August 2019 in pictures

Fruit in abundance this month! Grapes, damson plums and apples.

And plenty of cucumbers and tomatoes

July 2018 in pictures

It has been hot! The main part of the garden has been largely protected by mulching but it has been hard work watering the numerous pots and the grow sacks. The water buts are now empty so we have been saving water used to clean vegetables and pouring that on the garden, and are now having to resort to water straight from the tap.



The cucumbers are doing well as are the two aubergine plants. I decided to try the aubergines again, having failed over the last 4-5 years to get a decent crop and they have, naturally, been flourishing in the heat.

We were really pleased with the broad beans (variety Eleonora). This is the first time I have succeeded in growing them and we are now saving some of the beans for next year's seed. I started them off in small pots indoors and then planted them out under cover. (Enviromesh). That put a stop to the pigeons feasting on them. 

I'm most pleased with how the beetroot turned out this year. For the first time we used Charles Dowding's technique of multisowing. I honestly did not think they would turn out that well but many of them grew to about the size of tennis balls. This is definitely a technique that we shall adopt next year. 

July 2017 in pictures

Golden sweet mange tout. Very pretty mauve flowers, yellow pods and delicious but not very prolific. I'm not sure it's worth growing them again in any quantity.

Flowers and bulbils on Babington's leek. Nice garlicky flavour. I used some in cooking and kept some bulbils for growing on. 

Monster purple sprouting broccoli. This beast stood at 3ft 6in. The others around it were a normal 2ft max and had long finished sprouting. This one had only just started. It lasted another month and would have probably gone on for at least another year had it not been so shallowly rooted. A few blustery winds and it started to keel over and eventually I had to remove it. But it died give us plenty of broccoli spears and leaves before its demise. 

The start of our garlic harvest. I did label the three varieties that I planted but when it came to harvest the labels had disappeared! So I have no idea what is what. I'm not sure it really matters as I will use the cloves from the best specimens for replanting this autumn.

First of this year's cucumbers

Potatoes, Golden Sweet peas and first of the runner beans

Cherry plums

Grapes forming

Gorgeous colours on this monster that landed on a grapevine leaf. It was one inch long and buzzing loudly. I thought it was hornet of some sort but it is a hoverfly - the Hornet Mimic Hoverfly also known as the Belted Hoverfly, Volucella zonaria. Harmless.

Rudbeckia adding a splash of colour

Cinnabar moth caterpillars munching on ragwort.

The temperature may be in the 30s but Ms Moggychops
has found a cool, shady spot in the garden

August 2016: the harvest and foraging begins in earnest

August seemed to be especially busy this year. As well as harvesting the crops from the garden, we went out foraging for blackberries, elderberries, apples and damsons. See the August harvest and foraging summary 2016 for details of what and how much we gathered.

A lot of the blackberries were eaten as we picked - they were especially sweet this year - and the rest eaten fresh with ice cream, made into a pie with some of the elderberries and damsons, and included in elderberry, damson, blackberry and apple jam.

Around half of the elderberries were made into syrup to help alleviate the symptoms of winter coughs and colds. Some of the damsons and berries were also "brandied" for Christmas liqueurs. Depending on their type and flavour the apples were eaten, added to jams and chutneys, or incorporated into fruit pies.

Our own damson tree produced some fruit for the first time. It was not a huge harvest but more than we had expected. The tree was planted about two and half years ago and the frost had burnt off much of the blossoms so we were pleased to have the handful that made it through. The variety is Merryweather and they taste more like plums than tart damsons, so they were reserved for eating "straight" rather than being made into preserves and pies as were the foraged ones.

We had our first grape harvest. There were plenty of bunches and although the fruits themselves were quite small they were very sweet. We've had plenty of advice on how to improve the yield and size of the grapes, ranging from removing some of the bunches early to reducing the number of grapes in a bunch with nail scissors. I'm not sure either of us has the patience for the latter and it seems a shame to lose entire bunches. We'll see how it goes next year but might thin out the number of grapes in just a couple of bunches to see what effect that has.

The cucumbers went berserk. I went away for a couple of days and came back to find that several monsters had materialised. Similarly, some of the courgettes both yellow and green had decided to try and imitate marrows. 

The runner beans are in full flow, the cavolo nero is doing well and we have some green peppers, which we are particularly pleased about as they are being grown outside against the south facing fence. A few of the golden beetroot were of a size that made it worthwhile pulling them up, and the tomatoes are finally ripening en masse. Our potatoes, which are grown in pots and Marshalls Gro-Sacks, are now finished. We generally had good yields and they always taste better than shop-bought so it was worth the effort. It is a shame we do not have more space that we can use for growing them. 

The most prolific of the tomatoes at the moment is a yellow/orange cherry variety. It is one of the plants that emerged from the compost that we put on the Gro-Beds and as we have not bought any seeds that fit the description it must have originally been bought from our local supermarket. I do vaguely recall buying a pack of variously coloured "speciality" tomatoes that were on the reduced price shelf. They were described as extra sweet and flavoursome but when we tried them we ranked them a big fat zero in the taste stakes. I think we put them on one side and they were eventually consigned to the compost heap. Unlike the parent fruit, the ones that have now emerged really are indeed sweet, which I can only assume is down to the growing conditions in our garden. 

Our strategy of cutting the cabbage heads and leaving the stems in the ground has paid off as we are still harvesting small heads of pointed cabbage. It will be interesting to see how long the plants keep regenerating. Kale, brussel sprout and cabbage seedlings have been potted up and are in an area next to the north facing fence that I call the brassica nursery. They will soon be planted out and so far they are looking good. The main problem is that the wood pigeons have identified our garden as a source of tasty cabbage snacks so we've had to put up some protection against the feathered varmints! 

Our sole gooseberry bush (Whinham's Industry) has settled in against the north facing fence and produced a few berries for us. It's a lovely sweet dessert gooseberry. We have taken some cuttings but have yet to decide where we shall eventually plant them.

It's not all been good news, though. The large sycamore trees that blighted our own and our neighbours' gardens have been cut down by the council but the roots are still there and very much alive. We spotted leaves sprouting from one of the roots on on our side of the fence and it was increasing in size daily. Some people recommended that we just keep cutting it back and it will eventually give up and die. But that would mean checking on the wretched thing daily and it could take years to give up the ghost. Another approach that I found on the web, and which would be especially satisfying, is to drill holes in the wood, fill them with kerosene and set fire to the whole lot. While I am sure this would be effective, it would also probably be effective in burning down several fences along with the gardens in the immediate vicinity. So we have gone for the chemical option and applied tree stump and root killer. I suspect that one treatment may not be enough and it will try and spring up elsewhere along the root or from another one, so constant vigilance will be required.

But to end on a happy note, here is a photo of part of our zone 1 alongside the kitchen and bathroom extension. Beans, tomatoes and chillis are flourishing, and the squashes are rampant and clambering up the garden wall. I may have overdone the comfrey juice! 

July 2016 - hot!

July was an average sort of month for our area in the UK except that we had several days of very, VERY hot weather. On July 18th the temperature hit 35 degrees C. The cat gave up and tried to find somewhere cool indoors, we didn't even try to work in the garden and any watering that was needed was left to early morning. At least the spell of hot dry weather gave our squashes, peppers and tomatoes a boost, and one of the cucumber plants went berserk.

I was away working for a few days in the middle of the month and came back to a monster cucumber that had suddenly appeared alongside a couple of slightly smaller ones. It was a very nice ridge cucumber but not what I had expected. The plants that I had put in this container were supposed to be striped and globular (can't remember the name of the variety). I have no idea what went wrong with this one as the other plants are now fruiting as described on the packet. I probably mis-labelled the seedling.

The walking onions - also known as perennial onions, Egyptian onions, tree onions, or topsetting onions - are at last walking, They form a cluster of bulbils on top of a stem which makes it top heavy. The stem bends over and when the bulbils touch the ground they take root and produce more plants, so it is like they are walking across the garden. You can add the bulbils to salads or use them in cooking but this year we have reserved them for generating more onions. Nearby is a serpentine garlic, which I had completely forgotten about. Near the top of the serpentine stem bulbils are formed. When ripe, the stem uncurls and the bulbils drop to the ground, again forming new plants. Love these plants. Almost all you have to do, once they are established, is let them get on with it. Of course, you still have to thin them out and pull up the bulbs and stems that you want to eat! Otherwise, it is relax on the garden lounger with a drink and watch them do their own thing.

Egyptian walking onions

Serpentine garlic

This year has turned out to be a superb one for onions, although earlier in the year we did think that the overwintered sets were going to a disaster. A few did flower and set seed or bunch into something more akin to shallots but on the whole we have had a good crop.






The same cannot be said for the garlic. We gathered plenty of bulbs but they are all on the small side. Many of them also had bulbils forming halfway up the stems.






The veg in the containers in zone 1 alongside the kitchen/bathroom extension are doing well and an experiment in growing peas at the back of the gro-beds has been a great success. We have been having peas, peas and yet more peas for lunch! The lettuces have all been eaten and the tomatoes and squashes are now taking over the beds.

The chillis in the pots have finally sprung into action following the hot weather and it is onwards and upwards for the the runner beans. The problem with the beans is that they are so tall they are crawling across the kitchen roof. We shall either have to resort to ladders to harvest the topmost beans or leave them until the end of the season when they can be collected for seed for next year.

Peas, potatoes and cabbages are still the main crops at the moment with a few carrots and beetroot. As mentioned in the June posting the cabbages were very poor last year but have made up for it in 2016. Cauliflowers are the complete opposite. In 2015 we had several 4 pounders but this season we were lucky to have enough for a couple of meals - and the colour was weird. There is white cauliflower, cream cauliflower, green cauliflower and purple cauliflower. But we found a couple of mostly white with purple splodges caulis in our garden. It was in an area where self seeded stuff is allowed to grow so we're wondering if it's a cross between a white cauli and purple sprouting broccoli - or just a mutant! Disappointingly, the colour disappeared on cooking as is often the case with purple coloured veg.

Escaping horseradish

The bag containing the horseradish is in zone 3 and generally we don't pay much attention to it unless we want to pull up a root to make some sauce. This year we started growing strawberries for ground cover around this and other veg bags in that area and it was when we went to pick some berries that the horrible sight you see to the left greeted us. The horseradish has broken through the bottom of the veg bag, not just here but at four other points, and it is spreading. The gardening magazines, forums and blogs do warn that horseradish will eventually stage a break out no matter how well contained. This is war but it looks as though it is going to be a never-ending battle with no chance of either of us winning outright.

Mr or Mrs Toad (or both, or perhaps even the whole family) have been crawling around the garden and there are frogs a-plenty hopping everywhere. This one was spotted under the shade of the gooseberry bush. Great to see so many of them in residence.

Brassica seedlings

Everything is in place for the summer, autumn and early winter harvests but now is the time to start thinking about the mid to late winter and early spring supply of veg. We don't have to worry about the purple sprouting broccoli as we allow it to go to seed and it sorts itself out. Brussel sprouts and some cabbages are already on their way to being established as is the cavolo nero but this/next year's main project re brassicas is to try out different varieties of kale. Red Ursa on the right of the picture, a stable cross between  Frilly Siberian Kale and Red Russian Kale (seeds from the Real Seed Catalogue), leaves looks especially interesting.

With so much food coming out of the garden this month I have to show off at least one meal, which is what we had for Sunday lunch at the start of July - and we did rather pig out. NOT from the garden were rice, split peas for the dhal, chickpea flour, vegetable oil, milk for the home made yogurt, and spices. Home grown ingredients: beetroot (beetroot tikki), potatoes, peas, pea pods, cabbage, swiss chard, onion, garlic, cucumber, lettuce, coriander, parsley, mint. The bhaji (below the beetroot tikki) was made of onions, shredded pea pods and shredded cabbage.

And finally...

The view from the kitchen window, 22nd July 2016. The first crop of peas have nearly finished and now the triffids (squash) are taking over and trying to break in!