Rasa Pelham Gardening

How I collect and save seeds for my garden

Hey everyone, hope you are doing well! I thought I will share some of my gardening experience since people have been spending more time on their gardens(which is exciting to hear!) and maybe now it is more topical people might find it interesting.

I have been gardening for quite a few years and what I have realised is that it’s a constant learning process. There will never be a day when I will know it all when it comes to this subject. I thought I will also mention here that we took a very exciting decision last week and decided to even get an allotment for next year (fingers crossed there is some space). Anyways… what I would like to talk to you about this time is about seed collecting and storing.

I started seed collecting last year and I wanted to share straight away about my experiences. However due to us having website problems at that time I ended up holding off this post till now. And what a good timing! Not only that there is more interest in the subject, but also this is a good time to start thinking about seed collection. Also I have now seen what worked, so I can share some feedback here as well. Seed collecting is what makes gardening a little bit cheaper, more sustainable, and more interesting. Have you ever seen a plant that you would like to grow but could not find a seed to buy?

The starting point of seed collection is planning. Why? Because you need to let some plants develop their seed which takes a little time and preparation. So make a list and schedule what month you will be collecting those seeds. I created my list with space where I can mark a cross for each item as I go along.

Of course sometimes seed collection can be spontaneous, especially when you see a beautiful plant or your friend gives you an interesting fruit. Last year I collected lots of flower plants that now I am watching grow. I am also growing lots of Russian black tomatoes that my friend gave me to taste last year. It made crazy loads of tomato plants just from one fruit!

Once you have assembled your list you will have a better idea of the preparation that needs to be done. Look up how to collect seeds from each plant. I ended up watching quite a lot of seed collecting videos last year! Plants like cucumbers and courgettes definitely need a long time till they are ready for seed harvesting. Some veg like lettuce or carrots are harvested before they have a chance to develop any seeds so this maybe another reason why you need to prep and wait. The majority of other fruit and veg seeds are pretty obvious. They just need to be picked and dried. Make sure you dry seeds away from the sun!

After seeds are completely dry you can store them however you like. It’s important that seeds are kept in a dry, cool, and dark place. I used envelopes, but jars or little containers work fine as well.

If you want here we have few printable envelopes just for fun. Hope you like using them!

Using my own seeds has been very satisfying this year. I hardly spent any money so far. I only picked a few things from the shop, such as strawberry seeds for my kids as well as getting seeds to use where some I harvested did not work out. But those were only a few. Cucumber and courgette was was some of them! Probably because I did not allow enough of time before seed harvesting. The seeds that worked out really well are here as follows: tomatoes (all types), beans, pumpkin (got too many now), chamomile, marigolds, poppy, sunflower, nasturtium and still waiting for others. Totally worth trying out!

Enjoy gardening!

Rasa xoxo

Rasa Pelham Gardening, Preserving, Recipes

Green tomato ketchup

Last week we said goodbye to our green house (for a season). It was quite emotional for me as I really fell in love with it! Although the journey of building it and general gardening jobs delayed our house renovation (kitchen in particular) I feel having green house has given us irreplaceable experience. I loved getting fresh tomatoes everyday for my toast and salads, even if it was for only few months. I have learned a lot too! I will be applying my new learned knowledge next year when I grow tomatoes again :).

But what to do with all those green tomato that missed their chance to catch some sun? Few years ago we made some green tomato chutney. This year however I decided to go with green tomato ketchup only because we use ketchup more often (I bet you do too!). Green tomato ketchup taste a little fresher to compare to regular ketchup but is equally delicious with chips!

This recipe can be halved or doubled depending on your green tomato harvest. So weigh your tomatoes before deciding how much ketchup to make.
GREEN TOMATO KETCHUP

  • 2 kg tomatoes
  • olive oil
  • 3 onions, chopped
  • 2 celery sticks, sliced
  • 2 thumb fresh ginger, grated
  • 4 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 1/2 tsp ground mixed spice
  • salt and pepper
  • 700ml water
  • 2 tsp tabasco sauce (more if you like spicy)
  • 150ml apple cider vinegar
  • 200g brown sugar (I used dark brown which made the ketchup look darker)

1. wash, weigh, chop the tomatoes and set aside.

2. Place onions and celery  in a large saucepan with a generous amount of olive oil, ginger, garlic, ground coriander and mixed spice. Season with the pepper and a pinch of salt. Cook gently till softened.

3. Add the tomatoes, water and bring to the boil and simmer gently until the sauce reduces by half (around 3 h for 2kg tomatoes).

4. Whiz the sauce in a food processor or with a hand blender. Add the vinegar and the sugar. Place the sauce on the heat and simmer until it reduces and thickens to the consistency of tomato ketchup. At this point, adjust the seasoning to taste.

5. Spoon the jam into the ready sterilised jars or glass bottles.

    Should at least try making it for those chips 😉
    Rasa xoxo

    Rasa Pelham Gardening, Making

    Growing jasmine indoors + macrame style trellis diy

    I can’t remember when and how I came up with the idea of a climbing plant in our bedroom, but I am very pleased right now to actually have achieved this goal. I must admit I did not do much research when it comes to what climbing plant to get specifically though. It went something like this: I went to Homebase to get some paint, checked out their indoor plant selection, saw some jasmine plants heavily reduced (it was after their flowering season in March), looked up on Google on how to care for them and so on, liked the description so I thought worth it to have a go for £2 per plant. These plants need bright light with some direct light if possible (check), moist soil without being soggy (check) and natural season temperatures (check). Now I just hope I like the flowering scent when it comes next February…. should be lovely for the bedroom, surely!

    I repotted the plants within a week of purchasing. Bingo! They don’t have to be fancy pots, don’t even need to have a drainage hole. Instead fill the pots with gravel, then soil and that should do the trick.

    To make one of the pots more exciting (it was a very basic pot). I used some masking tape for areas where I wanted the original colour to stay and create a pattern of my own. I used some Hammerite metal paint that was leftover from our shelf brackets, but you can use any other suitable spray paint too. I love how spray paint creates an even finish without those undesired brush marks.

    Now, forgot to mention, when I used to dream about climbing plants indoors I always envisioned that two vines would meet over this wardrobe door. This is why I placed the jasmine plants right where they are (one either side of the door).

    To tell you the truth I have never been a fan of macrame deco, but after seeing so much inspiration on Instagram its hard not to fall in love with it. I obviously have no idea how to do macrame, but I am sure I will learn one day. I used my crochet skills this time to create an indoor trellis looking slightly like macrame art. Or could it be because I used classic cream white yarn that looks like cord?
    To make this trellis you will need macramé rings (whatever size and amount you want), some yarn (preferably cotton or even cord, but I needed to use up wool so I used that) and a large crochet hook (used size 9mm).

    To begin with, have a plan how you would like the rings laid out. I wasted so much time trying to work this out on the fly while i crocheted them together. I had to undo it many times as I realised there were better ways to connect the rings. I began with single crochet on my first ring.

    The plan does not have to be complicated. All you need to do is draw the rings and draw the direction the crochet will flow round the ring and onto other rings to connect the rings together. You can see how I did it at the picture below.

    By the end I began using chain stitch on the areas where I skipped from one ring to another without connecting any other rings at the bottom.

    I hung the trellis with nails, I thought this is the least damaging and sturdy at the same time. 

    My poor jasmine plants have been waiting for their trellis for a month or so. This is why I did not even prune them straight away as I should. Hopefully I was not too late. Apparently you should prune jasmine as soon as they flowered to give a good chance for the flowers to develop next year (fingers crossed). As I was pruning I also removed dead vines as well as dried leaves.

    I am so looking forward to see that trellis to fill up 🙂
    Rasa xoxo

    Rasa Pelham Gardening

    Photography challenge: learning about ISO while in the greenhouse

    I have been very busy past month (not only with holidays) but also with Lukas. I only get two hour break a day (I guess I am lucky I hear) so thats all I have mostly for tidying up, getting things organised and little bit for gardening and blogging. So this is why I decided to combine gardening with learning what my camera can do. It was tough two hours ;-).
    So we got little green house this year (very tiny, one of those plasticy temporary ones) and I am growing cucumbers and tomato plants in it. I must admit I broke every gardening rule there is, planting plants too close and very late in the season. But I hope I wont get penalised for it and still will get some sort of harvest. As you can see in the pic above it looks very messy and random. This is what my goal was to fix this problem during my two hour slot.
    As I was repotting the tomatoes I decided to experiment ISO that sets a sensitivity for a light. The higher the number setting is the more sensitive the camera is to the light. I have learned the other settings that work with the light too like aperture (with f stops ha ha) and shutter speed. But this one is mostly used to set the light, the side effect of it is picture being grainy. I took couple of shots of the tomato plant with different ISO settings but had no luck. I realised that auto camera mode was interfering trying to compensate the light by changing shutter spend (hence blurry pic from my hand shaking)

    That wasn’t the only problem with this photography challenge. For some reason I could not set the camera to a high ISO. I could see it there (from 500 to 1000) but somehow could not select it. So I could only experiment with up to 400 ISO.

    I set the the shutter speed to 1/20 which allowed me to experiment with ISO and see the results of it. The picture bellow is taken with 200 ISO.

    This picture is slightly lighter as it has been taken with 320 ISO.

    The final picture has been taken with 400 ISO. Can you see how light can be edited just by using different ISO settings?

    By the end of my two hour break I remodelled the green house. Yes, it’s still not perfect, but I think it will do for now. I hope there will be some sort of fruit coming out soon ;-).

    I hope you found it useful 🙂
    Rasa xoxo

    Rasa Pelham Gardening, Making

    Make your own kids gardening kit

    Although we are in the middle of winter I already can’t wait till spring (I think I had enough of cold and rain). So making this seed growing kit for my nephew was quite uplifting :-). Hopefully he is now looking forward to spring as much as I do!
    In the kit I included the beans for sowing (5.) and everything else that is needed to make it grow (minus the water). Some of the stuff I had to buy such as kiddy gardening tools (2.) and compressed soil (4.). However the other items were free, like these toilet roll pots (3.) and the box with the straw (1.) that I just upcycled!

    I decided to go with the beans because I thought it’s cool and it’s so easy to grow. It kind of goes along with Jack and The Beanstalk story! I thought it would make a very personal gift if I replaced Jack’s name to my nephew’s name.

    I hope you found this simple gift idea inspiring
    Rasa xoxo

    Rasa Pelham Gardening

    Starting tomato seeds (my January experiment)

    A close-up view of ripe red tomatoes on their vine, arranged on a wooden surface.

    Visiting the Eden Project inspired me to start thinking about gardening a little earlier this year.

    Tomatoes were the first thing that came to mind. Although I have grown them for a few consecutive years, I have also managed to make quite a few mistakes along the way. One of the mistakes I often made was starting the seeds rather late.

    This year I decided to try something different and follow my grandma’s example. She always starts her tomato seeds very early in the year, sometimes already in January.

    I know, I know – the seed packets usually suggest starting them later, but I thought it might be worth experimenting and seeing what happens.

    Of course, starting tomatoes indoors in winter means they grow in less than ideal conditions. Light levels are lower and temperatures are not always perfect, so the seedlings may grow a little slower than usual. Still, I am curious to see how they will do.

    Since I couldn’t find any biodegradable seed pots in the shops this early in the season, I decided to make my own (and I must admit I felt quite proud of that).

    I simply used empty toilet paper rolls. Folding one end inwards creates a small base and turns them into surprisingly sturdy little pots.

    Step-by-step guide to making degradable pots from toilet paper rolls for gardening.
    A collection of homemade biodegradable seed pots made from toilet paper rolls, placed in a plastic container, alongside packets of tomato seeds and ripe tomatoes.

    Next step is filling the pots with compost and sprinkling the seeds on top.

    I often plant more seeds than I probably need, thinking some of them won’t sprout – and then of course most of them do, which means I end up thinning them out later.

    A hand holding tomato seeds above a container with homemade biodegradable pots filled with soil.

    Now they just need a bright windowsill and a bit of patience.

    Enjoy this little winter gardening moment.

    Rasa xoxo