I do generally try and share in my videos when things don’t quite go to plan, when I make mistakes and “fail” at things, for want of a better word. It’s not easy to show every failure though, because sometimes you only realise it’s a mistake a lot later on, once whatever it is you did/made/attempted has been put to the test over a longer period of time and you realise it’s not working how you had hoped. Or because the thing in question feels boring and not worth showing. Or because the you haven’t actually learned anything yet from the mistake, so it feels pointless to share it. Or because you feel like you’re just whining over something pretty insignificant. Or for numerous other reasons.
Anyway, it feels like I’ve been failing at lots of things lately. And it’s fine, in fact it’s even good! Becuase if you fail at something, it means you tried it in the first place and that’s one step closer to getting it right. And because most of the time, you do learn something from your failures.
In fact, I don’t like the word failure but I’m just using it for want of a better alternative.
So, here’s a little list of things I just can’t seem to get right lately!
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Pickled cucumbers. I love pickled cucumbers and I definitely didn’t fail at the growing cucumbers side of things, but could I get them to pickle and turn out nice and crunchy? No. I tried so many different ways and every time I just got a soggy, nasty jar of cucumber which had to be thrown away :(
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Green Beans I sowed and planted various varieties of runner beans & French beans continually all summer and into autumn now. Couldn’t get them to grow, half the time couldn’t even get them to germinate. All I can think is that I started them too late. Next year, I’ll try and sow from March/April, I guess?? And try totally different varieties.
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Winter garden transition Everything I plant out is getting eaten by slugs and snails. I should have started my seed trays in July, so everything would be bigger and stronger by now and have a better chance at withstanding attacks.
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Life admin There’s lots of stuff I need to do. But I just… can’t… be bothered
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Keeping things tidy The house is a disaster. Specifically certain corners of it. The kitchen is constantly teetering on the brink of disaster. I am kind of aware that the problem is storage but I don’t seem to be able to pull myself together and think about how to fix this. I guess I need to go to Leroy Merlin and buy some boxes, drawers, etc and think about where to put them.
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Bug in jars I discovered bugs in jars of things I’d dried. Namely, a jar of ground carob and a jar of sun-dried plums. The carob was dried in the sun (without any netting/protection over it) after it was boiled, but I didn’t think anything would lay eggs in something so hard and dry. With the plums, I dried them in our solar dehydrator which is protected with fly netting, but I guess either something got in anyway or there were already eggs laid in the plums before I dried them, which later hatched in the jars. I think in future I could try putting the carob powder in the freezer for a short while before storing it. I’m not sure about the plums but freezing before storing could be an option there, if it doesn’t change the consistency too much.
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Seed trays I see pictures of other people’s seed trays and all the little plants are bushy and leafy and looking eager to go out into the big wide world. Everything I sow in my seed trays grows leggy and stringy and languishes in there for weeks on end until I feel sorry for it and pot it up anyway, except half the time the little plant is too small and spindly to survive the transition.
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Carrots They will not germinate :( I honestly have no idea why. I have done everything by the book.. I think??
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Direct sowing Related to carrots. In fact very little which I am direct sowing seems to be doing anything. I blame ants… Not sure how to combat this. Might try sowing in the rain (since we seem to have plenty of rain lately) since apparently ants are not so active in the rain.
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Scaling up I had dreams of scaling up the growing area this autumn/winter ready for the spring. This would mean extending irrigation over into an adjascent field, digging up/decompacting the field to sow green manure and cover crop, maybe improving the soil with animal manure which could rot down over winter. Well, I have failed at the first hurdle - irrigation - so without that, there’s really no point doing much else in this field as the cover crop would likely need irrigating over the winter at some points. So it looks like this will have to wait for another year…
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Jam I made a lot of jam this year, most of it wasn’t great. A couple of batches didn’t set properly (I always try and get the set without using store-bought pectin) and there was a whole batch of grape jam from which I didn’t remove the seeds, out of laziness, so that’s going to be annoying when we eat it. The consistency is more like syrup too. Good job Mauro likes jam and I can probably convince him to eat it all anyway…