Around the vegetable plots

After the frantic Spring digging, sowing, planting out, the vegetable garden is producing the goods.

Everything seems to be coming along nicely, even the runner beans are catching up after suffering from frost, slugs and rabbits. This year I've been careful to protect the sprouts and cabbages from butterflies and pigeons, using frames made from plastic cable ducting and fine-guage netting. The cable-ducting was an idea picked up from the garden at the Men & Women in Sheds at Loughborough.
 

Middle bed has peas, broad-beans, celery, cabbages, brussels sprouts
- and poppies

Through the poppies - view of broad beans, coming to the end now,
and across to the walnut trees and up to the old school.

Celery doing really well - and tasty!
First time we've tried growing celery, but the shop-bought stuff is full of chemicals.

RH bed with rhubarb, horseradish, potatoes and runner beans on the frame at the top

End of year round up

Well that was 2017!

A very strange year all round what with Trump and Brexit and the Weinstein fall-out, as well as all the problems out in the far east.

In the garden our efforts were much hampered by needing to spend a lot of time with an elderly neighbour, general care and keeping her company and also a lot of legal stuff. So the garden is a real mess - but will come up looking great in the spring as it always does.

The end of the year has been cold and wet. We had some serious snow and then rain, freezing and further snow. Today the soil is still frozen, so there's not much to be done. Yesterday while the sun was shining briefly I cleared out the spent tomatoes from the greenhouse. I was harvesting ripe tomatoes right up to the end of November.

Generally the year was fairly good for vegetables and absolutely crazy for fruit.

Potatoes

The early warm weather meant that the potatoes grew pretty well and harvested before any blight attack, and unlike last year they didn't drown. I just planted two varieties this year - Desiree reds and white Sante. The Desirees were really good with some nice big ones good for baking, the Santes a bit small but OK. There were very few worm holes or other kind of pest problem. The Desirees have kept well too.

Beans

All the beans were all pretty good - French climbing, runner beans and broad beans. This year I planted "Fasold" French beans and they were great. I won't bother with the Blue Lake again.

Beetroot

The first sowing was really good. I sow the seeds in modules and then plant them out in the veg patch. They all grew well, I think because of the warm weather. Most of the second batch are still out there, didn't grow so quickly, but will provide a few serving during January I should think.

Chard

I bought the wrong packet of seeds - Rhubarb Chard instead of Rainbow Chard - but still pretty tasty and continuing to produce dark green leaves on their red stems to replace those harvested.  They've taken a battering during the snow but are starting to shoot again already for meals during the winter.

Brussels Sprouts

Well, they started out fine, all seedlings surviving. I erected a netting cage to keep off the butterflies and pigeons and pheasants. But they really haven't done too well. They haven't grown very tall and the sprouts are the size of peas. However, we've had a few meals of sprout tops and they were very tasty. Hasn't helped that the strong winds during the autumn and the snow just before Christmas collapsed the cage!

Soft fruit

All the currants did well. We netted the redcurrants and one row of the blackcurrants and got a good crop off both. The gooseberries were good, especially the new bush which I took as a cutting a few years ago - it's really got into it's stride now. The jostaberries also produced - but I don't really think they are worthwhile. They don't have the flavour of blackcurrants.

The raspberries did very well at the beginning of the year, the fruit produced on last year's canes. This year's canes weren't so good, probably because it was cooler and much wetter by the time the fruit formed.

My strawberry plants have increased and we had some lovely fruit (Elsante). I took more cuttings.

Rhubarb

We completed the clearing of the first rhubarb bed and transplanted about 9 plants. We treated them with some care to let them get established, but still managed a few pies and crumbles and some rhubarb and redcurrant jam.

Apples

Amazing! More apples than we could eat, cook up, freeze or give away. Especially amazing because last year was a good apple year and some varieties like Bramleys tend to be one-year-on one-year-off. We have put some in store but some varieties don't keep.

Pears

The pears produced a good crop for the first time in years. They've been devastated by some fungal / bacterium thing which makes the little fruit turn black and drop off. For about 3 years I've been spraying the trees with a "winter wash" which is supposed to kill off such diseases and also eggs of moths and such which would turn into worms in the fruit. Maybe this has had some effect, or maybe just the weather - who knows?  - but I'll be out there spraying again during January and again before the blossom forms.

Plums

Mixed.  We have 4 plum trees of different varieties and a damson. One plum tree which we had given up for dead two years ago produced some lovely fruit, as did the purple plum which makes excellent jam. But the big plum tree (produces BIG PLUMS) was not so good, despite there being very few wasps this year. The wasps usually get to these luscious fruits before we do. The damsons were productive as usual, and we are enjoying damson vodka and vodka-soaked damson chocolates!

Cherries

We have a large, wild cherry tree which the birds love. We once managed to pick enough to make jam, but we don't usually bother and leave them to our feathered friends. The morello cherry produced about 12 cherries which were carefully observed and eaten by the birds when they were just ripe (before we got up in the morning). The Stella cherry is still getting going with only a few, quite tasty, fruits.

Well that was 2017 - so now it's time to start planning 2018!

Cold and grey

The temperature didn't get above zero today. After quite a mild December and early January when we had just one day of snow this week has been pretty chilly - proper winter. This morning no frost despite the cold. We haven't had any rain for about a fortnight, so too dry I suppose.

There hasn't been much activity in the garden. Stormy weather at the start of the month flattened the cage protecting the brussel sprouts. I was worried the pigeons and pheasants would strip the unprotected plants but so far they've kept away. We're having a good feed of sprouts at least once a week.

Snowdrops are just poking up through the grass. One or two helebores are flowering. But generally things are taking their time. Last January daffodils were out up at the crossroads in Coleorton and we were pulling rhubarb. This year the rhubarb is just starting to shoot, although a couple of plants we transferred into big tubs are further ahead. I dragged them into the greenhouse to protect them from the frost.

Plenty of wild life activity. Moles are very active in the fields all around and along the grass verges by the roads. They are also busy around our bonfire and have come down the garden as far as the kitchen window. Birds visiting the feeding area include a pair of pheasants, large family of magpies, crows, wood-pigeons, great-tits, sparrows, robins, blackbirds. And a couple of squirrels. The bird table is slowly falling apart. We don't put much food out - just scraps and in the cold weather a scoop of peanuts and seeds. When we filled all the feeders most of the food was taken by squirrels and wood-pigeons and sometimes rats. There's plenty of berries and seeds in the garden and surrounding hedgerows and woods so I don't think they will go hungry. It's nice to see the birds feeding, but the bird-feeders are more for our enjoyment I suspect.

I peeped under the tarpaulin we had left lying over part of the rhubarb patch we are reorganising and found a spherical nest beautifully crafted from dried grass with a small entrance hole. I think it's a field-mouse nest.

That was 2016

Christmas is over, the turkey carcass in the pot for stew and a new year starts tomorrow.
The last week has been cold and frosty with blue skies and sunshine during the day and clear, starry skies at night. At last a bit of proper winter weather. Until now it's been just grey, wet and very warm for December. We had a couple of days of frost which is supposed to be good for brussel sprouts and raspberries. It does clear off some pests and bugs too.

In general this year has been warm with some periods of really heavy rain and then some - shorter - periods of sunshine. 2016 is supposed to be the warmest year on record for the whole world, so global warming maybe starting to kick in. Definiely been some crazy weather which is what the scientists predict.

Round up of the year in our garden:

 

Vegetables

The big success this year was Brussel Sprouts. We've carefully nurtured them, with a big cage with fine mesh to keep out the butterflies and the pigeons and pheasants. Very little problem with slugs despite the wet weather. We had a good feed off the sprout tops and pleanty for Christmas dinner. They should keep us in green veg for another few weeks.
Chard was good and is still giving a few leaves, but the second sowing just didn't take.
Runner Beans and Broad Beans did well, but the French Beans were a complete disaster.
Onions and Leeks also did fairly well and better than expected as this was our first try after a break of a few years because of the Allium Leaf Miner. I just did a few Leeks and the ones we picked early were great, but those we left in to grow bigger got the dreaded bugs again.
The Sweetcorn experiment was a flop. We had a couple of rather misshapen cobs with just half of the kernels swelled up. Tastysnack but not a meal.
Marrows, Courgettes and Squashes were excellent, especially the Butternut Squashes. They were very late getting going, with slugs giving them a hard time for a while, but eventually produced lots of medium-sized fruit with good flavour.
This year I just did Tomatoes (Alicante) in the greenhouse, unlike previous years when we have also grown beef tomatoes in the small conservatory. 9 plants produced a massive harvest. We still have a handful of small tomatoes in the fridge and a good batch of tomato chutney.
Potatoes: Not a good year. It started with drowning spuds and didn't improve much. Spuds were of modest size and some had holes in the middle, rendering them pretty useless. The best potatoes have ben from the big pots. Got 3 pots in the greenhouse at the moment and one is just beginning to sprout.

Fruit

The soft fruits - currants, raspberries and loganberries were very productive. The only thing we do to them is a bit of basic pruning and put a bit of compost around the roots each year, so they are gold-dust really.  We did put nets over the currants because the blackbirds and pigeons can strip the redcurrants and iin the last couple of years have been moving on to the blackcurrants.

The Cooking Apples, especially the Bramley, have been amazing and the red eater. We have apples stored in trays in the conservatory (not heated) and boxes of cooked apples in the freezer. This is the first year we have just left fallen apples on the grass to rot - or be eaten by birds, squirrels or mice. But the Russet and the small eating apple didn't do so well.

The Damson produced bucket-loads. Plenty for jam, mostly damson & apple, pies and damson vodka which is lovely and makes great Christmas presents in small 125ml bottles.

The small plum tree (similar but not quite the same as a Victoria) was good, but we had nothing from the the purple plum and the big plum despite lots of blossom.

Flowers & trees

The warm, wet weather meant shrubs and trees grew like crazy so lots to trim back in the autumn and massive quantity of leaves to sweep up and compost.

Wildlife

Each spring I have a bit of a panic about the bees and this year they seemed to start a bit slowly. We had a warm month and then it went cold again. But eventually plenty of bees came into the garden to forage. Obviously its difficult to assess absolutely but I have the impression that honey bees (from hives) were in short number, but bumble bees of various sorts were doing OK. The press report wasps having a bad year. I think there were fewer, especially in the autumn, but I managed to get stung stepping on a wasps nest on the rockery and there was a sizeable nest by the rhubarb.

A lot fewer butterflies than usual.  Spotted a caterpillar of the elephant hawk-moth which apparantly like fuschias.

There was a little frogspawn in the spring although I didn't hear any croaking males. During the summer we saw several small frogs and large toads around the garden and a couple of newts. A friend asked me to write a report on the changes to frogs and toads in the 10 years we've been here, so I did this blog post in October >>

November catch-up

Here we are nearly at the end of November and counting the days till Christmas.

It's been a strange month, starting off quite mild and then a few odd mornings of frost and fog and this week torrential downpours. The trees are now bare, except for the magnolia which hangs on to its heavy leaves for another few weeks. Two Saturdays ago we spent all day sweeping up leaves. Paul used the leaf blower which then sucks up and mulches the leaves, Chas got busy with the rake and I just used my hands to sweep up great bunches of leaves into the wheelbarrow. We have two black "Dalek" composters into which we put the leaves to rot down. Next year it will be lovely leaf mould. Some leaves go onto the compost heap, but they do take a long time to break down so just mix a few at a time into the general mix of grass cuttings, plant trimmings and veg stuff from the kitchen. This year there has been an amazing apple harvest and inevitably a lot of fallers, rotten ones and apples eaten by birds, squirrels etc. A lot of those get recycled in the compost too.

Just a few buckets of apples from the amazing apple harvest this year.

The garden looks a bit bedraggled with herbaceous plants in various stages of die-back. Some tall, brown sunflowers and hostas just flopped and soggy. It's not been very inviting weather to go out and tidy up. But I guess it doesn't matter too much. Sometime during the winter we'll tidy away the leaves so that the spring bulbs can come through.

The vegetable harvest is pretty much finished. There are a few Leeks (unfortunately they seem to have got the alllium leaf miner again but just slightly so the leeks are useable) and a bit of Rainbow Chard. Unfortunately the second sowing of chard didn't come up. The main crop we have to look forward to is Brussel Sprouts. After previous years when they have succumbed to caterpillars, pigeons and pheasants we built a cage with fine mesh netting and so far they are doing well. We've had a couple of meals of sprout tops and the little sprouts are growing nicely. Maybe a few will be ready for Sunday.

Summer Summary

I've been too busy in the garden to blog this month. August has seen mixed weather - but mostly quite sunny and hot. In between some showers, often quite heavy, so in general things have been growing OK. We had a spell a couple of weeks ago when we had to get the hose out to the veg and the fruit trees each evening.

The raspberries are between harvests at the moment. We had a good harvest during July and I put some in the freezer and made lots of raspberry jam as well as eating raspberries with cream, yoghurt, in trifles or just off the bush. All the other soft fruit has finished but the raspberries are just starting to set for the second flush.

The fruit trees are starting to produce. A few plums are ready. The Bramley apple is absolutely loaded. Surprising, because last year it gave a good harvest and Bramleys are notorious for "one year on - one year off". With the strong winds there are a lot of fallers, so blackberry and apple crumble was on the menu on Sunday. (Blackberries from the hedge).

The runner beans are nearly finished but have done well. This year we put the brussel sprouts in a cage to keep out the cabbage white butterflies and the pigeons. So far they are doing well and hopeful for sprouts for Christmas. A first for us this year is sweetcorn. Again, we caged these to keep off the rabbits and squirrels. The cobs are beginning to form nicely and should be ready in a couple of weeks I should think.

We've had a couple of meals from the chard which is going very well and on Sunday I planted a second row. The beetroot in the veg plot are really good and I popped half a dozen in the oven alongside the roast beef yesterday. The beetroots in the "leek bed" are rather poor. It's quite shaded under the ever-expanding cherry tree and also very dry. Planted another row of beetroot in the veg plot, because you can never have too much beetroot.

In the greenhouse the tomatoes continue to amaze. I pick them as soon as they start turning and ripen them off on the kitchen window sill. Plenty for us and for the neighbours too. There's also 5 pepper plants with some small fruit just forming.

So everything is doing well on the produce front.  After last year's neglect the shrubs and flower beds are pretty desperate and we've all been out there digging and chopping to try to get the jungle under control. Good exercise! Oh, and while clearing weeds and overgrown bamboo fromt the top of the rockery I stood on a wasps nest - OOUUCCH! They got inside my trainers and stung both ankles. Decided to leave the rockery until the wasps move on.

More planting and Glass Mystery

Another beautiful spring weekend - but interrupted by sharp showers and hail, resulting in fabulous rainbows.

More planting:

Broad Beans. 30 beans in 3 rows straight in the ground. These are saved from last year (Masterpiece green longpod) when we had a bumper harvest.

Brussel sprouts. This year I went for a different variety - Evesham. These are supposed to mature earlier than the Bedford we have previously grown. Although the idea of a late variety brussels is to provide greens in midwinter when there's not much else, it's always touch and go whether there will be any ready for Christmas. Well gardening is all about experimentation and discovery!
I planted 40 little brown seeds in modules and placed them on the greenhouse bench with a sheet of perspex over for extra protection (there was a heavy frost last night).

Now here's a mystery. The modules were filled with soil from the garden before sowing and gently pressed in with a little extra fine soil on top. The perspex placed over. This afternoon I found a small piece of glass on top of one of the sections. It surely wasn't there last night! This happens all the time outside where piles of glass appear on the surface of the garden beds. People explain it by saying worms move the earth or the rain washes the soil from above. But no worms or rain in my brussel sprout modules!

Winter fare

In the rather soggy winter we're having it's lovely to enjoy the harvest from the garden.

• Parsley - Picked from the garden this morning for the roast chicken with parsley and thyme stuffing
• Brussel sprouts - The pigeons have started pecking them now so there won't be many more, but much better than last year when the pheasants got stuck in and destroyed the lot. Going to buy some cages this year!
• Roast potatoes - The last of the Desirees from the garage store. Actually there a few small ones left which I'm going to use as seed potatoes.
• Roast squash - They've kept really well in the garage. They are seeds saved from the shop-bought butternut squashes from 2012, not quite so orange-coloured but tasty none-the-less. Make good soup too.
• Plum crumble - Plums stoned and slightly cooked keep really well in the freezer and are ready to use in a crumble, pie or just with custard. We've got some plums bottled too.

Flutter-bies

The sunny summer weather has brought out the butterflies in thousands. The garden is all a-flutter with the lavender, marjoram and buddleias particularly popular. We've seen all colours - white with black wing-tips, orange wing-tips, brown, peacocks, tortoiseshells and a comma.

Of course these lovely creatures start off as voracious caterpillars which strip the leaves off anything.

Last year the rose round the front door was devastated by little stripey caterpillars. Each year small green/grey grubs completely strip the leaves of the Solomon's Seal after the flowers have finishes. We have self-sown tall yellow mulliens around the vegetable plots at the top of the garden which are host to hundreds of yellow and black striped caterpillars.

Unfortunately some butterflies are very fond of brussel sprouts. We have put nets over them to keep off the pigeons and pheasants but the butterflies have got in. So this evening I spent an hour on hands and knees squishing little green grubs and yellow and grey eggs. Not nice.

Last of the Celeriac

An absolutely beautiful spring day! Warm and sunny with a light breeze, birds singing, first few butterflies and ladybirds everywhere.

I'm gradually getting around to digging over all the vegetable beds ready for broad beans and peas straight into the soil as soon as it's a bit warmer. They're frost resistant so not much risk with early sowing. We've got caught a few times planting runner beans and french beans in May even, so this year I'm going to be cautious and leave them till nearly June. They grow fast when it's warmer and will catch up.

I've still got sprouts standing. Today I picked enough for a couple of meals and there's still some left, but they are beginning to open out so maybe another fortnight and they'll be over.

The other crop still in the ground is Celeriac. Last year Paul gave me a packet of seeds. I've never grown them before but followed the instructions on the packet and also advice from  Joe Hashman (On the Plot with Dirty Nails). I ended up with about 60 seedlings which I planted out. But they never really got going and, unlike the football-sized job we bought from the supermarket just to see what they were like, we've only had tennis and ping-pong balls. Anyway I dug up what was left and made Celeriac and Potato Mash to go with roast pork and the sprouts - very easy because celeriac cooks quickly in the microwave with a splash of water and a bit of butter and you can mash it up with a fork.