Green manure

Regular readers of my blog will know that I love money and time saving, gardening concepts. Sowing green manure is a double whammy! It’s a cheap (price of a packet of seeds) garden manure, enriches your soil which results in strong healthy plants. Winter weeds are suppressed in your vegetable or cut flowers beds, it just needs digging in a couple of weeks before you’re ready to sow seed or plant up come spring.

This is the first time I’ve grown green manure so it’s a bit of an experiment. First of all I cleared the vegetable beds, quickly hoed them and removed any weeds. Then I thinly sprinkled the seed over the beds.

Vegetable bed prepared for green manure seedThe first vegetable bed prepared for the green manure seed

I have selected two green manure seed mixes; mustard from Nuts n’cones, which is a quick grower, I noticed this morning that it’s germinated in the four days since sowing. The other is a winter seed mix of rye and vetch, from Suttons seeds. Green manure seed

Come spring when you’re ready to dig in the manure, get the strimmer out and chop the green manure to a fine mulch, this will help it rot down in the soil quickly.

I am a little late sowing the manure, they say September/October is the optimum time for winter green manure, but, my vegetable and cutting garden beds have been in full swing up until now so fingers crossed it will have sufficient autumnal time to develop. I will report back on the results come spring.

Extend your vegetable plot season

There was a time when I wondered why us gardeners worked so hard planning, preparing and tending our patches for rewards that last less than half the year (May to October). I would put it down to our passion for gardening. I now know that I got completely the wrong end of the stick, gardens are to be treasured, enjoyed and harvested throughout the year. With careful planning and preparation, you can have bountiful produce from the garden all year round.

Autumn is a key time to sow winter salad and crops for spring and early summer, usually I just sow broad beans and garlic. This year Suttons seeds website has inspired me to be more adventurous.

Broad bean, ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ is a delicious variety which harvests earlier than spring sown broad beans. Sow them directly into your vegetable bed and unless we have an extremely cold winter it should have no problems, if we do have that suspected freeze this year I’ll pop fleece over it for a bit of protection. Garlic seems to thrive on a cold spell and my autumn sown garlic is always a much heartier and healthy crop than weedy spring grown specimens. Plant the individual cloves pointy end up, 5 cm deep and approx 15 cm apart.

Garlic and broad bean seedsGarlic cloves and broad bean seeds

Planting broadbeansPlanting the broad beans, giving them plenty of spacePlanting garlicPlating the garic clove, 5 cm deep, pointy end up

The Sutton seed selection includes spring or salad onions, ‘White Lisbon’ which is winter hardy and should be ready in March and April. Peas, ‘Douce Provence’ is recommended for autumn sowing and hopefully we’ll get an early crop to look forward to in May. For the first time I am going to try and grow winter salad, instead of resorting to bags of super market salad. I am trialling the salad leaves outside and in the greenhouse; it will be interesting to see how they compare. I have sown a spicy oriental salad leaf mix which is advertised as ‘Speedy veg, ready in three weeks’, a leaf salad mix and Italian salad leaf mix, both come in seed tapes which are another first for me. They are easy to sow and I’ll be interested to see if the germination and growth is better with the seed tape spacing than my normal seed sprinkling method.

Autumn veg seedsMy autumn Suttons seed selctionAutumn sown peasSowing peasLeaf salad in seed tapePlanting the seed tapeOutside autumn veg sowingsMy outside autumn sowingsAutumn salad sown in the greenhouseAutumn salad sown in the greenhouse

I look forward to seeing the progress over the coming weeks and months.

Small acts of kindness

Small acts of kindness and appreciation have an enormous impact. Today such and act made my summer. An envelope was popped through my letter box, inside, a beautiful card saying how much they had enjoyed the ‘Produce from the garden’ honesty stall and blog. To receive such appreciation has in itself made the honesty stall worthwhile and the money raised insignificant, however, not for my three boys who have enjoyed a fun filled summer of trips and activities thanks to the stalls proceeds.Honesty stall

For this year my £1 honesty stall is closed. I have a very long list of autumn jobs which I must focus on and I need to start filling the freezer and bottling the produce ready for the lean winter months. My beach hut looking stall, constructed from random wood off cuts and painted with the left over front door paint will be stored in the garage until I dust in down next May ready for the Rhubarb harvest.

Thank you to everyone who’s supported the stall. I have met so many lovely people, filling the stall each morning with produce from the garden and seeing it empty by evening has been hugely satisfying. I will of course still be cutting flowers until the frosts so if you’d like a bunch of dahlias or a little posy just email me info@producefromthegarden.co.uk. I look forward to opening again next year. In the meantime the blog will keep you updated with many plans I have for the kitchen garden.

Honesty stall closed

Autumn and mulching

Yesterday was the first day of autumn. The gardens tone has changed in the last week, from the rich opulence of late summer to a slightly darker, damp garden with a not unpleasant decomposing aroma, evoking the need for wellies and jumper. I love the transition of seasons; they herald progression and development, whilst generating nostalgia for the different seasonal routines. Autumn is a time of hard work often in dank conditions; it’s rewarded with the cosy satisfaction of a hot bath followed by a cup of tea snuggled on the sofa in front of a fire. I yearn for this contented autumn serenity as much as I look forward to dining outside on a warm summers evening with a chilled glass of white, enjoying the intoxicating, heady scent of nicotiana, stock and petunias wafting across the patio. I love England for its variety in seasons, it stops gardening life becoming boring and mundane, perpetuating a gardens development in a subtle and gentle way.

I once read an article by a head gardener in the The Daily Telegraph gardening pages, describing how people thought that autumn must be his time to relax, reflect and catch his breath, ‘on the contrary’, he would reply,’ it is my busiest most hard working time of year’. I can’t agree more, it’s the time for the most important horticultural task of the year, the secret key to any successful garden, mulching. It does take some time and effort but the pay back is enormous. If you do one thing to transform the performance of your garden it should be mulching.

Five reasons why mulching is essential:

  1. Minimise your weeds. A thick layer of mulch smoothers most annual weed seeds, preventing germination.
  2. An instant garden make over. A mulch lifts the presentation of the plants in your border and tidies up a bed up. The effect is comparable to cutting the lawn and edging the borders.
  3. Improves the structure of your soil. The key to organic and I think logical gardening, is to look after your soil and in turn the soil will look after your plants. As your mulch breaks down it loosens up heavy clay or binds together sandy thin soil.
  4. Helps retains moisture in the ground, reducing evaporation. On a day like today retaining moisture in my soil is not high on the priority list, but it’s right up there in June /July!
  5. The combined mulching benefits will mean, your plants thrive

Mulching is the answer. There’s just one rule:

Don’t skimp! For mulching to work you need at least a 5 cm covering.

I’m a target orientated person, there’s nothing like a deadline to spur me on to finish a job, so I aim to have all the borders mulched by Christmas. The biggest issue is sourcing sufficient mulching medium without spending too much money. There are many types of mulch you can use:

Leafmould – my favourite mulch, it looks good, is free and gives good structure to the soil. Collect up all your fallen leaves and store them until next autumn. I put the fallen leaves in a simple square chicken wire enclosure with four posts. Alternatively for smaller quantities pop them in bin-liners, water and poke breathing holes in the sides, they can then be left until the following year.

Garden compost – Home made is the best and free, try to prevent perennial weed roots and annual weed seeds getting in it, otherwise they may re-introduce themselves to your garden. You can buy compost from most councils who re-cycle garden and food waste.

compost mulchCompost as a mulch

Bark chippings – a great mulch, but can be expensive

Wood mulch – I never have enough compost or leafmould, so I’m forced to buy in mulch. My favourite in wood mulch, cheap (I pay £20 per cubic metre) and sometimes free from tree surgeons. Wood mulch can take up nitrogen from the soil during its decomposing process, once rotted down it goes back into the soil, to compensate I just sprinkle a bit of fish meal or fish blood and bone before laying the mulch.

Wood chip mulchWood chip as a mulch on a newly planted border

Mushroom compost – Spent mushroom compost can be bought in from mushroom farms. It is alkaline so not to be used if your plants demand a neutral or acidic soil.

Straw – I used this one year on my vegetable patch, the slugs moved in and loved it, come spring/summer my crops were in a sorry state. Never again!

Hedge cutting and pumpkins

This weekend has been spent, hedge cutting. I don’t mind the cutting bit, but, clearing up the debris is in my top three worst garden jobs, along with turning compost and cleaning/sharpening my tools. There is a silver lining; tidy hedges are a satisfying end result. I was of course distracted on several occasions during this tedious task, one diversion were my limp and over for this year, pumpkin plants. Clearing them to the compost heap revealed five orange gems, they’ll be stored, ready for my boys to carve at Halloween.

Pumpkins

Produce from a friends garden!

SquashI was thrilled to be given this magnificent specimen of a squash as a gift. It looks fabulous on the centre of our table instead of the usual flowers. Memories have flooded back of an autumn trip to the Napa Valley, there was a stunning and very stylish (what I would call rustic chic) display of various varieties of squash in a lovely restaurant in Calistoga. I’m feeling quite inspired, I quite fancy a display of squash next year, there are so many different shapes, colours and textures. Also, a great gift, it definitely makes a change from the usual bunch of flowers. A very sophisticated, earthy beauty of a vegetable. The only slight issue is where to plant them, but, there’s always a way, I’ve never let restricted space constrain me in the past!

The next conundrum, the fate of this wonderful specimen, squash risotto or a Thai curry.

Last few weeks of summer

We’re nearing the end of August and savouring the last few weeks of summer. We’ve had several days of rain in the last couple of weeks, sandwiched between lovely summer sunshine. It feels as though the lower vegetable patch has doubled in size during this time, the gravel paths have been engulfed with luscious vegetable crops making access tricky. Every time I pass the pumpkin patch I discover new ones nestled under their canopy of leaves, it looks like we’ll be having a good Halloween display. We’re cropping a good daily handful of courgettes and the butternut squash is defying all boundaries and crossing not only its borders, but weaving itself through the bean and pumpkin beds as well. The squash are tricky to spot as they’re light green camouflage is yet to turn an autumnal yellow.Vegetable beds in full swing

 

The bottom vegetable beds in full swing

Back in March the husband and I coppiced one of our cobnut trees, counting the rings on the branches we cut back it had been a good twenty years since it’s last cut. Our plan is to coppice a tree every year on a 5 year rotation, the resulting stakes are kitchen garden treasures; they make beautiful structures for beans to ramble up or to keep the dahlias upright on a windy day. Rustic arches give height, interest and something for the sweet peas to climb up. I banned boring, ugly, utilitarian bamboo canes from the kitchen garden years ago replacing them with charming, irregular, characterful chestnut and hazel stakes. To me the aesthetics of the kitchen garden are as important as its produce. After toil, bad language, and a terrible cobnut branch tangle, our first tree was coppiced and cleared; it seemed such a brutal operation that the chance of its survival was slim. I’m relieved and delighted to say it’s thriving, putting up a great selection of shoots that will no doubt become beautiful, straight, long stakes in 5 years time.

coppiced cobnut treeCoppiced cobnut in March 2015

New growth on the hazelCoppiced cobnut in August 2015

Shallots

I usually sow shallots in my green house from seed in early spring (I’m yet to be convinced of the benefits of growing onions and shallots from sets).When they’re big enough to handle I separate the individual seedlings from the seed tray and plant them in to the vegetable bed, a fiddly, tedious job that irritates me so much I’m lucky to get half of them planted before giving in and throwing the left overs on the compost heap. This winter I was drawn to a tip in a seed catalogue suggesting you sow the shallots seeds in modules, once germinated and large enough you plant the modules as a whole in the vegetable bed. The shallots should find their own space. A great time saving scheme with little faff. Sadly, this short cut was a disappointment, the shallot crop was not great, and I think they do need to be planted with space. All is not lost, I did have an allium triumph, I couldn’t resist some 39p red onion seeds from Lidl, I thinly sowed two rows directly into the vegetable bed, germination was quick and very successful so I thinned the seedlings and then left them to it. We’ve had a superb crop. Not only will all our shallots and onions be sown directly in future I’ll also be getting myself down to Lidl at seed time to get first pick of their seed bargains next year.ShallotsMy disappointing shallot cropRed OnionsMy fabulous Lidl red onion seed crop

Beetroot

A lovely old friend popped in for lunch the other day, whilst pottering round the kitchen garden she was telling me how she’d started ‘juicing’, her kids loved it, she got to use up all her left over fruit and veg, it’s healthy and a lot cheaper than ‘innocent smoothies’. She explained that all her friends were doing it, and they all hit the same problem, some of the tastiest and most healthy recipes require raw beetroot which is frustratingly hard to find in a supermarket, or your local shops. Beetroot is low in fat, full of vitamins and minerals and packed with powerful antioxidants.

The solution is easy, grow your own. It’s simple to grow, takes up little space, and has attractive leaves so can even be sown in a flower bed. Just pop in a seed 1 cm deep every 6 cm and you’ll have a crop of beetroot in weeks, keep sowing little and often and you’ll never be out of stock. As an extra bonus the leaves are delicious cooked like spinach.

Beetroot growingBeetroot growing with a few rocket seeds in front

BeetrootBeetroot just pulled from the veg patch, tied and ready to pop on my honesty stall

A mornings harvest and more cabbage white caterpillar problems

Every morning I potter into the Kitchen garden and gather the ripe and ready produce. Today it feels as though the kitchen garden has moved up a gear.The harvest!

 This mornings harvest

Courgettes, mini cucumbers, tomatoes, beetroot, runner beans, French beans, salad leaves, cosmos and dahlias, all producing a hearty crop on a daily basis. Apart from the beetroot, they’re all cut and come again crops, so the more I harvest the more they’ll produce. They just need a good daily water and occasional feed.

The cabbage white butterflies have found my purple sprouting broccoli for the second time this year; sadly the caterpillars have caused far more damage on this occasion, munching their way through several of the plants. They’re all about to be re-homed in the compost heap.

Cabbage white caterpillarsThe culprits!Purple sprouting broccoliThe damage!