May 2019 in pictures

The brassicas are now flowering in earnest and going to seed. They will soon have to come out to make way for summer and autumn crops.


Meanwhile the Eleonora broad beans are doing really well. At this relatively early stage we pick the pods while they are still quite small and cook and eat them whole, along with some of the tips from the plants. There has been some blackfly on a few of the plants on the outside of the block but we seem to have got away with a light infestation.

We are still harvesting a few of the sprouting brassicas that haven't yet broken into flower, and there are the overwintered spring onion, onions, Swiss chard and bulb fennel. The last, though, was very close to bolting. Must remember to keep a keener eye on them next year.

Overall, I feel that we are finally using the garden to the full for the whole year: one crop finishes and is replaced with a new sowing or seedlings. Meanwhile the cat guards the strawberry and asparagus beds, with the rhubarb offering her some shade from the midday and afternoon sun!

And talking of new sowings, this is the time of year we start the runner beans. First they are soaked overnight. Then they are placed between wet paper kitchen towel until they start to germinate, when they are transferred into small pots and home made compost. These are harvested from last years plant's and we always have excellent germination rates.

October 2017 in pictures

The autumn harvest from the garden continues: squash, cauliflower, herbs, carrots, tomatoes and courgettes. 

The sweet chestnuts came from a tree next to The Church of Our Lady and St Anne in Caversham. It is a well established tree and there is always a good crop, although the quality of the chestnuts does vary from year to year. This year they were really plump and a great addition to stews and casseroles.

 

We gathered in the last of the tomatoes, some of which were still green but may ripen indoors. They are usually eaten before that happens, though, chopped and fried with a little garlic, onion salt and chilli. It was not the highest yielding year we've ever had but a good one and we did manage to avoid the blight that afflicted so many vegetable gardens and allotments in the area. The photo on the left is a sample of some of the varieties we grew this season.

A friend gave me a bag of quince from their garden. I poached some in a honey syrup along with some foraged apples and the rest I incorporated into marmalade (recipe to follow in a separate post).

We harvested the two monster squashes that were growing against our kitchen wall; they weighed in at just over 6lb each in weight. I found the label at the base of the plant and it said "Harlequin". I've been collecting seeds from our squashes for about three years and so far the harlequins have all been small to medium sized yellow/orange specimens (see the one on the right in the photo). I initially thought that there had been cross pollination to produce the green giant on the left but on checking my seed catalogues I see that Harlequin is an F1 hybrid. It's amazing that my collected seed generated so many "true" harlequins. Some of the green giant was made into chutney and the rest eaten over two weeks in risottos, curries and roasted veg recipes. Its twin is waiting to be eaten. We shall probably tackle it at the end of the year!

Our other main harvest was that of runner bean seeds. We have been growing runner beans and collecting our own seed for many years and have long forgotten what varieties they are/were. It doesn't really matter as they are well adapted to our garden conditions, are prolific and taste good. I may, though, try out one or two new "bought-in" varieties next year.

Some of the brassica and swiss chard seedlings have been planted out in areas that won't be trampled on when our storm-damaged, dividing fence is replaced (hopefully in November). They have all been covered with fleece, not to protect them from frost but to stop the pigeons getting at them! The brussel sprouts that you can see in the background are big enough to take care of themselves. 

August 2017 in pictures

Cauliflowers not huge this year but at least they survived the cabbage white caterpillars.

An interesting looking squash emerging from the compost spread under some of the runner beans.

Tomatoes are doing well this year. First time we've grown Brandywine and Costoluto Fiorentino.

A good crop of runner beans across the garden.....  

...and  the grapes have excelled themselves this year.

Plenty of wild fruit for foraging: elderberries, damsons, blackberries, apples and plums.

May 2017 in pictures

Really pleased to see that the pear blossom and fertilised flowers survived/missed the frosts. It looks as though we shall have at least a dozen pears this year, up from last year's single fruit that survived.

A typical Sunday Lunch for this time of the year. Starting at the top and working around the plate clockwise: steak and ale pie from Reading Farmers' Market; pea shoots (kitchen window sill); stuffed purple sprouting broccoli leaf (garden) stuffed with risotto; purple sprouting broccoli (garden); carrots (Reading Farmers' Market); potatoes (supermarket); various brassica leaves (garden).





Typical daily veg collection for May and on this occasion the veg was for a shared meal at a meeting and AGM of Transition Town Reading (TTR). Includes swiss chard, purple sprouting broccoli, onions, cavolo nero, various kales and oregano.

And this is what I made for the TTR AGM: winter/spring vegetable quiche, spicy vegetable and chickpea flour muffins, and sprouting broccoli leaves stuffed with vegetable risotto.

At the front of the house, the new(ish) rosemary bush is now well established and liking the hot dry environment. The surplus garlic cloves that I planted as an experiment are also doing well. 

Some of the runner bean seedlings that were started off under cover. Having been caught out with late frosts in previous years these will not be planted out until late May or the beginning of June.








I bought some interesting varieties of tomatoes and chillies from Homecrafts in Caversham, and was forced to use the bath as a "waiting room" for them a while. Tomatoes were Brandywine (pink beefsteak variety), Principe Borghese (red egg/plum shaped fruit)  and Costoluto Fiorentino (red beefsteak).

Although there is a lot just beginning to grow some of the crops are finishing. Last year's planting of swiss chard is now going to seed but there are still several meals worth left before they need to be pulled out. 

October 2016: time to bring in the chillies and tomatoes

October is often a mild month and many of the summer crops are still growing, albeit slowly. There were some cold nights and the threat of frosts towards the end of the month so time to pick the chillies. There was a good crop on the plants that made it past the seedling stage but I lost most of them right at the start of the year. 

I always start the chillies indoors but we don't have an area in the house that is consistently warm enough for them. So, I use a propagator. Unfortunately, it is a very basic model: either on or off and if left on for too long it can get too hot. I was away for two days running some workshops and forgot to switch it off. On my return I was greeted with cooked chilli seedlings. A mistake I won't make again and time to invest in a thermostatically controlled propagator.

We picked all of the tomatoes and brought them indoors regardless of whether they were ripe or not. Some were beginning to turn and have been left to ripen in the kitchen. Others were nowhere near ready to ripen and used up in stir fries and omelettes. The last big green courgettes were picked but the baby yellow ones were left until frosts and slugs threatened. 

And I found I had a single, lone aubergine. When we started growing our own veg we had several years of successfully growing aubergines in pots outside (we don't have a greenhouse) but we then had three years when we didn't have the right weather at the right time. We gave up after that but this year I was given a plant so I thought I'd try again. I was underwhelmed by the yield but it was probably not the right variety for growing outdoors. They are not on my list for 2017.  

The runner bean seeds have been collected for next year. I've been saving these for so many years that I'm no longer sure what varieties I have apart from the white ones, which are Moonlight. Moonlight, however, has been a perennial disappointment. I have tried different suppliers as well as our own and grown in different locations. The plants grow well, they produce plenty of flowers but we get hardly any beans from them. All the other varieties we grow have been fantastic this year. 

I have no idea where we are going wrong with Moonlight but we shall try again in 2017. We are enlisting the help of friends who will grow some plants from two of our batches of seed so that we can see it really is us or the seeds that is the problem. 

The garlic has been planted and this year we have three heritage varieties: Red Duke, Mikulov and Bohemian Rose. 

Outside of the garden it has been a good year for Rowan berries. There is still rowan berry jelly in the cupboard so this time I made marmalade with the juice and some citrus fruit. 

The wasps that have been nesting in the kitchen roof space have been dying off in small batches over the last couple of weeks and this morning it looked as they were all on the way out. This sight was repeated across all three kitchen windows. But there are still dozens, if not hundreds, of them buzzing in and out of the nest so a lot more to go. The windows are covered in streaks of some sort of sticky goo but there is no way I am going to attempt to clean them while there are wasps still around.

Squash harvest minus five already eaten!

October 2016 Zone 2 and 3

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!