a fermenter's journal
for July 2026
As I’ve probably mentioned a couple of times in my regular notes my growing season was a little disrupted this year. Although as I’m not full time in the kitchen I should in theory have more time to spend getting the allotment in order it has also meant I’ve had more time to be away, which I was for big chunks of May (doing my nettle residency that I still need to write about) and June (a wedding), thus missing the weeks when I should really have been getting everything ready for high summer. The few saved cucumber seeds I managed to sow failed to germinate, and by that time it was really to late to get anything else going; so while everyone else drowns in cucumbers (it’s been a fantastic year for them), courgettes and tomatoes, I have been nurturing the beans and squashes of late summer and begging what bits of other people’s gluts that I can. This is all to say I haven’t been doing as much fermenting as you might expect, for this time of the year. The elderflower champagne I had on the go was looking good but then, after a couple of hot days of neglect, started developing black mould; I woke my scoby up but it was looking rather sad again, the last I checked it.
