The Paraplegic Farmer

Autumn is all but here.     With the nights drawing in and the temperatures dropping to single figures over night it definitely feels like Autumn is on its way. But its not time to retire indoors just yet! There is still plenty to do in the garden. In fact there are about a thousand and one jobs to do, most of which depends on your own garden and what you do with it. Some items that will need your attention are going to be lawns, flowers, bulbs, greenhouses, vegetables the list goes on. I'm going to concentrate on what we have here in our own garden.  The Lawn. Almost every house has a lawn! Or at least a patch of grass somewhere. Now is a good time of year to pay some attention to your bit of grass, no matter how large or small it is. You may not be too bothered about your bit of green, but some people like to keep it nice and manicured. So a few things you can do to your lawn to improve it or keep it looking and performing tip top are ...

  Hopefully this should be good! I found a recipe online for a nice green chilli pickle, all our chillis are red! So this will be loosely based on the recipe I found and it will take a few days to knock up.  For this you will need: 1.5 - 2 cups of chopped green chillis 6 tablespoons of Mustard seeds  3 tablespoons of Rock salt 2 teaspoons of Turmeric powder 1 cup Mustard oil 5 -6 Lemons (1/2 cup of lemon juice) 1 cup = 250ml This should be enough to fill a medium sized jar So as I mentioned before there will be some tweaks. First being with the green chillis. All ours at the moment are red but I don't suppose that matters too much so I added....... Two Numex Big Jims Two Maule Hot Two Satans Kiss One Thai Dragon Also I changed the Rock salt for chunky table salt and when it came to the Mustard seeds I ground Two Tablespoons of seeds and used two Tablespoons of Mustard powder, we shall see how it turns out. So first off cut the chillis int...

This is going to be a review, I was going to aim it at the elderly and disabled. But in fact it's going to apply to everyone. No one is left out here, it caters for all.  I had never given it much thought before, when I was young fit and able bodied. But now I am on wheels these things do crop up, and when it comes to gardening the tools you use do come into it. When I first got home after eight months in Hospital I decided that I would try to do what I could in the garden, within reason! I could get onto the John Deere tractor to cut the grass (we have since sold it) but when it came to the flower and vegetable beds the tools we had were either too long for me as I was now sat down or the Hand tools were too short for me to reach the beds.  So this brings us to Wolf Tools (Wolf Garten). This is a range of tools with interchangeable heads and lots of handle options. I went for the 120cm long handle and the 35cm short handle, they do more sizes and are made ...

Here's an easy one for you. Creamy chicken and chilli pasta. I just cook for the two of us so if you need to feed more people you will have to adjust the ingredients accordingly.  What I used: 3 chicken breasts 3 Tolli sweet peppers 1 Onion 3 Satans Kiss chillis (you can use any chilli) 1 tsp Garlic powder Splash of oil for frying Pasta of your choice Single cream  First off I start the pasta, boiling the water add a dash of oil and then the pasta. While that's doing I cut up all the other ingredients and add them to a frying pan.  Chillis Chicken Peppers Onion Cook until the Chicken is golden...... With the pasta cooked, drain and put back into sauce pan. Add the cooked ingredients from the frying pan and also the single cream. I also added some of Tina's Hot chilli cooking sauce (this is optional). And give it a good stir over moderate heat. When it's all warmed through nicely its...

Well this doesn't happen very often! Preparing for next year, getting organised. It's unheard of in this house. So yesterday afternoon I had a cheeky look on premier seeds website.   http://www.premierseedsdirect.com/   And whilst ordering five litres of Chilli Focus fertiliser I got some of next years seeds in. We are going to mainly focus on chilli plants for next year, giving the  sweet peppers a miss and cutting back a little on the Tomatoes. So for starters we are going to be planting......... Maule Hot, these go up to about 30,000 on the Scoville scale.  So not too hot. Satans Kiss, a small chilli pepper from Italy. The Italians stuff them with Anchovies and Mozzarella, they get to around 50,000 Scoville units. Birds Eye Demon. We have grown these this year and starred in one of our chilli challenge videos........ https://youtu.be/rDdQ8tdd240   They were mighty hot when just eaten raw and have proved to be very useful in ...

It's a bit fresh outside today, is it a sign that Autumn is on its way? The forecast for the next ten days doesn't show much above 20°c with some rain thrown in for good measure. Hopefully we will still get some warmer weather, we have only just got into September after all. But the Tomatoes in the grow bags have finished, Tina has stripped the plants of fruit this morning and has since removed the plants. They never really did do that well, just planted straight in the grow bag! They did produce tasty Tomatoes, but not that many.  I think we found what the problem was, and that was that there was not enough room in the grow bag for the roots. So we invested in some of these........... Plant Halos, Growbag Halos whatever you want to call them. You cut a hole in your grow bag to fit them in, they have about six spikes that go down into the compost and that's where the water goes. You plant in the neck of the Halo and the roots can then go down into...

Not as hot as part 2 was but it was quite nice.

I've been pondering over something for the last few days!  What is it? And where did it come from? So I have been searching the internet and browsing through old orders I had placed with Premier Seeds Direct. http://www.premierseedsdirect.com/   And I can't find anything that looks similar to this plant, the fruit is quite distinctive and like nothing we have growing at the moment. Then I remembered this............ Three types of seeds came with this kit, Jalepeno's, Cayenne's and some that were called "Hot Scotch". I've just read the instruction book and it called them "Scotch Bonnets". So there you go, problem solved. I've had this kit since Christmas 2015, but as I spent most of 2016 in hospital they never got planted. And then this year we had a greenhouse catastrophe! The pop up greenhouse we started with took flight across the garden and all the seeds got mixed up.  There are quite a few recipes ...

We are running out of ideas of what to do with all the tomatoes we are getting. Tina has been dehydrating them then vacuum sealing them for the freezer, she has also pulped some up for sauce bases and some have made it into a sauce which is getting bottled up as we speak. So another idea we have seen doing the rounds on the internet is smoking!        But we don't have a smoker! No problem, we have a gas BBQ and this little trick should turn your BBQ (if it has a lid) into a smoker.  First off your going to need some wood chip, so I spent an hour in the garage chopping up some old Oak we had. Once that was done I soaked the wood chip in some water for about an hour and a half.  Then your going to need some aluminum foil. Double the bottom part and leave enough to fold over for the top. Place the wood chip on the bottom part of the aluminum foil and then bring the top part over and seal it up.  When its all folded up y...