As quickly as spring has sprung so have the aphids. These tiny nutrient-sucking bugs cluster together and feed off a plant's new growth.

Last year my climbing rose, although attacked by aphids, bloomed all summer with multiple flowers. Again this year I have noticed some tiny buds forming along with small clusters of these annoying pests. 

I am determined not to let them destroy my rose and today I spent a good hour removing what I could see of them from the plant.

If allowed to infest the plant they can cause some serious damage such as curled leaves, stunted shoots, yellowing, and other forms of distortion. 

I had seen a few ladybugs around the garden and so I was hoping this year the plant wouldn't become infested. However it appears as though the ladybugs are not doing their job and eating enough.

So along with checking the rose each day and removing what I can I am going to try a friendly soap spray which will hopefully keep them away. Its very basic, 

2-4 drops of liquid detergent
2 litres of water

I will spray the plant weekly and see if this is enough to keep on top of the aphids.


Another option is ginger spray - it will not kill the aphids on the plant but will repel them.

1/2 cup finely chopped ginger
2 cups of warm water

If you know any better ways please let me know, I am happy to try anything to keep them from eating my lovely roses.

On Saturday the boy and I decided to make our own Sushi! It is not as hard as it may seem, with some good instructions and a little patience it makes for a fun dinner.

This meal is rather messy, as you use your hands to make the maki rolls and the rice is super sticky. Make sure to have a bowl of water at hand, the key here is to keep your hands wet whilst spreading the rice onto the nori.

So to make these maki rolls pictured above you will need the following:


For the rice

• 500g Sushi rice

• 1/2 cup of Vinegar rice

• 750ml water

• 2tsp Salt

• 2tbs Sugar

In order to make the Maki Rolls you will need:

• 4 sheets of Nori

• Bamboo mat

• Fillings

For the filling you can use anything that takes your fancy. We added prawns, surimi (seafood sticks), smoked salmon slices, red & green peppers, cucumber & avocado. 

Extras for dipping:

• Soy sauce

• Wasabi paste

This recipe makes up 4 Nori Rolls (16 maki rolls)

To cook the rice add the 500g of sushi rice to a saucepan and add 750ml of water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for around 20 minutes or until the rice has absorbed all the water and the grains have doubled in size. 

Transfer the rice to a plastic bowl using a wooden spoon (A metal spoon will damage the rice) don’t scrape the rice out from the bottom of the pot. If it comes out easily, good, if not – leave it. The rice at the bottom of the pan will be burnt and will not taste nice. 

To prepare the rice vinegar place into a pan and add the sugar & salt. Heat gently until the sugar & salt has dissolved.

Add this mixture to the rice and mix well.

Leave the rice to chill (do not chill in the fridge). This is where having some patience comes in. We had to wait around 30 minutes for the rice to cool. Meanwhile you can prepare your fillings by slicing thinly and placing into bowls.

Once the rice has cooled you are ready to start making your rolls. Make sure to have a bowl of water with a little rice vinegar added. This will make working with the rice easier - its super sticky.

Place a sheet of Nori onto the bamboo mat with the rough side facing up. Keep yours hands dry whilst touching the Nori. 

Wet your hands and make a handful of rice into a ball. Place this into the middle of your Nori. Spread to cover the Nori however leave an upper margin of around 2cm to allow the roll to close correctly once rolled.

Now you can place the fish and any vegetables along the edge of the Nori on top of the rice. 

Using the closer edge of the rolling mat, close up the filling with the nori by rolling over the top of the filling making sure the rice covers the ingredients. Continue to roll until you reach the end of the Nori - keeping pressure as you roll so its tight.

Once rolled you can unroll the mat from around the sushi and you should have a long Maki Roll. Using a sharp knife cut into sections - we cut into 4. Soy sauce and wasabi paste is great to dip the maki rolls into and tastes great.

Enjoy x

The Smoky chicken and tomato bake is a recipe which is sweet & simple but delicious. It uses chicken portions which are some of the cheapest cuts of meat making it good for people on a budget.
This lovely recipe takes around 20 minutes to prep and an hour to cook, here is what you will need:

• 1 red onion, chopped into wedges

• 3 salad tomatoes, cut into quarters

• 1 drizzle olive oil

• 6 chicken portions (thighs/drumsticks)

• 2 red peppers

• freshly ground black pepper

• 2 tbs red wine vinegar

• 5 cloves of garlic - chopped

• 1tbs paprika

• 1tbs oregano

• 100ml chicken stock - using only 1 cube

• 400g tin chopped tomatoes

Preheat fan oven to 165ºC. Put the olive oil into the baking dish along with tomatoes, red onion, garlic cloves, chicken portions, red wine vinegar, herbs and stock and mix well.

Place the portions on top of all the ingredients once mixed and season with black pepper. Bake for 1 hour.

Serve with mashed potato or new potatoes, enjoy!

So I started sowing my seeds super early! I'm a complete novice and dived straight in before properly researching dates and such. The results have been fast germination and quick growing seedlings, which I was not expecting and a little unprepared for.

The runner beans are getting rather tall, around 1ft most of them and they still cannot go outside until the middle of April and even then it's a bit risky if there is any sudden sharp frost. I'm hoping since we have had a very mild winter here in London that by mid April it will be nice and warm and the runner beans will flourish. In the mean time I have selected 4 and potted them up a size which hopefully will be adequate until they go into their final positions.

The tomato & chilli plants have now grown their true leaves, and I have now potted up 6 of each into individual 3" pots where they will remain for another good few weeks, although this could be shorter depending on how vigorously they grow.

Potting them up however was a bit of a nightmare! I used Jiffy plugs, which are a great idea but the instructions say to plant up to 3 seeds! Well unless you thin them out early and leave just one seedling it becomes very difficult to pot on. I lost a few seedlings in the process as some of the roots broke. So next time I will plant 2 seeds and thin them out nice and early.

I also finally got around to thinning out the carrot seedlings, unfortunately I had to transfer them into a much deeper pot as the trough the carrot seeds came with was only 5" deep. Their recommended in at least 8-10" deep. Carrots do not really like to be disturbed, however they seem to be doing ok.

One of the longest seeds to germinate were the mixed peppers, my last blog post showed the teeniest lonesome pepper seedling. Since then I have had 9 germinate and all are starting to develop their first true leaves. I will be leaving them to grow in the troughs to a decent size before thinning them down to 4 and then finally only selecting 2 to pot into final containers (one per 35cm pot).

I have decided only to grow 2 of each plants and I am hoping this will be both manageable and provide sufficient quantities of fresh fruit and veg. I have lots of things I would love to grow but simply not the space! Have you thought about growing your own this year? or have you already got seeds well underway?

Last night I had a rather yummy dinner which tasted great and took under 40 minutes to prepare and cook. It was quite rich and had lots of strong lemon flavour, the cherry tomatoes mixes well with the white wine and creates a really nice sauce.

This is my adapted version of  Fish in a bag, you can add fennel & olives to this dish however I decided not to add them as i'm not a huge fan.

• ½ lemon, finely sliced

• 5 cherry tomatoes, halved

• 1 drizzle olive oil

• 120 g firm fish fillet, such as haddock, halibut or salmon, (i used haddock).

• sea salt

• freshly ground black pepper

• 1 splash white wine

It's so simple, you can either make a foil pouch or if you have any fish cook bags these are also perfect.
Simply add all the ingredients together in a bowl except the white wine, give it a good gentle mix.
Add these to the bag with the white wine and seal.

I set my oven to 175ºC as it is a fan oven, however may need to adjust this accordingly to suit yours. It was placed in there for 20 minutes. 

I served this with a lovely crisp baby leaf salad and new potatoes, perfect.

Over the past 3 weeks I have started to think about this years gardening plans. All of my plants are finally with us here in London. There was no room at the time of moving to bring them all, so my in-laws have been making small trips with them.

I have a small cluster of potted plants, which include a rather large climbing rose, a salix tree, olive tree and a bay tree. There is a number of smaller pots which currently contain daffodils and tulips also.
I spent the best part of sunday re-arranging these plants into their final places in our tiny narrow garden, I also needed to repot a few tulips in the process as they looked in fairly poor conditions (grown from last years bulbs in little soil).

This year is going to be the first year however that I intend to grow some basic fruit and vegetables. As I have little space I have started with a selection which are meant to be good for beginners. I have two wooden troughs, one containing carrots, and the other containing peppers. I also have mixed salad leaves, chilli plants, runner bean plants, tomato plants and a small selection of herbs.

It has only been a week since I planted the seeds, and already I have lots of seedlings! Much faster than I anticipated. The Chilli seeds will be out of the propagator in a few days and will need to be thinned out to grow on stronger, along with the tomato seedlings. I started them off in the Jiffy propagator which comes with expandable coir disks and have been happy with the results.

The pepper seeds are the only vegetable which has taken a while to germinate. Today I spotted the tiniest seedling, which i expect will be fully upright within the next 2 days. These were planted at the same time as the carrot seeds almost 3 weeks ago.

I am intending on growing most of these fruit and vegetables in grow bags similar to these two here.
Although I may get some plastic pots for the chilli plant, I still have a few weeks to decide.