Garden Blogs

Thursday, 16 July 2009

and soon to the kitchen…..

So I’ve finally harvested my crop of red onions, planted last November – it’s taken a while but they are worth the wait – sweet and strong, they smelled so much I’ve had to put them outside to dry (….in the rain…. not one of my best ideas but I think they’ll be fine). Of the 100 onion set bag I planted around 70 (got a bit carried away and there was nothing else going on the garden so why not, I thought) and have just harvested about 60 onions, 5.5kg worth ranging in size from reasonable down to pathetic (hardly bigger than the ones I planted). And where did the other 10 go? Oh well, I’m delighted with them and they’ll keep me going until the spring planted onion sets are ready in a couple of months. Tomatoes are ripening at a rate of a couple a day and I think in about three weeks time I’ll have a deluge of them. I’ve been lent a book of tomatoes recipes so hope to make something that I can put in jars or the freezer to use later in the year, provided I don’t just eat them all or give them away immediately that is. I’ve lost a few courgettes to rot during this rainy spell, so I’m hopeful for less extreme weather for the rest of the summer but I can see I’ll also have a lot of courgettes in about 3 weeks – ratatouille here we come…. Peas are being picked daily with the first mange-tout now ready, and I’ve finally identified spinach as the unknown plant in the middle bed which I’m delighted about – I was a bit random with recording what I’d planted where during May and didn’t think I had any. More potatoes have been dug up – these ones I think should be Yukon Gold, but look more like Ratte so I’ve probably mixed up the bags whilst shuffling them (highly likely) and must have a better marking system next year – not that I mind which potatoes I have when, it’s just a shame to dig them up early when a greater yield could be harvested a few weeks later (as I think could have in this case). I cheated a bit with pepper plants as mine were very slow germinating, and bought some small ones months ago – they are doing very well with good size peppers on, but the green peppers keep falling off before getting to the ripening stage. It might be the wet and I may have to put the greenhouse back up to regulate their water intake if so, but I’ll ask “head gardener” for her advice first. I’m hoping there will be some ready for my ratatouille so I can say it’s all from the garden (with the exception of the marmite, lee & perins and red wine that is – all essential ratatouille ingredients). I’m a bit concerned there is no sign of corn from my sweetcorn plants yet. They are a good size and look very healthy so I’ll try to be patient, it’s just frustrating when everything else is showing flowers & fruit. My newest experiment is fennel which I love – I started seeds in a tray and transplanted them but the packet advises sewing direct into the ground so they may not do as well as they should – they’re looking good though so I’ll wait and see what happens over the next few months and will know for next year. The pictures I’m taking all look the same, with just a bit more greenery or produce each time so sorry if they’re boring – next year I will find them (and this blog) a really useful benchmark for my crops as I’ll never remember all this, as much as I think I will at the time…

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

here it comes....

now harvesting: onions (finally - they've been in the ground since November!); tomatoes; potatoes (a bit too big to call them new potatoes); peas (fresh off the plant, that taste a million times better than ones you can currently buy); dwarf French beans; courgettes; radishes. I really do have "a bed of lettuce", and the bright orange flowers on the runner beans are a delight. how very very satisfying....

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

bursting at the seams

the garden's growing like mad....and the recent rain is wonderful! less words more pictures.....

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

beware the prowlers

I’ve been a bit remiss with my updates and haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks now (bless me mother earth it’s been two weeks since my last blog…). This mid-summer time of year goes in a flash and every spare moment is spent outside. Each day brings new surprises in the garden and you can almost see the plants growing. It’s all very exciting you know: the first tomatoes are just turning orange; tiny bright yellow courgettes (hurrah - finally!) no longer than a fingernail are bursting out of the plant stem; pea pods are swelling with sweet, crisp, tasty goodies (if they get that far – a few have been eaten mange toute style straight off the plants); the runner beans are covered in beautiful bright orange / red flowers; ripe strawberries make great gardening snacks and the forest of purple sprouting broccoli has taken over the new bed. Equally as satisfying but not as nice to look at is the red onion patch with stems all laying on the ground indicating they are nearly ready to harvest, and the potato bags as the foliage starts to die off – I think I’ll empty out the first ones this weekend. I can’t wait for my fridge to be full of my own produce instead of plastic wrapped supermarket goods (though at least you have a vast range of local seasonal produce on offer at the moment – food miles and all that). As we head into July I’m rather relieved to be left with just a few packets of seeds that can be planted this late – I’ve run out of space and I’ve run out of “nurturing” time. I’ll I’ve done recently is tie up tomatoes, take out side shoots and plant out some Kale plants kindly given to me - apart from the daily watering ritual which sees me trotting through the house with wateringcan’s full of my bath-water…. This hot dry and sometimes windy weather isn’t helping much with daily wiltage visible in my potted courgettes (bought as a climbing variety but I’ve not sent them up anything so they’ll be trailing along with the others) and tomatoes in smaller containers so my other task for this coming weekend is to find bigger pots for those suffering the most. To add to my list of garden menaces (greenfly, slugs, cats, etc.) I can now add foxes. A clattering outside my window the other evening alerted me to something not quite right going on out there, but all was still when I peered into the dark from the front door. The next morning I found my trowel half way across the garden for the second time. I’ve seen a fox prowling around and know that they like anything leather, so can only assume that the leather strap on the handle smelt like a good thing for a fox to run off with, only that it was attached to something heavy, metal and noisy, and was duly dropped. Pics to follow…

Monday, 15 June 2009

always read the instructions….

As my previously referred to “puny” courgette died off as anticipated, I realised that time was slipping by and to have any produce I had one last chance at getting some new seeds germinated. Frustrated by my incompetence in this area, I rather begrudgingly resorted to re-reading the instructions on the seed packet, and duly covered my last three seeds with a clear plastic bag as directed. Lo and behold, a week later up popped all three with bright green leaves and I now have three courgette seedlings doing exceptionally well. The packet advises that it’s possible to plant the seeds direct into warm soil at this time of year, but I not only needed to give these seeds the best chance, I needed to work out for myself where I was going wrong – sometimes you have to learn your own lessons the hard way don’t you? I’ve not had too much to do in the garden over the past week – the welcome showers have kept it watered and everything is growing on nicely. Lucky really, as I’ve generally been to busy to get out there much. I’ve spent most of my garden time sorting out tomato plants – all 35 of them (and that’s excluding the “naught” ten, who have been sent to the far side of the garden in disgrace). Far too may for one person you may think, but my aim is to have such an excess that I can turn some into sun-dried tomatoes, or relish / sauce. What usually happens is that I end up eating them like sweets or giving them away and never get round to my plans. Stronger resolve this year, I promise. Some more potting on is required, and spacing them out along the short length of South facing wall for maximum morning sunshine requires constant OCD style giggling of pots and trays. I’m a big fan of the look you get from the old style terracotta pots, but I’ve found that plastic pots hold the moisture better, and in this hot weather it’s the plants in the latter that fair better when I don’t have time to water. They are fed once a week, either with a commercially bought solution, or mum’s comfrey and sheep dropping mixture (the plants love it but it smells as bad as it sounds), constantly checked for side shoots, tied to their sticks as they grow, and most importantly not watered too much as this makes the fruits split. I was given a couple of old wicker baskets by a good friend, so these are being used as space is now running out in the beds. With no need to fill the entire basket with expensive compost, and some old bricks lying around, these were put in the bottom with some black plastic from an old compost bag on top, filled and then planted up with some of the 40 or so lettuce seedlings I planted out (couldn’t bear to throw away any – salad anyone??). The larger basket will look far nicer than my current potato bags when I use it for that purpose next year, and the wicker style fits well with my willow trellising that protects the beds. Very satisfyingly, the peas have flowers on, with buds just showing on the French beans peppers are showing a multitude of small green blobs and my forest of purple sprouting broccoli is far more advanced than my one surviving plant last year. I noticed the first strawberry starting to turn pink yesterday, and the leaves on the red onions are starting to yellow (as referred to on the harvest section of the instructions I found and decided I’d better read) so it won’t be long before produce starts. Onion and strawberry salad anyone….? Sounds a bit odd to me, but I bet it’s been done somewhere.

Monday, 8 June 2009

imposters in the garden

Bit of a disaster in the tomato department. I’m relieved to find that it is due to a pack of rogue seeds and not neglect on my part, but I’m rather upset that my favourite sungold cherry tomatoes have turned out to be imposters. I’ve watched the plants over the past two weeks as their leaves gradually turned yellow and curly and the plants growth became stunted, thinking I was missing something – had I fed them enough? Overwatered them? was it too cold outside? Or too windy? Was there something eating their roots? And this morning, with both relief and dismay, I saw the tell-tale sign of feathered leaf growth that rogue plants have (image below). Small comfort, but at least it wasn’t me. I’ve finally managed to get some French beans germinated but courgettes are still proving challenging (oh, how can a courgette be challenging??). Out of about 20 seeds I’ve got four plants so far, and one of those is looking decidedly puny so I don’t hold out much hope for it. The climbing courgettes are doing well and will soon need something to climb up – I’ve not quite worked out where and what though. Should I actually manage to germinate more than one, the “traditional” type will be planted at the edge of one of the beds and, as they can take up a fair bit of space, encouraged to grow out over the stones, away from other plants, leaving more bed space. It’s so pleasing to see flowers turning to fruit and vegetables – miniature green strawberries, tomatoes, courgettes and peppers are showing and whereas previously I was excitedly watching the seedlings progress, I’m now peering at the produce as it slowly turns into the desired harvest. Like something out of Jack & the Beanstalk, runner beans are shooting up their sticks, twisting round and round in helter-skelter fashion. What makes the plants snake round the sticks so determinedly? With a bit of garden envy I find myself asking my gardening friends how far their produce has got this year, and am secretly relieved when I find that they also have only harvested radishes or lettuce so far… speaking of which, my lettuce enthusiasm needs a little tempering – I now have about 30 lettuce seedlings, all of which will be ready at about the same time – even if I give them away I’ll never get through that many, but at least they were easy to germinate. I’m slowly filling the last few bed spaces I have left, but keep finding areas I’ve clearly planted up and forgotten what I put there and when. I have three beautiful straight rows of what I think might be the first sign of carrots, but could equally be beetroot or spinach. My classic error is to think I’ll remember, or recognise the seedlings, and I’m not. Last year whilst planting out lettuce I managed to dig up a row of shallots I’d only put there the week before – you’d have hoped I might have learned from that…. Like a heavily pregnant woman feeling for foot-shaped lumps in her belly, I can be found rubbing the outside of my potato bags as I try to feel if they are ready to dig up – a few are flowering , but I’m not convinced there’s much going on under all the lush foliage yet. You can’t rush these things so I’ll just have to wait a bit longer…..it’ll all be worth the wait though, I’m sure. (Random gratuitous shot of the flower in my garden that is most pleasing to my eye right now – having been totally unsuccessful with Irises to date, I can’t get over how beautiful this one is.)

Tuesday, 26 May 2009

The beauty of sticks

You know, I’ve come to realise that sticks are a bit like shoes – you can never have too many of them. Sticks for beans, sticks for peas, sticks for tomatoes, sticks as props, sticks as markers, sticks for protection, etc. I spent a happy Sunday this weekend "sticking" stuff. Last year’s collected buddleia shoots, cut and dried before the plant died off, are just the right height as pea sticks, and my neighbour’s overgrown apple trees found a use after they had been felled, in wood for my fire and bean poles for my garden – not as neat as the traditional cane structures you generally see, but I rather like the organic and haphazard form my less ordered alternatives take. A bit like a Womble, I’ll collect up anything that I think I might be able to use in the garden. Where as some of my fellow bloggers need to protect their gardens from the attentions of their canine friends, I have to protect mine from the local feline population, so more sticks help make my raised beds impenetrable, coupled with willow trellis either as side barriers or laid directly over the beds while they are dormant, or growing the type of crops that can shoot up through them.

I look at the beds and see huge gaps in them and it feels as though I’ve done little to fill them. And then I look at the not insubstantial list of what I’ve grown and realise that I still have some way to go my planning of what goes where and when for optimum use of the precious space. Three 3ft x 8ft beds don’t give as much room as I need in order to grow all I want to, so I have pots galore for all sorts of plants and am experimenting with sweetcorn in pots instead of in the beds this year – the key to their pollination being proximity, so I’ve happily crammed them together and will see how they fair. Obvious others are tomatoes, peppers and herbs, but this year I was intrigued to find climbing courgettes – a great space saving idea if it works. I’ve also got turnips in an old butler sink and nine potato bags (up from 3 last year which gave me potatoes for only about a month). A friend of mine at work is growing strawberries in hanging baskets which must be an ingenious way of keeping the slugs off. My risky experiment is runner beans in containers. The containers are only about 12 inches deep which I think will be deep enough for the roots, but my error was in not considering how deep and firm the supporting sticks need to be. Having put poles into the newly composted bean troughs, I arrived home one windy evening to a scene of devastation with the poles over, uprooting the young bean plants I’d so carefully positioned them next to. Not quite Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I did have to drop my bags and stop immediately to put order back into the garden before going inside. My neighbours think I’m a bit potty (no pun intended) but they’ll see, when I’m eating fresh candy-floss smelling strawberries straight off the plant like sweets.

With the exception of one brave early radish that defied the cold (unlike the rest of its fellow seedlings) and actually produced something worth eating, I’ve not had any yield from the garden until this weekend. Lettuces started by mum and planted out at a size of about 2 inches in diameter back in April are now ready to be eaten, and the obligatory Bank Holiday Weekend BBQ has to have salad doesn’t it? Two Little Gem lettuces formed the basis of said salad, and to my huge relief and delight my friends, without prompting, commented on how sweet and fresh they tasted. Hurrah for picking and eating within an hour – it really is so much better. I’ve struggled a bit with my own lack of desire for lettuce in the past – I’ve either seen too many slimy slugs crawling across them to bear the thought of eating them, or have left it to late in picking them and ended up with bitter leaves instead of sweet ones, but I’ve now seen the lettuce "light", and planted some more seeds today (woefully late to have an ongoing supply I realise) which will hopefully be ready in about 6 weeks time.

My big disappointment so far is my spectacular failure at achieving germination for my courgettes and dwarf runner beans. I have to admit, that part of this is ignorance, and part is probably laziness. I vaguely remember one of the packets advising early propagation under a plastic cover but I can’t remember which one so clearly haven’t done that; and I was waterng in the evenings which (I’m now advised) probably made the compost cold overnight and hindered the germination process. Sadly, knowing that hasn’t made me get up any earlier in the morning to water before work – just too difficult…. So what have I got growing? The images hopefully show runner beans in the white tubs (two types to compare); peas and mange-tout just out of the ground in a forest of sticks – ongoing soaking and planting will hopefully give me a crop over a month or two, instead of a coupled weeks – there’s a big gap in the middle though where I over-soaked, and whilst trying to pick up and plant these small mushy blobs though "I’m not sure these ones will make it – either that or they’ll give me mushy peas straight from the plant". They duly didn’t. Still, it’s given me the opportunity to extend my pea planting (and hopefully harvesting) season over a longer period; lettuce, as mentioned, ready to eat; strawberries which were bedded down this weekend (a very satisfying job – as a horse rider there’s nothing nicer than putting your horse to bed at night on a fresh, deep bed of clean straw – and the same could be said of the strawberries); onions planted last October which I’m now poking regularly in the hope that they may be nearly ready for lifting, but they’ve not flowered yet so I’m just getting impatient I think; the fenced in bed has asparagus grown by mum from seed – another waiting game as they’re young and I won’t have any to eat for a couple of years – I might not live here by then….; between the asparagus are (space saving) onions which will be ready later in the summer; behind them far more purple sprouting broccoli than any girl can eat (with more seedlings ready to be planted out as last year I managed to kill all my seedlings apart from one, which was, quite frankly pathetic); seven different sorts of potato; three types of tomato; two types of courgette; peppers; cabbage, sprouts, mini sweetcorn; radishes; plus fennel, spinach, carrots and beetroot not yet out of the ground; and herbs inside on the windowsill. I’ve also got some nasturtiums in my veg garden – the leaves give the most intense peppery flavour when eaten in salads, and look stunning just after rain, holding the water like silver drops. The flowers are also edible so I’ll give them a try later in the year.

So eight hours of gardening over the weekend was a most enjoyable way to spend my time, and I’m happy to leave the garden to it’s growing until next weekend.

Wednesday, 20 May 2009

Hello – a bit about me to start…..

I’m probably the most annoying type of gardener out there: beginner, enthusiastic and short of time – experiencing the full highs and lows that come with pursuing a new hobby. I’m in my mid 30’s and realise that I’m turning into my mum. Rest assured I don’t see that as a bad thing, but understand that I’d rather stay home and poke about in the soil than go out clubbing: a far different situation than five years ago. The reason I’m annoying is that, instead of reading all the back issues of Kitchen Garden my mum has bestowed upon me for knowledge, it’s much easier to phone up and ask, isn’t it? So weeks will pass with little contact, then six calls within an afternoon as various confusing or frustrating aspects of my garden that I don’t know what to do with come to light. "Head Gardner" as my dad calls her is repeatedly summonsed (probably away from her own gardening tasks) and with unending patience, and no doubt some raised eyebrows, sorts me out. And if my mother is not available, I have a handful of other put-upon friends who are on the list – a strict rotation ensures I don’t annoy any of them too much to result withdrawal of the critical advice service.

So, driven by my disdain for tasteless, "un-local", food-mile hungry, chemical covered supermarket vegetables I decided to start growing my own. My postage stamp size front garden was converted one back-breaking day into a series of raised beds (and guess who helped with the digging and design of the beds). The most fantastic thing about the location of these, is that I walk past them at least twice a day without fail as I leave for and return from work, making wilting plants (yes, occasionally I’ve been guilty of not given adequate water amongst other garden sins), garden pests, straying trusses, unwanted side-shoots, weeds and all those other things that need keeping an eye on daily easy to manage. The therapeutic benefits of gardening, I’m sure, will be well documented elsewhere (I’m just too busy / lazy to go and read about them). But I don’t need to read to understand this – I am never happier than after a good session potting on those precious seedlings that miraculously popped out of the soil with little or no help from me (last year I ended up with in excess of 40 tomato plants because they somehow self seeded and kept popping up everywhere, and so I just kept lovingly potting them on). Occasionally, just a cursory glance around the garden is all that’s required and with nothing to be done, I can leave it to grow; and that’s just as therapeutic. In the busy world of work winning for a large company in London, I need all the therapy I can get…. So my blog will document my garden’s journey through this summer season and if along the way I inspire other novices to give it a go, well that’s just an added bonus I wouldn’t have normally had the chance to enjoy – thank you Rachel’s.