2010 successes - home garden

Well, 2010 is not over yet, but we're transitioning into the colder autumnal darkness. Worth marking what were the successes and failures in the summer garden this year.


Upside down tomatoes - not prolific, but no blight. They are starting to ripen now. Yummy!
Courgettes doing great. Onions and shallots were fab - all harvested, dried and stored.
Some potatoes that self seeded produced a huge crop in a raised bed, and the spuds in pots yielded reasonably.
Garlic got rust, but it seems to be fine - lots stored, and lots saved for planting more in a month or so - will plant loads of hard neck garlic.

Sunflowers in a pot are great - just about to bloom. The cherries ripened, and were very small and tasty in September. No Damsoms. No pears - a few apples on one of the trees.

Lettuces did great in window boxes until July.
Beetroot didn't do so well. Carrots were a dead loss. Sunflowers in the front bed were decimated by slugs when they were several feet tall. Also wasps were harvesting cellulose from other sunflowers and weakened the stem, so the wind blew them over.

We saw lots of butterflies, bees and other bugs in the garden - which was great, the long hard winter would have decimated them. We will leave our teasel to provide homes for them again this year.

The tall beans are getting decimated by the wind - as always - but some nice borlottis growing there.

I have planted a lot of daikon and corn salad for the winter - and the leeks seem to be doing well. Have planted spinach also, it has germinated and is thriving in seed trays.

The home garden was neglected a little in favour of the allotment, and I have left a lot of leeks to go to see to save seed - they have now occupied the same area for > 12 months, so a good weeding is in order. The seeds don't seem to be turning into the small black seeds that I would expect - anyone know anything about saving leek seeds?

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all - I have been away from this blog a good bit lately - making crafty things and baking - some results on my other blog.

However, now that the nights are getting shorter, and the days are lengthening somewhat, it's time once again to turn back to the garden. Maybe I'll just be sorting my seeds, and starting some broad beans inside, and harvesting a few leeks, but summers a coming - and we have been waiting since 2006.

Leeks

Some of my leeks are going to seed - which makes them completely inedible. I ODed on leeks this year - though I don't think you can have too many. The Hannibal leeks are still growing well, but the Bleu de Solaise seem to be an autumn harvest variety,(though they were sold as a good overwintering variety), and a good many of them are producing seed heads.

I should remember to sow those ones early, and the Hannibal later, to get a good crop from autumn on. And stick with the Hannibal, or another variety for winter eating.

August Harvesting

Just to note what is doing well in the garden at the minute, and what we are enjoying at the table.

Potatoes: Lots dug, and waiting to be used, lots more still in pots.
Courgettes: Producing steadily, but not in glut amounts. The round ones are especially good.
Squash - a few uchiki kuri, a crookneck, Anna Hubbard.
Runner beans: Keeping on top of them so far.
Dwarf French: Sharing with the slugs
Lettuce: Bitter and running to seed
Beetroot: Lovely and big - leaves yummy, roots mostly going into chocolate brownies
Onions: mostly harvested, eating lots
Shallotts: I have 1kg in a string bag for storage - don't think they will last too long, though.
Tomatoes:Lots of green ones - just a few ripening.
White turnips - pulled some today for my mother - await her verdict. I fancy them pickled....
Artichokes are still producing a bit, but the novelty has worn off. We are letting a few flower for the beautiful colour, and maybe the seeds will be viable.

Blueberries ripeing, and a few raspberies.

A little sunshine would go a long way...I suspect I might have a glut of something then...

My strategy on the onions and shallotts is to eat away at them,and have leeks and bunching onions for when they are all gone.

I'm trying not to buy any fruit or veg - so that part of the fridge is strangely empty. I think I'll have to crack and buy some carrots - they are miserable this year.

First quarter 2009

Got off to a good start with peas and broad beans - they are in the garden and doing well. Any leeks planted earlier are growing, but not terribly fast. All the rest - cabbages, onions, calendula, lettuce have been destroyed by the slugs. Vast amounts of egg shells are not working.

The second phase of planting - tomatoes, borage, ore leeks are doing ok, but I have not exposed them to possible slug predation.

This week I am going crazy planting - mostly in paper pots - and hoping that something will survive my extended absence in April. You spend so much time looking forward to this point in time, and when it comes, it's not what you expected.

Outside, I have planted carrots, beets onions and early potatoes - and some in pots - this weekend I hope to plant the rest.

We are harvesting Kale, parsley, thyme, chard, corn salad. The daikon is going to seed. The leeks are almost all gone, but the autumn sown onions might be worth trying soon.

Harvests

Clearing the beds bit by bit - before we know it, it will be time to start replanting them! So today I harvested most of the remaining leeks - I'll miss having them out there - and some corn salad.

The corn salad was mixed with some Rocha pear, and a little goat cheese, and dressed with a light balsamic vinegar dressing for a sublime salad.

There's more corn salad in one of the planters, and in another bed. It's a great one for this time of the year, and it self seeds like crazy, so with judicious weeding, you can forget to plant and still have some coming along.

I'll probably make a Leek and Feta tart tomorrow. And will hopefully get around to sowing some more leek seeds, so it won't be too long before the next batch is ready.

January starts

On January 25th, I sowed quite a few seeds - Broccoli, Lettuce, Leeks, onions, Cabbage, spinach. I mixed cabbages, lettuces and onions in my reliable vegetable boxes - I didn't want a full box of anything. And I thought by mixing, I woudln't get varieties mixed up. And Iput them in a warm place that is not terribly well lit.

However, now the broccoli and Cabbage are germinating (already - 3 days!), so either I need to move them to a better lit place, and reduce the germinating chances of the other plants, or leave them where they are, and have leggy cabbage seedlings. I'm going to pick the latter option, mainly because I don't really care about the cabbages, and it would be good to show my class some leggy seedlings.

Beautiful Frosty Morning

 

 

It's a beautiful fresh frosty morning here - the leaves are well decorated. This is the coldest that it's been since we moved back here in 2006, and my laissez-faire attitute to the root veg may backfire on me. For the past 2 winters I have left the beets, turnips and daikon in the ground through the winter, harvesting them as needed.

But since we didn't have much frost, this was a fairly safe strategy. This year, my fennel has already taken some damage from the frost, we covered it with fleece on Monday, but I have more or less written it off. It's not really supposed to overwinter. I was hoping for a few more Beet and Daikon harvests, though - I'm hoping that only the surface is frozen, and that they will be ok. The leeks are looking a bit limp, and some of them are going to seed, so probably time to use them up too. If things thaw in the afternoon, I'll go out and harvest a few to assess the damage.


Lesson learned - get in some straw in the autumn for tucking in the root veg!

On the positive side, this frost will break down the bed I prepared at the weekend, and will do a good job of killing the pests, it's a necessary part of the cycle, and welcome as such.

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

It's been a good Christmas for me and the garden - We have had lots of visitors all through December, and we were able to serve up lovely Beet and Lentil Vinaigrette, Fennel and Orange Salad and Leek and Feta tart.

Also, we had our own home grown carrots and Brussles sprouts for Christmas Day. that was one of my objectives for the 2008 garden year, and I'm delighted that it worked out.

And there are still lots of leeks, beetroot and fennel in the garden. Not to mention daikon, chard, kale and cabbage. And thyme, parsley and rosemary. Though the fennel is taking some frost damage.

Yesterday I sorted out all my seeds - organised by the time of the year when they need to be planted. So I have grouped them buy month. I only have a few to buy - onion sets, shallot seeds, potatoes, and purple and rainbow carrots.

I planted about 30 broad beans - to start inside, and then move outside. Probably worth while starting some outside too. From my notes, I didn't get a great harvest from last years crop - and they are a lovely early veg. So will have to try for more this year.

My gardening class starts in less than 2 weeks - I'm having fun preparing, hoping that we will attract some students from outside the school community. The more the merrier!

For the first class, I'm planning to get all the participants to make a garden diary - in looking at this blog and my written notes, it's incredibly helpful to be able to look back and see what was going on, weather and plant wise, and what my ideas were to improve things in the future.

Also, divided some artichokes, and planted calendula, and I would hope to pass on some of these plants to the students. The dry weather over Christmas has been great for getting outside, although it has been very cold.

Autumn Harvesting

Weird, but it seems like I am able to harvest more now than I was at the peak of the season. Today I started a pot roast - and I added to the stew are around it - from the garden - borlotti beans, Leeks, parsley, and a kind of winter radish from real seeds. We also have daikon (mooli), carrots in planters, kale, some upside down tomatoes, raspberries, fennel, mispoona, mizuna, corn salad, a little rocket. Some brussels sprouts and cabbages coming on - the broc is a washout with caterpillars, but all in all pretty good.

With the beef coming from my brothers farm down the road, and Ballinagore potatoes still available, we are having some good locavore dinners.

Onions planted, and general allium comments

Planted overwintering onion sets about 4 weeks ago now, and they are sending up some little shoots, which look encouraging. Two kinds- red ones- called Electric, and yellow Senshyu. I'm hoping that the problems of them going to seed will not happen with the overwintering ones. Anyhow, it will be good to have some in the late spring.

Every says that onions are cheap to buy, easily available, and so you should grow something else, but we use loads of them, and it's good to be able to go outside and pick them when you need them.

Yesterday, we had oven roast potatoes (cut into 1cm dice), with leeks (cooked with the potatoes) and some scallions and chives added just before serving. They were delicious - I thought that I had made way too many, but they were all scoffed. The leeks and chives were from the garden - the leeks are doing very well, even though I planted loads more this year, I think that I will have even more next year :-) They are easy to grow, and seem to be pest resistant. (Fingers crossed)