crops

What’s eating our redcurrants? (a tale of two bushes)

We have two redcurrant bushes. (Well, actually we have three – there’s another one in our front garden, doing its best to disguise itself as an ornamental deciduous shrub.) OK then, we have two redcurrant bushes in our back garden. One of them is in an old dustbin and is doing OK (see bottom pic). I picked a couple of punnets’ worth from the dustbin currant on Sunday, and have put them in the freezer.

The other bush, which is in the raised bed by the back wall, isn’t faring so well. It’s being eaten up by a mysterious pest, which has destroyed the leaves and nobbled any fruit before they had a chance to develop. The back bed is also a haven for snails; possibly it’s these which are responsible for eating the fruit. I confess I have neglected this bed – I’ve let the brambles run riot and I haven’t pruned the redcurrants, because the whole subject of pruning fruit bushes scares me. I’m going to have to get over my pruning phobia if I want to get any fruit off this bush next year, and also monitor the bush more closely in the spring for signs of any larvae/insects.

From what I understand (http://www.gardenseeker.com/pruning/pruning-redcurrants.html), you need to prune in late winter/early spring and cut back the older growth to the ground, as well as cutting any wispy side shoots from the previous year’s new growth. So this post is a reminder to get my secateurs out in early March.

PS: the bonus cat is Magnus. We’re down to just him now, since Lottie the tabby died a month ago at the age of 22 🙁

Using a strawberry planter for Tumbling Tom tomatoes

As of last week I have been feasting off the strawberries in containers in our front garden – although sadly, the ****ing snails are feasting off them too. I make a point of doing a “snail check” every morning and evening, and any that I find get unceremoniously chucked into the shrubbery on the other side of our front path. I don’t use slug pellets (don’t want to cause harm to local bird/cat life), so the snail checks are the price I pay. But the strawberries are worth it. Amidst the strawberries is this fine terracotta strawberry planter, which I’ve planted with… Tumbling Tom tomatoes. My neighbour from three doors down gave me the planter – he doesn’t have time to garden right now so I’ve promised him some of the fruits of my labour. (In case you’re wondering, the two tomato plants growing out of the top of the planter are Gardener’s Delight.) All my tomatoes are doing OK a week after being potted up. None of them have flowered yet though – don’t think we’ll be eating any home grown tomatoes till August.

Hardening off tomatoes… on an old divan

Today was the first day I put my tomato plants out to harden them off. They’re just getting two hours today, to ease them in gently (last year they got a bad case of windburn from having been left outside from 8 am to 4 pm, in blazing sunshine). Given that there’s still nearly another week before dear old Thanet District Council collects our ghastly eyesore old bed, I thought I’d once more put the upturned divan to good use, by pressing it into service as a shelf for the tomatoes:

Handy tip: to speed things up each day when you put your toms out for hardening off, keep the pots in old washing up bowls or something similar that has reasonably high sides. The pots are secure when you lift the bowls and carry them outside, and won’t fall.

Salad leaves – May 2016 edition

Owing to the late/cold spring, there hasn’t had much of a salad crop yet. Last week was the first time when I could actually make a lunch based on salad leaves. The roll call was as follows: rocket, chive flowers, Welsh onion, flat leaved parsley, pea shoots and mizuna. I added some ham and Roquefort, plus a dash of mayonnaise – it made a nice and civilised lunch!

An unexpected use for an old divan: a potting table

I haven’t been spending as much time in the garden as I should, because I’ve been doing odd jobs around the house. One of these jobs was to get rid of our old bed and buy a new one. The new bed was self-assembly so that entailed a whole day of screwing leg A into frame B, and swearing copiously when it all went wrong and had to be dismantled. Mr Beans tried to help but he’s not a huge DIY fan either. However, we got there in the end.

So this weekend I had a lot of gardening jobs to catch up on, including potting up my tomato plants. This is where the old divan came in handy. At the time of writing it’s in two halves, both propped on their side in our front garden, waiting for Thanet District Council to take them and the mattress away. As luck would have it, the tops of the divan halves were *just* the right height for me to use them as a potting table. I could stand comfortably at my full height, without stooping over and doing my back in.

Other jobs done this weekend: planting more seeds – peas, spinach beet and spring onion. I don’t feel very optimistic about the spring onion because the first lot of spring onion I planted back in March hasn’t come up. Well, there are a few whiskery seedlings but not the full container of tiny plants you’d expect by now. I’m not sure if it’s down to the cold weather, or the fact that the seeds may be too old? If the second batch comes up OK, then weather must be the answer.

Planted tomato seeds today

The seed trays are sitting on our windowsill, covered with a piece of metal grille to stop the cats from kicking them about. This year I’ve planted Gardener’s Delight, Brandywine and Tumbling Tom.

Elephant garlic redux

My last attempt at planting elephant garlic was in 2011. It wasn’t totally successful – I got a crop out of it, but the bulbs I ended up with were the same size as normal garlic. Put it this way, there was nothing “elephant” about them. This time round, I’ve used bigger pots – ten inches in diameter rather than 6 or 7. Hopefully this will do the trick. I planted the bulbs last October, and as you can see, they’re doing pretty well:

Top tip: I grew mizuna from seed in the same pots as the garlic. So while the garlic was sprouting last autumn, I also had a crop of salad leaves.

Bank holiday blackberrying

2013: the year that summer was one month late

The saucepan on the right contains the first of our redcurrants (about three quarters of a pound of them), picked at the beginning of this month (July). Not too late in the year you might think, but the raspberries that grow in the raised bed alongside the currants are only just now producing fruit. In normal years, those raspberries would have been over by the middle of June. My tomatoes are only just now starting to flower. Ditto my runner beans, which are really struggling to get going. On the plus side, we have a nice healthy crop of strawberries! (Of course, it helps when you have at least 30 plants. If you like strawberries, and want to eat more than a couple a day at the height of the season, you might as well have a whole corner of the garden dedicated to them. Or at least a corner of your patio.)

The first salad of the year: 23rd May(!)

For lunch yesterday I had the following:

A couple of slices of Yorkshire ham
A chunk of Stilton
A dollop of mayonnaise
Some chilli chutney
A pear
Some mixed salad leaves.

It was extremely tasty – the salad leaves were from the garden and were beautifully crisp alongside the ham and cheese. What’s strange is that this was the first batch of salad leaves I’ve actually picked this year. Normally by late May I’d have been chomping on rocket, chives, pea shoots etc. for about a month or so. But the weather has been so cold that – like everything else – the salad side of things is very much delayed.

Also picked the first batch of rhubarb today. There should be enough for several crumbles this year, as our rhubarb patch is finally getting established. As for the strawberries, they are coming along but still no ripe fruit. Maybe the first week in June?