The Edible Garden

While wandering around the garden I spotted a couple of globe artichoke plants coming through from last year. Lucky that I did as they are growing in the bed that I was going to use as my composter ready for next spring, and it is these two plants that are the inspiration for today's project.


I watched the first episode of the new GW series "The Edible Garden" last night, and whilst it was quite light and frothy viewing there were a couple of good ideas in it that I decided to steal.

One was the recipe for the green bean falafel which looked very quick and easy to make, and the other was the lobster pot frame supports.

So this morning once I had weeded my flower bed - as you can see my lupins are coming up nicely, as are my gladioli, I cut down some branches from our firs.

These were then stripped of greenery and I was left with some flexible spurs approx 1 metre long. I chose the firs not only because there is an abundance of branches to experiment with, but also the thin young branches are very bendy at the moment so easy to manipulate into whatever shape you fancy.

In an attempt not to mow down or cover in manure or otherwise decimate them, I made the first lobster pot frame to cover my newly found artichoke plants. These don't actually need the support of the frame, the frame is quite literally there to remind me not to destroy the plant!

I then made a couple more to go around some sweet peas that grow in an odd spot in the garden but keep coming back each year, and another small pyramid to go into a container for my cherry tomatoes later in the year.

At this point I realised not only that it was freezing outside, but that it was 6pm and I had not made anything for dinner yet but that I had made one too many lobster pots, so decided to call it a day and hunt down the gin in my topsy turvy kitchen.