Showers and slugs coming our way?

With rain forecast to return this week the slugs and snails will probably come out of hiding and start chomping again. It's been relatively quiet on the mollusc front with minimum damage to my vegetables and even the marigolds offered up as a sacrifice are starting to bloom. I sow marigolds in pots over the spring and summer so that I always have some that I can immediately deploy to any area of my vegetable plot that is under attack. The effect on the marigolds is usually devastating - see below!



Another approach is to use a garlic wash. I have not tried this yet so cannot vouch for its efficacy but many people say that it does deter snails, slugs and some other insect pests.

A recipe that is doing the rounds again is one that was mentioned on Gardeners' World and has been repeated many times elsewhere. I originally found it on the Bowden hostas site at https://www.bowdenhostas.com/pages/Garlic-Wash-Recipe.html. There are two other versions of the wash, one of which includes hot peppers, at "Get Rid of Pests with Garlic" http://www.permaculture.co.uk/readers-solutions/get-rid-pests-garlic

Pollen to go, please

As well as vegetables and cultivated flowers I have many wild flowers growing in my garden. I am always taking photos and inevitably some of them turn out to be rubbish! The above is a heavily cropped image from one of my reject photos. The camera was focussed on something else but as I was about to delete the image I spotted the hoverfly loaded with pollen on a cranesbill flower. A friend has suggested that the hoverfly is probably Platycheirus albimanus. As insects are not my strong point I am open to alternative suggestions.

Rain, rain and more rain!

After a good start to the gardening year we have had nothing but rain, rain and yet more rain here in Caversham. Despite that - or maybe because of it - parts of the vegetable garden are flourishing. Potatoes and peas are doing well as are the herbs and lettuces, but there is only so much salad and lettuce soup I can eat and I am running out of ideas for consuming the abundant greenery!

Tomatoes are slow this year as are the cucumbers. I made the mistake of planting out my cucumber seedlings too early and they were quickly battered to the ground by heavy rainfall. The second batch seem to be doing well now but it will be a late crop this year, if any at all. Surprisingly, the aubergines seem to be surviving and the chilli peppers are racing ahead.

Monsoon conditions of course bring out the slugs and snails but I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in the damage caused compared with previous, drier years. I did spray part of of my vegetable plot with Nemaslug as an experiment, but there doesn't seem to be any difference between the two areas in terms of plant destruction, which has been minimal. It could be that the slugs from the untreated area moved into the treated ground once the nematodes had done their stuff and died or the nematodes infiltrated the unsprayed ground. I also use a number of barrier methods which possibly helped (see 20 Ways to control slugs in the permaculture garden or on the allotment | Permaculture Magazine http://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/20-ways-control-slugs-permaculture-garden-or-allotment) or maybe the slug and snail predators have been out in force banqueting on the blighters! Whatever the reason, I certainly have not seen the scale of devastation reported in the Transition Culture blog (The Four Slugs of the Apocalypse http://transitionculture.org/2012/07/13/the-four-slugs-of-the-apocalypse/). I'd be interested in hearing what other UK gardeners are experiencing re mollusc infestations.

As an aside, if you have a particular interest in slugs and snails (apart from wanting them off the face of the planet altogether) the Field Studies Council has a number of identification guides including Land snails in the British Isles (2nd edition) - FSC : http://www.field-studies-council.org/publications/pubs/land-snails-in-the-british-isles-(2nd-edition).aspx and the much older (1983)  A field guide to the slugs of the British Isles http://www.field-studies-council.org/fieldstudies/documents/vol5.5_156_a.pdf.

Finishing off the Swiss Chard

Amazingly some of last year's Swiss chard survived the heavy snow and ice we had this winter, but they are starting to bolt and look as though they are about to run to seed. Interestingly, the red rhubarb chard succumbed to the severe weather conditions so we are left with just the green varieties. Yesterday I harvested about half of the remaining crop and made a swiss chard tart from it.

Recipe: Swiss Chard Tart

This makes an 9 inch diameter tart 1.5 to 2 inches deep.

Ingredients

Shortcrust pastry made from 3oz of white plain flour, 3 oz of soya flour, 3 oz butter,  2 oz of grated cheese, 1/4 tablespoon salt, water to mix to a dough. Alternatively you can make a 'standard' shortcrust pastry using white plain flour or buy ready made pastry.

3 tablespoons  of olive oil
2 medium sized red onions thinly sliced
1lb swiss chard - stalks and leaves separated
3 medium/large eggs
200 ml crème fraîche or crème fraîche + greek style yoghurt
8 oz grated cheese (if you want to keep it "Swiss" use Gruyère or Appenzeller)
salt and freshly ground pepper
sprinkling of oregano, thyme (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 190 °C

2.  Roll out the pastry and line a round loose bottom tin or tart dish.  Then line the pastry with a circle of baking parchment and fill with baking beans to bake it "blind". Bake  for 10 minutes, remove the paper and beans and cook for another 5 minutes.

3. Remove the pastry from the oven and turn down the temperature to 175 °C

4. Heat the olive oil in a pan and cook the sliced onions until soft. Chop up the swiss chard  stalks and add to the pan. Cook until soft  (about 4-5 minutes). Slice the chard leaves and add them to the pan. Mix everything in the pan together and cook until the leaves have wilted. Set to one side.

5. Mix the eggs with the crème fraîche (or crème fraîche/yoghurt mixture), add salt and pepper and the herbs (if you are using them) .

6. Sprinkle the bottom of the baked pastry case with about two tablespoons of the grated cheese. Then add the onion and chard mixture.

7. Add most of the rest of the grated cheese, keeping back about 2 tablespoons. Gently mix the cheese into the onion and chard using a fork (try not to gouge out the pastry base with the fork!). Pour over the egg mixture and sprinkle with the remaining cheese on top.

8. Cook for 20-30 minutes or until the filling has set and the top is just starting to turn golden.

Eat hot, warm or cold.



Ingredients from our own garden: swiss chard, oregano, thyme

Early potatoes and jerusalem artichokes

The garden is now really starting to take off with all the warm weather we have been having in the UK. The early potatoes and jerusalem artichokes in particular are surging ahead. I left some artichokes from last year's harvest in the bag and they obviously survived the harsh winter we had this year. The seed potatoes came from Marshalls and I started then off in egg trays indoors in late January.

I decided to take a risk with the weather just over three weeks ago and planted them out.  I half fill the bags with soil, place the chitted potatoes on the surface and then add just enough soil to cover the tubers. As the shoots grow I add more soil until the bag is nearly full. This method has worked really well ever since we started using the bags four years ago and although we only get enough for 4-5 meals for two of us it is just so nice to taste new potatoes straight from the earth. Once the potatoes are finished we plant courgettes and squash in the bags.

We started using bags at that end of the garden because of the tangle of roots that are close to the surface and come from the trees and bushes by the fence.  It is so much easer to use the containers instead of continually trying to convert that patch of ground into something usable.

Next job: potting up the tomatoes

Time to clear the garden and order seeds

It is raining here in Caversham at the moment but last weekend we had a couple of hours of sunshine - enough time to clear most of the debris from the garden. There was a lot that was not suitable for the compost heap - thick branches from the bushes for example - so they went into the green waste bag.  It is now full but our next collection date is February 1st. So, if there is any more garden waste for recycling over the next few weeks it will have to sit in a refuse sack and then transferred to the green bag once it has been emptied.



There is not much left in the ground now: swiss chard, spinach, parsnips, scorzenera and jerusalem artichokes in one of the bags at the back.  The other two bags will be planted with early potatoes and once they have been harvested  courgette plants will take their place.

It's also time to finish ordering seeds for the coming year. I usually order tomato and chilli seeds from Simpson's Seeds. Simpson's started out as the Tomato Club and specialised in unusual tomato varieties. They now sell a wide variety of vegetable and flower seeds, and in recent years have expanded their hot chilli collection. There are no pretty pictures in the printed catalogue but the web site more than makes up for that.  The other companies I use are Marshalls, Mr Fothergill's and Thompson and Morgan.


My next task will be to draw up a schedule for sowing seeds  both indoors and  outdoors.

Welcome to a Caversham Garden

I set up this blog a year ago with the intention of blogging the successes and disasters of growing vegetables in a small back garden in Caversham. My husband and I have been "growing our own" ever since we moved to Caversham in 1982 and many of our friends have encouraged us to share our experiences with others. Well the blog didn't happen in 2010. We are both self employed consultants and are also actively involved with various professional bodies. For my part, I have now stepped down from most of the committees I was on, which means that I have no excuse whatsoever not to get this blog going!

This will be a sort of diary of our gardening year: from ordering the seeds through to harvesting and eating the produce. It will cover disasters as well as successes and l might also include some of my favourite recipes.

Comments and your own experiences will be welcomed.