Stumbling Through The Garden

Autumn is very much here, so much so that I put the fire on tonight rather than the heating. It’s noticeable walking to the garden that the trees are looking bare

I had a spare 30 minutes this afternoon so tackled clearing out the greenhouses as we’ll be demolishing them so we can move them into a better position at some point soon. I had thought that most of the tomato plants were past it and planned to bin the lot however, on closer inspection the San Marzano’s were fruiting well, they were green but I’ll leave them a little longer. The Gardener’s delights too were still showing signs of fruiting but the Super Marmandes got the chop. The Super M’s were affected badly with blight and I think I only got one or two toms from them. Don’t think they’ll be grown next year.

With the Cucumbers/Super M’s now relocated to the chicken run and the Hens attempting to scale “Greenhouse Reject Mountain”  I inspected the Chilli’s. The Jalapeno’s have not been that great if I’m honest, But I think that was down to the heat in the greenhouse not being correct, I believe it was too low. I had great plans to make stuffed Jalapeno poppers. Sadly it was not to be. The Long Slim ones have worked quite well but again they are no match to the Long Slim Chilli plant in the kitchen. It’s currently got about 20 decent sized fruits on it. Must just be the perfect temperature. It’s so handy having it there, tonight we made beefburgers and could add a small chilli to the mix. Note that I referred to a singular “small” one, We learned our lesson on the heat level with these ones when we made Pizza and foolishly added too much of the “Green Fire” to them. The amount of times I’ve cut a chilli and then rubbed my eyes borders on the comical.

I still plan on pulling all the onions as soon as the weather clears as I really don’t want them to rot in the ground or go to seed. Maybe this weekend……

Interestingly, Is it Chilli or Chili? Both seem acceptable but the more I look at them they both seem wrong. Chillie….Chilly…..

I’d given up with the pumpkins (Hundredweight) as 4 out of 5 plants had died. It looks like they were not pollinated and the flowers dropped off but as I was checking the sweetcorn and found this little hero:

Will I mature by winter?

The question is, will it ripen before the frosts arrive?

The sweetcorn is looking good but again, will it be ready before frosts arrive?

A Sweetcorn

The tattie patch is finally clear and I’ve covered half with the Hungarian Rye. I’ve also sown some in the space where some of the onions were. The instructions tell me it fits in well in any rotation as and when a space becomes clear I’ll cover it up again. Next year I won’t have as many potatoes so I’ve essentially doubled up the amount of growing space.

The silverskin onions are looking good too, these were the first batch of things grown in buckets. Growing things in containers means a lot less weeding.

Onions live here

That’s the remainder of the spuds up and the ones I didn’t spike with the fork are drying in the steading. Didn’t get as many as I thought but still go more than enough.
I had a rummage through the turnips today and binned all the large ones, they were either rotten or suffered the black heart disease I mentioned before. The smaller ones however seem to be fine but I pulled them out anyway to start clearing the ground. I might chop them and put them in the freezer.

I went on a bit of a mission pulling things up to see how they were getting on. The carrots are a mixed bag, some are good the others are small and rock solid, I think I needed to thin them more. Parsnips are pretty good although could have been thinned a little more too as they are coming out in weird shapes, makes peeling them a treat. Kohl Rabi are ok, had one or two that grew well, the others are lagging behind.

With an arm full of odds and ends we made roast veg for tea, it was pretty good. Potatoes, Turnip, Parnsip, Beetroot, Onions, Garlic, Rosemary and thyme, at least I think it was thyme it could have been a weed.

I managed 30 minutes tonight turning over the old potato bed in preperation for getting the Hungargian grazing Rye sown, should get it done tomorrow although the weather forecast doesn’t look great.

I learned a few things this year, one being that I don’t like weeding, what makes it worse is the weather we’ve had. Sure, I could have gone out and weeded for hours in the rain and high winds but to be honest I’d rather not. I’m now at the stage where I just need a break in the weather so I can get the remaining potatoes pulled and into sacks. I bought some sacks and Onion nets from here the other day, arrived very quick and seem to do the trick. As soon as they are up I can get the Green Manure sown, I’ve opted for Hungarian Grazing Rye this year.

That leaves the main veg plot. We’ve still got masses of onions that are not yet mature, the sweetcorn of coming along, Beetroots are ready and I just need to pull them to pickle. Carrots and Turnips are still a long way off being ready, not sure what went wrong.

I digress, next year, in an effort to outsmart the weeds I think I might cover one of the areas in black sheeting, cutting holes/strips for what ever I plant. This will help me plant in long rows rather than the blocks I did this year. Anyone tried this and is it worth doing or should I just stop being lazy?
I took most of this week off work with the intention of working in the garden and house but after watching the Sunflower being blown over for the 8th time (see pic) I retreated to the Internet looking at ideas for next years veg patch. Not content with my current box of seeds I picked up some Roma Tomato (100 seeds ) for 9p along with some Squashes for the same price! At that price, they may not work but what can you get for less that 10p nowadays? (When I was a lad a Chomp bar was 10p, as were Fredo’s, sadly no longer)

Horizontal Sunflowers - Sadly this is a normal sight.

The lemon Cucumbers are good, I like these cheery fellows and will grow them next year. They don’t have the bitter taste all the other ones had but were grown in the exact same way.

If anyone has advice for next year I’d like to hear it.

While I followed Marley and Sprocket to the field to continue their jumping training (by practice “their” training I mean that I jumped the hurdles while the dogs watched) Sprocket disappeared into the hedgerow to continue her “project”. Sprocket’s latest project appears to be the eation of an open cast mine. She goes in, earth comes out, she appears covered with earth.
Anyway, while waiting for the mud covered dog I noticed that the second lot of Onions which I thought are a few weeks from harvesting have little buds on the end of a large stem. I pulled one and it does look to be a little on the small side. To harvest or not to harvest is the question? While Sprocket dug and Marley watched the piles of earth grow I plucked the seed head off each onion and marked the offending bulb with a came.

I read that these Onions will not store will and should be used first. I might manage that.

None of the stems have fallen over and they’re still very green so i’ll keep these ones in the ground a little while longer.

I decided to spend sometime looking at what was left of the tomato plants in the greenhouses and ended up binning a lot of the Ailsa Craig and Super Marmande plants as there was too much blight on them. Very poor yields from each this year. The tumblers continue to give good cherry toms which is suprising as they’ve been fruiting far longer than I thought. The San Marzano are starting to ripen, I harvest 1 today but the others will soon follow.The Gardener’s delights are fruiting very well too.

For next year I’m going to plant a lot less tomatoes, or at least make sure that I space them out more to give them more room. Going to go for quality rather than quantity.

The Lemon cucumbers are ready, I’ve only had the one but it tastes exactly like a cucumber. These will be grown next year but the Telegraphs won’t, they were very poor.

There was a break in the weather so I managed to dig up the Garlic and some of the onions. These were all grown from sets rather than seeds. The garlic seems to have yields some large and some small bulbs, I was expecting a more uniform size range. The other onions I grew from seed are almost mature so next year I’m not going to bother with Onion sets. Much easier going the seed route.

After watching Gardener’s World my Dad mentioned there was a section on Green Manure.  Episode can be found here. I spent friday night watching it and have since ordered some Hungarian Grazing Rye seeds as they were the ones discussed in the episode. It should be a case of scattering the seed soon and then leaving to grow over winter, then cutting and turning into the soil. As it grows densely there should be little in the way of weeds.

I have since read that it can sometimes be hard to get it to break down but with such a large range of options I’ll try this stuff this year

Interested to hear if anyone has experience with this or with any other types available. Unfortunately vegetableseeds.net didn’t stock these seeds so had to go elsewhere, hint hint.

Of course, I’ll need to pull all the veg that’s still in the ground before planting the Rye which is taking forever. We’ve had weeks of rain and high wind. The wind had been so high that the majority of onions and Garlic look like the dogs have been dancing on them. Up until now we’ve just been pulling the veg as and when we need it. I know I say this every post but all going well I’ll get the onions, garlic and beetroot up this weekend.

After last weeks attempt at pickled beetroot the firey feeling and numbness had finally left our mouths so we felt up to trying again. The last attempts saw us have one jar with some added chillies and the other with just the malt vinegar.

This time we used 5 large beetroots and boiled for about 45 minutes until the skin was stating to peel off. While we left them to cool we started on the vinegar mixture.

To the pan of about 400ml malt vinegar we added about 1.5 table spoons of sugar, just the right amount to take the zingy edge off. We added that to one jar, the second we added a good amount of peppercorns, next time we’ll crush some first. The third and final jar we added ground cinnamon

With tea tonight we couldn’t wait, all 3 jars were opened and the testing began. Perfect! All 3 were slightly different than the next! I’m looking forward to seeing how the flavours develop of the next little while.

At the current rate all 5 jars will be gone by the weekend so we’ll make more, this time there will be a Chilli version.

I’ve made a note for next year that I need to increase Beetroot production alot.

These little guys are the ones I have looked forward to most out of all of the things I’ve sown and I’m hoping that they’ll be ready to eat soon.  Cucumbers that looks like lemons, how awesome!? Depending how many I get my plan is to give them to family members but also mix in a real lemon as a “surprise”.

They seem to be growing well with quite a few fruit on the plant.

Lemon Cucumber

In other news, I’ve been quite ruthless with some of the plants that are past their best. I like to keep things until I am sure they are past their best and have been know to water a pot of compost in the hope that whatever did live there might return.

Interestingly both Telegraph Cucumber plants have each produced one monster fruit each and then died. Maybe that’s normal, maybe not, but the Marketmore’s are producing about 8 Cucumbers each as far as I can see. All looking very healthy.

The Tumbler Toms  are past their best now and I’ll be removing about 3 plants in the next day or so to free up some space in the greenhouse. One of the Melon plants also looks to be on it’s way out, my fault, I didn’t give it the space and attention it needed. Next year I will have my melons!

If it looks like staying dry today I might pull some of the onions and potatoes and dry them.

The rain continued today and everything was soaking so any chance of playing in the garden was put off. I decided to make some Vegetable soup using the veg I picked yesterday.

I’d forgotten to pick some potatoes so went and dug some up. I have started the second Earlie’s and they are a decent size. Can’t remember the variety so will need to wait until I can wade through to the label which I stupidly put at the furthest point from the path.

With the tatties onboard I set to peeling and washing the veg. The Snowball Turnips were odd though, the inside of the large one was quite brown and almost spongy. I cut around it and kept only the whitest parts. The smaller turnip was not as bad but did have brown parts it the centre. From what I can gather it’s Brown Heart Disease which is caused by a lack of Boron in the soil but can be fixed for future plantings by adding Borax to the soil. While most root veg is fairly hardy and will do well in normal soil it looks like turnip’s are quite needy.

The soup was awesome though and we spent this evening pickling some beetroot. One of the jars of beetroot we added some chillies too   After the initial vinegary kick you receive a pleasant warming sensation which soon becomes a mouthful of lava