Grow Your Own Veg

The end of all good things

Geoff Hodge — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:02:00 GMT

Well, actually, it's the end of a lot of bad things! I've started clearing out the greenhouse and beds of all the summer crops and consigning the plants to the compost heap - and boy the compost heap's getting big.

Although there are still a few peppers and chillies in the greenhouse I've started to clean it out ready for the late autumn and winter inhabitants - all the tender and exotic plants from the garden. Yes, shock horror, the greenhouse becomes veg free (apart from a few salads) during the winter. I've started to clean it - the structure and the glass - and given it a good autumn clean; it looks very appealing in there at the moment I have to say.

Late summer abundance

Guy Barter — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 07:47:00 GMT

Warmth and sun make ‘allotmenteering’ a pleasure at the moment and it is tempting to indulge in unattractive gloating over the late summer abundance.

Turnips were reported on national media last week to, according to supermarkets, be increasingly popular on account of their low cost compared to other foods. One suspects that the increase was from a very low base as turnips are a minor crop; the media always omit the crucial information.

Tomatoes at last

Guy Barter — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:51:00 GMT

It has been a long wait and expensive in fungicide, but at last the outdoor tomatoes can be gathered by the bucketful; the slightly blight-tolerant ‘Ferline’, a moderate sized beefsteak cultivar, is the heaviest cropper by far with masses of bright red, tasty succulent fruits, but my favourite is ‘Russian Black’, really a chocolate-maroon sort of colour, with a tangy, salty fresh flavour to its massive ribbed fruits. Wide spacing and a weed suppressing paper mulch have kept airflow up around the plants and backed up with fungicide the crop is disease free. The cold nights are causing metabolic disorders so the crop will only last two weeks or so.

While waiting for the last crops to mature, maintenance tasks can be done before the soil gets wet and heavy to work. As a start the edges were cleaned up. Normally a carefully directed spray of glyphosate is used to maintain the grass edges but with the summer wind and rain this has not been possible, so it is back to the old way with edging iron and line to make crisp satisfying straight edges. The first steps for the big end of season clear-up have been taken.

Mellow fruitfullness abounds

Geoff Hodge — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:25:00 GMT

OK, so this is it. Autumn is officially here - not only judging by the calendar, but also by the nighttime temperatures - on Saturday night it went down to 4C. So that's pretty much the end of the main veg growing season.

I spent Saturday going through crops tidying up, disposing of the ornamental aubergine plants and sorting through the tomatoes to remove leaves to allow as much sun as possible to get to the fruit - the latter may now have been a complete waste of time as the fruit will probably fair better indoors.

Potato Digging

Guy Barter — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:53:00 GMT

The last of the second earlies were dug in the rain this weekend. You can do that on sandy soil. There are few days in the year when the soil is too wet to work. The damp tubers were left to dry in an open fronted shed beneath plenty of newspaper to exclude light.

After the ground was cleared it was levelled with landscaping rake, trod firm, raked again and sown with Italian ryegrass and raked again to cover the seed and trodden again to firm the seed in. The grass should germinate in a few days and by March will be a leafy sward ready to incorporate after protecting the soil all winter.

Covering up

Guy Barter — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 06:31:00 GMT

No point in sowing or planting new veg crops now of course so it is time to sow cover crops. Sandy soil should never be left uncovered if at all possible. Cover crops will suppress weeds, scavenge nutrients left over from the manures and fertilisers used this year and protect the soil from battering under winter rain.

My favourite cover crop is Italian ryegrass – a vigorous annual forage grass that, in these mild southern districts, will grow all winter. I also have some caliente mustard and finally some T&M mixed green manures. Naturally these are pest free and even pigeons turn up their noses at these crops. The mustard is first as its larger seeds grow quickly smothering weeds that are still germinating in warm moist soil.

As the spuds come out the ground is raked level, seed broadcast, raked in and the ground trodden very firm. Last year, as is usual in this district, the soil was too dry and dusty for good results but this year the moist ground is in perfect condition. Recent last minute sowing of pak choi, turnips and salads germinated in two days, so the cover crops should be up very fast.

Second-early potatoes have matured. I mostly grow these rather than maincrops because, here, in a dry year potatoes just run out of water and die in late summer and second earlies at least fulfil their yield potential by then. I am trying out some new second-earlies this year. ‘Vivaldi’ behaved like a first early and had a high early yield of smooth, white creamy tubes, but it won’t replace my favourite earlies, ‘Accent’ and ‘Lady Christl’. The first batch of Cosmos, a typical Dutch supermarket white cultivar ideal for pre-packing, and for my purposes drought resistant, tolerant of diseases and pests, very high yielding and good quality, was lifted and stored. Next out was ‘Bonnie’, a potato new to me, white with pink eyes, that yielded less than Cosmos but had a high proportion of big round ‘bakers’. Baked potatoes, with baked apples, are an autumn favourite of mine. Of the continental cultivars tried last year, only ‘Red Laure’ impressed me enough to repeat and it has grown much better this year in the absence of blight.

The next batch of spuds have already died back and are ready for lifting and in fact the early maincrop ‘Ambo’ and ‘Robinta’ are maturing fast. The late ‘Cara’ and ‘Pink Fir Apple’ are still going strong. This greatly eases the blight spraying chore with what may well be the last spray given to all but the very latest spuds.

Tomatoes will still need regular blight protection but they are grown in a compact batch next to the shed, in which I keep a mini-sprayer permanently charged with fungicide with which to mist the plants very carefully whenever the weather is wet and warm. At last the outdoor beefsteaks ‘Ferline’ are ripening meaning that I can now gather all the ingredients for ratatouille.

This summer I have done little cooking as such but feasted on whatever choice morsels of meat or fish that can be quickly and lightly cooked were on offer (or more usually approaching the end of their shelf-life) in the local supermarket and heaps of briskly steamed or boiled veg and plenty of salads. This happy situation will soon end as autumn begins so I am trying to make the most of summer produce while I can.

Bank holidays - I love 'em

Geoff Hodge — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:43:00 GMT

You can't beat a good bank holiday to get loads done in the garden. Having spent so much time away recently, we spent all three days getting the garden back into shape and finishing off a few projects that we'd got part way through. One of my main objectives was to give the veg area a good seeing to.

The beefsteak tomatoes obviously were never going to do anything, so they got cleared out of the greenhouse, which made lots of room to space out the remaining tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers. One of the aubergines has actually set a fruit, although I don’t hold out much hope of it getting to edible size this late in the season. The peppers are doing really well and we’ll have lots of chillies to keep us going through the autumn. Photographer Tim Sandall is having his own Chilli Festival in a few weeks’ time, so it looks like we'll be able to add to his endeavours.

In order to get all the grubbed up tomato plants onto the compost heaps meant that the finished heap had to be emptied and this was used to top up the beds and as a mulch around the rest of the garden.

Next job was to have a good tidy up of all the other crops – removing dead, damaged or dying foliage, remove spent plants, weed and generally make everything ship shape.

By the end of Saturday I stood back, lent on my hoe and thought ‘phew’ things are back to normal.

There was plenty to harvest and deal with. Although the tomatoes at home have generally been disappointing we’ve had a few fruit here and there and this weekend everything that was ready was harvested to make a rich tomato sauce, which along with some runner beans made a fantastic sauce for salmon steaks. The ‘Hundred & Thousands’ tomato plants have been cropping well and consistently and the tiny cherry tomatoes are great to eat raw and add a hint of sweetness to sauces. Sunday’s gourmet meal was pork with roast beetroot (red & orange) and carrots.

On Saturday we had a real ‘rock and roll lifestyle’ evening and spent hours cleaning, topping and tailing and peeling shallots and by the end of the weekend had six jars of them pickled and ready to store. Similarly the onions were cleaned up and put into store. Clare was a bit miffed as she was hoping to get three that were good enough to enter into one of our local shows next week but we just couldn’t find three that were the same size and shape. The potatoes that we harvested last weekend were similarly cleaned, sorted and put into boxes for storage in the garage.

As always, there were plenty of courgettes to harvest, so many so that Clare decided to bake a courgette cake. I realised she was baking, but hadn’t realised that it was courgette on the menu until I had my first slice to eat and noticed the green flecks. How was it? Well, it wasn’t long before I was tucking into my second slice; I think that answers the question! Moist & yummy is another answer; as you'll see I'm a real connoisseur when it comes to food.

By the end of yesterday the whole of the garden was looking much better, I’d moved a tonne of gravel, I ached all over, I’d eaten well from produce we’d grown ourselves, and was wondering why I’d been moaning about what a waste of time, money and effort gardening was a couple of weeks before! A happy ending to a happy bank holiday.

Good week for biodiversity.

Guy Barter — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:35:00 GMT

It has been a good week for biodiversity. While cleaning and sorting onions into those for late winter storage, ones to use before December and the rest to use as soon as possible, I saw, through the corner of my eye, a rather dirty onion get up and walk off. On inspection this unusual onion was a toad which had made a home in the cold frame where the onions are ripening. It crawled off into the herbaceous borders.

Then when lifting the mulching sheet as the last of the broad beans were cleared a slow worm slipped quietly from beneath the sheet into the adjacent strawberry bed. In fact there now appear to be slow worms under all my many mulching sheets - I have seen more slow worms this week than ever before.

Harvesting; where to begin?

Guy Barter — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:33:00 GMT

At last allotment work is easing off and the plot is mostly up to date. I have to say I am relieved – it has been a bit hectic harvesting and replanting at the same time.

With only six weeks or so of growing weather left, plants must not run short of nutrients. However everything looks mighty lush and only some weak, newly planted or pigeon damaged plants need feeding. Brassicas checked by pigeons, have had a second dose of calcium nitrate to boost growth and keep the soil alkaline. Where grow is not quite as it should be sulphate of ammonia has been applied, dissolved in water and placed at the base of affected plants with a watering can, to crops destined for autumn harvest; beans, beetroot, celery, courgettes and various salads and also in moderation to celeriac and leeks for winter harvest. Ground cleared of summer crops and due to be resown or replanted has received a boost of dried poultry manure pellets.

Mixed fortunes

Geoff Hodge — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:28:00 GMT

Right! This is getting silly! I know each year in the garden is different – but I just wish they were different in a good way. Two years ago we were over-run with tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and aubergines and the freezer was swollen with ratatouille. Last year was the ‘blight year’ and tomatoes and potatoes took a bit of a hammering. This year – it has been beans all the way – in all their forms. But the tomatoes, peppers and aubergines…!

We’ve just come back from a holiday in the south of France – every day hot, sunny and glorious. And while I’m lying next to the pool trying not to become a British lobster I’m thinking it MUST be sunny back home and all the fruiting crops must be bursting with fruit. Luckily, the mother-in-law was house sitting so everything would be fed and watered as and when needed.

Pungent wheels

Guy Barter — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:11:00 GMT

People are even more reluctant than usual to ride in my car now carting home the alliums is in full swing. Last year my garlic, onions and shallots were so disappointing that an emergency leek planting session had to be undertaken to have enough alliums for the winter. Not so this year, although I have still planted an improbable number of leeks.

The spring planted onion sets and shallots have fallen over and dried off – they have come home now, to ripen in the coldframe, to make room for the last of the leeks. They were grown through white faced black polythene salvaged from the ‘Taste of Autumn’ Wisley event. This kept down the weeds and reflected light back up into the foliage. I have been a bit sceptical about this white polythene but I really think it has benefitted this sun-loving crop. With no need to weed and hoe there is no need to space plants widely or in rows. Therefore the onion crop was set out at a high density with about 10cm between plants. The onions are on the small side of course but there are a very great many of them, all about 6 - 8cm in diameter which is fine for home use. On the other hand the white kept the soil cooler delaying maturity by two weeks compared to black polythene, but I think the yield is better under white.

There was virtually no bolting suggesting I could have planted a fortnight earlier for a bigger crop.

In the coldframe they join the over-wintered crop, which being planted much more widely are very much bigger, although the crop per square metre is smaller than for the closely planted spring onions. ‘Setton’ and ‘Sturon’ were the main spring planted onions and cropped very well as usual and were joined by newcomer ‘Stur BC20’ which seems just as good although it is hard to say if it is better. A new red onion ‘Red Supreme’ seemed to have the edge on good old ‘Red Baron’. A white onion ‘Snowball’ also did well, but is so pungent as to be almost unusable. Perhaps it will come at you less fiercely after storage.

Official onion trials suggest some good newcomers for 2009: ‘Reddawn’ and ‘Red Emperor’ are reported to be very promising and two sets with good disease resistance may be available to gardeners soon. By some fluke of dry weather in June onion downy mildew was less damaging this year but is a scourge against which the gardener has no defence.

As ever ‘Senshyu Semi-Globe Yellow’ and ‘Radar’ were reliable over-winter and the red ‘Electric’ is completely reliable unlike older over-wintered reds.

A wide range of shallot cultivars were grown from onion-sized ‘Red Sun’ and ‘Hative de Niort’ to funny little ones whose label I have yet to uncover from beneath the black landscape fabric mulch through which all the over-wintered onions, shallots and garlic were grown. Some of these shallots were set out in spring to replace onions that failed over winter and have filled in the gaps productively.

To harvest the onions and shallots the sheet is lifted and those bulbs that don’t come way with the sheet are gathered up. I was pleased with myself for planting beans, courgettes and pumpkins into the maturing onion crop to get an early start but of course I cannot now lift the sheet and each onion has to be laboriously inched out without disturbing the following crop.

Garlic has all been gathered with ‘Early Wight’ and ‘Solent Wight’ making a heavy crop despite the severe rust disease and ‘Moldavian Wight’ being very much smaller, but supposedly tastier. I am not sure about that.

Bean (and pea) feast

Guy Barter — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:34:00 GMT

Peas and beans are the mainstay of my midsummer allotment crops; Pea ‘Ambassador’ grown for shelling produces two pods per node on tall leafy plants that put up a good fight against weeds. The pods this year area little short – it is always much better to have 10 peas in a pod than 6, as shelling is so much easier. ‘Balmoral’ has longer pods and lots of them but on shorter plants that compete less well with weeds. However, the edible podded snap pea ‘Cascadia’ is the most productive pea, which again grows tall and leafy, is delicious and I could grow only one pea this would be it.

Peas are not very high yielding. Official yield figures for peas are about 400g every square metre and broad beans are much the same, while dwarf French beans yield nearly double at about 750g and I would guess that edible-podded peas approach dwarf French beans (no official figures are available). Climbing French beans probably crop a little more heavily but nowhere near as much as the 2000g produced by a good crop of runner beans.

Like the pea season, the broad bean season is on its last legs. The main crop of ‘Witkiem Manita’ sown in March is nearly finished, the follow on crop of small seeded ‘Scorpio’ has been gathered and the final sowing of ‘Witkiem Manita’ has set a good crop and is just going over mature. Scorpio has very tasty small beans, but I still think the bigger, more vigorous, ‘Witkiem Manita’ gives the best results overall. If my eyes don’t deceive me this is the bean used for the August supermarket crops of broad beans and I hope to get similarly good results at this difficult season. Old books recommend ‘The Sutton’ for this period but I was deeply unimpressed by its late performance last year, although it gave fair results from an over-wintered crop.

The French beans raised indoors in April have been gathered. The direct sown beans from early May are almost over and the May sown is in flower now, while the June sown crop are 20cm tall but have yet to flower. As dwarf French beans are much the same in my view I just bought one big bag of 'Scuba' with some purple 'Royalty' for pretty.

To follow them July-sown yellow and purple climbing French beans are climbing their wigwams and to follow these late sown runner beans have reached the top of their canes

Both peas and broad beans are being cleared away now with time for a second crop before winter. It is well to have plenty of plants on hand to follow on, and my stock of cell trays has been re-sown with courgettes, cucumbers, beetroot, calabrese, cauliflowers, herbs, kohl rabi, oriental greens, and salads ready to go out into the newly cleared ground.

In the meantime courgette, French bean and runner bean seeds have been dibbled with a length of 25mm dowel through the holes in the landscape fabric through which broad beans have been grown. It is amazing how well seeds germinate under this treatment as long as they have some slug control applied at the same time. Without cultivation the soil has lost no moisture and the soil compacted by the dibber and the subsequent consolidation of the soil over the seeds by a clenched, gloved fist leads to rapid germination and growth, while the landscape fabric keeps the ground weedfree. If all goes well, and remains deer-free, these will be cropped in October. A covering of fleece boosts temperatures by a couple of degrees and excludes deer, which happily appear insufficiently enterprising to push aside the fleece.

Summer came and went

Guy Barter — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:31:00 GMT

The fleeting spell of hot weather after Tatton Park Flower Show made all the difference to my allotment..

For weeks careful watering and feeding to ‘push’ tender crops has been needed to make sure they develop enough roots and leaves to take advantage of summer when it arrives

Sweet potatoes under their low polythene tunnel have gone from weedy plants covering a tea tray’s worth of ground to cover over a square metre. In fact they are in danger of over-heating so the tunnel was pulled back and water applied to the landscape fabric mulch through which they are being grown. They got a really good soak and this might do them for the year; until mid August anyway. Abundant water can lead to lots of leaf and rather watery tubers, so they are being grown hard for smaller, but tastier tubers.

Tomatoes have gone from thin and willowy to thick, dark green plants with large trusses of fruit. Sweet corn from pallid and wispy to dark green and luxuriant. Climbing french beans have arrived at the top of their canes putting on a spurt of growth. Dwarf French beans are in full crop. Cucumbers have burst out of their fleece tunnel. Peppers have formed a heavy burden of fruit in their fleece tunnel. Unfortunately courgettes the size of my little finger when I left were only fit for the compost pit.

My numerous pumpkins and squashes have grown from plants you could almost fit under a bucket to sprawling monsters making their move on the nearby soft fruit

As usual in high summer one other, much less welcome plant has shown its appreciation of the hot weather; Galinsoga AKA gallant soldier or kew weed. This extremely virulent South American weed loves heat, is not at all put off by dry soils and whole regiments of it have sprung up, especially in the root and brassica crops. It had to go, but at least the weather was fine for a crawling though dusty crops pulling this stubborn weed out one by one.

Where's the summer gone?

Geoff Hodge — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:33:00 GMT

I haven't blogged for a few weeks - simply because I haven't been around much the last few weekends to get any actual gardening done. After spending the weekend at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show we've spent the following weekends visiting family, goings to christenings and having a weekend away in Pembrokeshire - revisiting old haunts that I used to go to as a child.

This weekend has been the first one spent at home for ages - and yes there has been some inevitable catching up to do in the garden. Naturally, I've been doing things in the evening after getting back from the office, but it has only been 'maintenance work'. And to be fair, that's what tends to happen at this time of year: watering plants in containers, feeding plants in containers, tying in plants to supports (we've had some really windy days, which have caused even the runner beans to comeaway from their supports), sideshooting tomatoes - and, the one thing that makes all the hard work worthwhile - harvesting.

It won’t last.

Guy Barter — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:55:00 GMT

It won’t last. The wet weather last year and this is a temporary aberration I learned when visiting the Changing Climate Dome at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

The scientists from the Met Office, who are available for questions and give talks in this dome, tell me that the lovely wet weather that is essential for good crops on my dry sandy soil is due to La Niña. This is the opposite of El Niño which was apparently responsible for the hot, dry weather in 2006.

They are climatic features in the equatorial regions of the Pacific Ocean off south America that involve oscillations for water temperature with La Niña being associated with colder water and El Niño with warmer. The effects of these are, astonishingly, felt throughout the world.

Worryingly, the Met Office scientists say that although this year will be cooler than 2006 because of La Niña, it will still be one of the warmest years on record. When El Niño comes around again, as it surely will, we can expect heatwaves and excellent tomato and melon crops, but the peas, brassicas and salads will need heavy watering to do well.

I am going back to the flower show today and I will have a lot more questions on climate change for the Met Office people.