The Frantic Gardeners’ Blog

it has been so very very busy at work that i haven’t had a day at home for 3 weeks. this is a bad thing for the garden, as well as a bad thing for me spending time with the family. grumpetty grump!

So the clearing and organising hasn’t happened yet. nor has the buying of garlic - so will do that, tho the braod bean seeds are here. will see how big a patch we clear as to whether can pop anything else in at the time.

Still harvesting lots of peppers - armfuls! and runner beans - armfuls, but the french beans have finished and the courgettes slowed down. lots of chard and potatoes still, and getting to the point of wondering when the sweetcorn ready. the weather recently has been v autumnal and much less sunny, so concerned about how they are ripening.

Harvested lots of raspberries, and also the pears. the watermelon haven’t made it, as the plant dying back

i think there should be more of them Had lots of family visiting today, and niece in particular veru enthusiastic about picking and choosing veg for dinner. still loads of french beans, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and chard. curry was a hit also made a pasta bake [spares of each into the freezer for when not eating so much of the same!]. ANother crumble - raspberry and apple. the pears are getting there now as well, so hoping to harvest them in september.

The watermelons still growing, tho i am not hopeful!

We have a v weird courgette. must post a piccie of it. it should be a yellow parador, but appears to have gone all mottledy. must be some kind of virus or reversion. when i print a pic, if anyone reads the blog they might comment on it. the others on that plant also similar.

Starting to harvest the runner beans. they are very prolific cropping and taste delicious. The cobra are pretty much finished now after the picking this weekend of french beans, but still blauhilde.

The grapes in the consercvatory are doing well. they take a while to ripen as such an old variety, but the kids couldn’t help picking.

Looking round the veg patch, we need to consider doing a big tidy up so that in sept can get ready to plant garlic and broad beans

we still have an abundance of courgettes, french beans and potatoes, but joined with an abundance of tomatoes, red peppers and aubergines. this is leading us to have a very mediteranean diet currently, with lasagne, pasta bake, stirfries, frittata, and aubergine moussaka. we are vegetarian so this is a good healthy diet for many meals we are nearly self sufficient, tho obv bought in pasta and eggs! [we must keep chickens next year i think] . To supplement this we have a sensible amount of swiss chard and salad leaves, a sprinkling of carrots.

The runner beans that i was moaning about seem to be starting show an extremely heavy crop. must look back at the packet to see what they were as i would highly recommend them. also setting them off so late seems perfect as they will be taking over as the french beans come to an end. Although there are still armfuls of french beans, some of the leaves are yellowing - particularly on cobra - i think the crazy weather pattern has ade them thinkit is autumn. Usually they go on for a bit longer. I have frozen loads after cutting and blanching, so our glut will last into the winter. I have also frozen quite a number of lasagna and moussaka and pasta bake with our glut crops so that we have ready made meals for the winter as well. I have also made a big vat of pasta sauce to dip into over the winter too [frozen in 4 person family portions]

Harvesting apples have made crumble out of the ones where cut some wasp damage out of - still yummy! harvesting some raspberries as well - though the daughters tend to harvest tem on sight, so i have to be quick!

As i type there is a thrush hopping around on the patio. one got trapped in the greenhouse earlier in the week, and going to close the windows and vents i had to get it to hop towards the door. luckilly out without a problem.

Actually, this isn’t all we are harvesting and eating, but we are harvesting armfuls of beans, potatoes and courgettes so this is making up the preponderance of our meals!

So far this week we have eaten: potatoe, courgette and french bean frittata with home grown salad leaves and tomatoes from the greehouse. We have had courgette mousaka - which was v delicious with the tomato sauce made from our own tomatoes, onions, garlic and the couple of peppers that are ripe enough . when we had bought quiche we had french beans from the garden, home grown salads and tomatoes and potatoes.

We have therefore harvested a lot of salad leaves and tomatoes too, a couple of ripened peppers [tasty grill] rainbow chard [stirfry with courgettes, french beans…]

Also harvesting are some apples that seem to be ripe. we have3 lost quite a lot of apples to wasp damage this year, so think tht next year we should probably have one of those fake wasp nests to see if they are protective. Nearly ready are autumn ripening raspberries - yum yum!

The chickpea crop has worked! it isn’t very big or exciting, but was a trial in the greenhouse with dried chickpeas rather than with bought seeds, so to get any crop i think is doing well. Excitements of excitements we have 2 watermelons growing! they are tennis ball size so I am not sure they will make it to harvest but again, they missed on being potted up properly whilst we were in canada so might do better next year

for disappointments - runner beans, only 2 plants germinated and waiting to see what kind of crop we get. the melons haven’t done anything either

nearly ready - aubergines, there seems to be lots of them coming along, peppers, raspberries and looks like a good crop of sweetcorn and squashes seem to be on the way.

so we are v happy with our garden currently, tho abundance of courgettes, potatoes and freinch beans, there is also a good harvest of rainbow chard, salad leaves, tomatoes and a smattering of carrots and the odd final brocolli to boost it.

we got back a week ago having been away for 3 weeks visiting relatives and seeing my cousin get married as well as visiting the rockies. Before we left I did a pretty good weed of the veg beds, put a straw mulch around the corn and squashes and topped up around the beans and potatoes and hoped for the best. My DH also bodged up the auto waterer for the greenhouse, but so late we didn’t have much of a chance to assess how much it was delivering.

whilst we were away we had some friends and some family come every couple of days for the rabbits and troubleshoot the veg, and they were told to pick whateve they wanted that was ready - it was mostly courgettes, salads and tomatoes.

when we returned, we came back to a complete jungle! harvesting the desperate things about to go over gave us several kg of different french beans, courgettes and escaped-to-become-marrows, potatoes, aubergines, several different brocolli, romanescu and caulifower, chard and tomatoes. it was a real glut.

we still haven’t managed to weed more than a small bit, as loads of nettles, so can’t rope in kids to help .

since then, continued to harvest chard and beans in great quantities, and courgettes [a base for many meals!] carrots both orange and purple, lots of rainbow chard, potatoes and tomatoes and salad leaves and a few aubergines.

i can see the squashes and sweetcorn are also doing well. there are a few more brassicas to harvest and the garlic. the broad beans are done. in the greenhouse the peppers are starting to go red, and there are loads of them.

i can see tho that melons and watermelons are not so successful.

wow! this month we have had 1/3 of the annual rain. It has absolutely poured it down - which has been v good for the watering. Today, the weather has changed, just like a switch has been thrown. It is boiling/sweltering/hot hot hot!! And today was the day that I had set for completely weeding the veg plot, watering it if required and then mulching. hmmm!! I did have help from DD1 in the end and we took out a bottle of iced water to keep us going.

Planted out

spare alpine strawberries went in the gap just emptied by rocket

tomatoes grown from potting the side shoots - gone between the artichokes.

maintenance

weeded everything hoed, pulled and hopefully got the majority. then placed straw all over the top of the beds and plan to put membrane down on the ‘paths’ as we have a holiday soon v keen to minimise the jungle on our return!

sideshooted the toms.

DH put trellis on wall so can plant out clematis and honeysuckle that are desperate.

girls beds of flowers are really looking fabulous, and they are both v happy with them. DD2 not seen any strawbs yet - should come next year…

harvested

ooh, i like this time of year lots of our meals have been made with 3/4 of the ingredients direct from the garden.

broad beans - the first sown nearly all finished now, but second sowing of red epicure starting - funny to have pink beans!

rocket - all the last rocket had bolted, so we pulled it all out so can eat some leaves and the rest for compost. next year plant less!!

pak choi - all the first sowing now harvested, again some had bolted, but cut the flower stalk off and ate the rest - mmm i love pak choi

summer sprouting brocolli - harvested 4 large heads this week [2 meals for a family of 4] have other brassicas to come [despite the panic earlier in the year, it is def not club root]. this has been such a hit with the family, that next year should grow more.

tomatoes - the sungold has been first to be ready, and the most prolific. shame only 5 seeds to a packet. DH’s speriment as to whether ring pot in growbag or in big pot seems to be clear for healthy look as growbag option. however, nodifference in harvest as yet. or taste.

courgettes - the ones in the ground harvesting merrily. lots of courgettes in our lunch and tea menu currently as well. the 2 in pots are not as good, will see if they will crop longer as will put in greenhouse once weather starts to draw in.

potatoes - just about to start a harvest i think the girls in bags are ready [emerald and rocket].

peas and mangetout - tailing off in the mangetout, should have done a further successional sowing [remember for next year ]  however peas in between 2 crops as it were, so loads of pods to fill out.

french beans - pretty much between crops, v few left now on the pots in the greenhouse, tho will see if they flower and crop some more, some beans on the first of the climbing beans [cobra] v tiny yet, and the second dwarf beans are flowering. since we will shortly be having a holiday, happy for the break to be whilst we are away

strawberries - just a few as this is the first year, but loads of raspberries

Pests and Wildlife

we saw a hedgehog rootling around by the compost bins

less happy a sighting is some caterpillars on the brassicas. they have bee hidden under environmesh, the damage not huge, but obv at somepoint one has got in . we have had large and small before, think these might be from a small. good inspection by dd2 failed to find any. i prob should repeat the process…

I like the idea of square foot gardening, and liked the book, and our beds in leeds were 4 foot by 10 foot and often roughly square foot planted. But i can’t be doing with all the mixing and stuff of his special compost, and tend to use soil. I am not sure you can plant quite so close in soil and still get healthy strong plants, so i tend to plant a sort of hibrid square foot/ my own way

Anyway, DH was v keen to have a proper go at square foot planting and was grumpy some time ago because i planted ‘his’ bed with salads, chard and peas [oops!]. SO, being a most excellent wife , I made him another square bed to square foot in. However, this bed has been ignored for about 2 months, and i started to drop significant hints that this bed would be co-opted. So today, he planted it up with some mixed lettuces [i had sown] , some dwarf beans [i had sown] and some rainbow chard [admittedly he had sown, but i pricked out ]

I planted out the rest of the cucurbits, hoed, weeded and popped more straw mulch down, this time around the sweetcorn.

All of this was done in between massive downpours of torrential rain.

My elder girl made jam today, with negligible help from me, just some health and safety supervision . We have one of those purple leaved wild cherryplums in the garden [and numerous little ones appear that we have to chase after, as wild and widespread as the elders] . They are nearly nearly ripe - a bit sharpish. However, the village craft fair is soon, and she wanted to enter the jam section with the jam we made last year with these plums plus whatever [and it really was as laid back as that!] .

This year we more or less followed a recipe from this book, which I have had for many years and love

She sterilised jars and equipment, picked as many of the plums we could reach [and i sawed a few small branches off that stopped DD1 climbing up to reach a few more] - 1.3kg .

She put these into our heavy pan and covered with 750mls water and simmered until they were all mushy. DD1 and grandad [staying here as an emergency visit as nana has been admitted over the weekend to hospital - frantic is the name remember!] mushed through a colander and took out all the stones. DD1 wanted some bits in the jam, so then added some of the smushed stuff too.

  She measured and had 1.2l of pulp and water. So she added 1400g of sugar [eek!] and also as much grated ginger as we could [about 40g] from the dried knobbly bit lurking by the cooker [ :blush: ] .

   Then put on a good rolling boil until we reached jam temp on my sugar thermometer. Since this is the first time she has made jam, I had her trying the different ways of testing done-ness.

At her first call I thought we were prob slightly under, so filled 2 jars [I have a jam funnel, so much easier for her], and then she boiled some more, tested again and was much more convinced. She has a nice jar each of under and over [possibly!] and will try some of each from the not so pretty jars to decide which one to enter.

, a photo by Scrumbledelicious on Flickr.

the omens are good for chilli and pepper harvest this year

, a photo by Scrumbledelicious on Flickr.