedition yesterday – three days of walking (60km) and two nights of camping. It’s been an exciting few months for him but that’s it for a while now. In order to achieve the award, he has to concentrate on finishing his volunteering, physical and skill activities. Oh, and all his school work of course.
I baked a couple of banana loaves earlier this afternoon for the after-school kitchen-raiders. If you usually eat all your bananas before they have a chance to be over-ripe, I recommend saving a couple to go past their best and use them to make this cake.
Dairy-free banana loaf
Makes 1 x 900g/2lb loaf
The quantities double up easily for two cakes – I usually make two at
a time and use 2 medium or 3 small bananas as we don’t like them very banana-y. And you can experiment with types and ratios of sugars. Using all dark brown soft, or a mixture of light (or dark) muscovado and caster, also works well. You could also add a handful of sultanas or walnuts (but my youngest doesn’t like ‘bits’).
100g dark brown soft sugar
75g unrefined caster sugar
60ml olive oil (basic, not expensive or extra-virgin)
2 eggs
175g self-raising flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
2 small or 1 large over-ripe banana, mashed
Line a loaf tin with baking parchment or use a loaf-tin liner. Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Whisk the sugars, olive oil and eggs together in a large mixing bowl using a hand-held electric whisk. Do this for a couple of minutes until the mixture is lighter in colour and frothy. Sieve the flour and baking powder into the bowl and use a wooden spoon to fold everything in until fully combined. Add the mashed banana and stir until just incorporated. Pour the batter into your prepared loaf tin, pop in the oven and bake for 40–45 minutes. Stick a skewer into the centre of the loaf – if it comes out clean and the top is springy to the touch, the cake is cooked. If not, bake for a few minutes more.
Remove from the oven, place on a wire rack to cool for a couple of minutes before turning out of the tin. It’s delicious eaten while still warm as the edges will be a little crunchy. It will keep for a few days in an air-tight tin, but ours usually disappear quite quickly.
acoastalplot 
Your new garden bed looks fantastic! What a great assortment of plants you got in there! And those alliums! Just such a beautiful sight! Good luck with those compost bins and thank you for sharing that yummy recipe!! Happy gardening!! Nicole xo
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Ah, thanks Nicole. I’ll show you how it all develops. Hope your week is going well x
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Spectacular aliums. I’m enjoying watching the garden progress – it’s so much better when someone else is doing the work!
Whenever I find an over-ripe banana, I throw it in the freezer and then make banana cake when I have enough collected. Next time, I’ll try this recipe – looks good.
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Ha ha, thanks Anne. It is a lot of hard work at the moment but mostly fun. Great idea to freeze over-ripe bananas. Will have to do that.
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Your banana bread looks great and is as you say a good way to use up bananas isn’t it. I think that the garden is looking wonderful, especially your new path area! It will be a lovely entry for the visitors to your garden! I hope that it all goes well. xx
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Thank you Amy.
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I always try to fit in too many plants – I just can’t stand those empty spaces in between. Good palette of plants for your new entry garden. Eager to see as they fill in and bloom.
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It’s going to look good and those alliums are gorgeous. My daughter and her cohort had to be evacuated from the New Forest (“Basically mum it’s just one big swamp”) when she was on her final DofE expedition. It was the weekend a poor couple died in a landslide and health and safety kicked in with a vengeance. And I did not go anywhere near my son’s walking boots when he returned last summer from two weeks trekking in the Pyrenees. My composting tip is to layer thinly. You never want to add too much of any one ingredient and the ratio of brown to green should be 70:30. You can always wet it if it seem to dry. And the bigger the better. My compost heap at the allotment gets bigger than me occasionally (I’m like Monty and Carol, I compost everything) but soon rots down. My children used to love climbing it when they were small and playing kings of the castle. Happy gardening and good luck with the garden safari.
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Thank you Sarah. Getting the mix right for the compost will be trial and error I think – there are three bays, all larger than before, so hopefully it’ll work. Have a good weekend.
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Your alliums look beautiful I didn’t manage to capture ours before going on holiday and now they have turned green. Your garden plans for the bank sound good and I’m sure the plants will enjoy their new home and reward you with a wonderful display. We have always had compost and a worm bin although the end product has not always been perfect. We soon got rid of the plastic compost bins after a few months of arriving here. The rats from the surrounding fields had discovered it was a good snug home for the winter! We have recently learnt that straw is a good ingredient to improve the compost so we are experimenting with that this year. We also gather seaweed in the winter and use it a mulch on the vegetable beds, have you tried that at all? Sarah x
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Thanks for the tip, Sarah. I hadn’t thought of straw but that sounds a v good idea. Ooh, yes, and seaweed – I noticed that on a friend’s asparagus bed recently – great suggestion. I’ll nip down at low tide! Have a great weekend.
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