Doesn’t look as though I’ll be doing any gardening in the near future

We had some snow a couple of weeks ago (shortly after my last post, in fact), and now it’s back with a vengeance! Don’t think I’ll be doing any gardening any time soon LOL.

The garden in late November

Being the end of November and bitterly cold, there’s nothing much going on in our garden at the moment so I thought I’d post a picture of how the back garden as a whole looks, to put everything in context. I took this photo from the top of a flight of steps leading down from our back door. From the bottom of the steps to the green door is about 4.5 metres. As you can see, it’s tiny by a lot of people’s standards and yet we still manage to grow quite a bit of stuff! I say there’s nothing much growing, but I have still managed to pick a bit of fresh mint to make tea with and I did also pick some Jerusalem artichokes to put in a risotto last night. (In case you’re wondering, you can just about see the Jerusalem artichokes in the photo – they’re the two dead stalks to the right of the compost bin, in the raised bed.) Were I ever to become a proud allotment holder, Jerusalem artichokes would definitely be a “must grow” crop – they’re extremely tasty, and very low maintenance too!

Garlic’s taking its time

Three of the normal-sized garlic cloves I’ve planted have finally poked their heads above the parapet, so to speak.  But no sign of the elephant garlic yet.  I have a feeling that it might be something to do with the torrential rain we’ve been having recently, which has turned the compost in my pots to a sort of spongy mess.   Will leave all the garlic cloves in situ for a bit and see what happens, although surely there should have been signs of life by now?

My elephant garlic cloves have arrived

The four cloves of elephant garlic, ordered from someone with the eBay user ID grahamdn1a (presumably not his real name lol), arrived today. Total cost including postage: £4.80. This might seem a lot but I am hoping that these babies will be the gift that keeps on giving, year after year. When there’s a break in the rain, I plan on planting them outdoors in similar (but deeper) containers to the ordinary garlic I planted at the weekend – there should be just enough fully rotted home made compost left!

‘Tis the season for planting garlic cloves

There’s nothing much going on gardenwise at the moment, although I was glad I watched Gardener’s World the other night, because there was an item on planting garlic. (If I hadn’t seen the programme, I’d probably have forgotten.) Last year at thsi time, I planted a single trough with half a dozen cloves of ordinary supermarket/greengrocer garlic. This July, we wolfed down our garlic harvest in next to no time – they were lovely and tasty, and I wished that I’d planted some more. So this year I’ve done two troughs (each one of which is about 65 cm long by 12 cm deep). I’ve also ordered four cloves of elephant garlic off eBay. I’ve never had elephant garlic – apparently it’s a bigger, milder version of bog standard garlic. Sounds as though it would taste fab roasted as a vegetable.

If you’re wondering what the chicken wire is for, it’s to keep the cats off until the garlic sprouts!

Last of the tomatoes

I picked about three pounds of green tomatoes today – they’re hardly going to ripen off outside in the middle of October and in any case my OH has offered to make chutney out of them! (I would have been foolish to turn this offer down, because I didn’t fancy making the chutney myself as it would have involved spending several hours in a very steamy, vinegary-smelling kitchen.) Plus my tomato plants are going brown and wilty looking (I believe the technical term is “dying” LOL), and many of the remaining tomatoes are acquiring a frostbitten, bruised look – see the bottom pic in this post.

I wasn’t sure whether I should compost my dying/dead tomato plants, because there’s always the risk that I could pass on disease to next year’s crop. Given that I will almost certainly be growing next year’s tomatoes in pure home-made compost, I have decided to err on the side of caution and throw the old plants away. I’d be keen to hear any thoughts from other tomato growers out there though.

Still going strong!

On the tomato front, that is. We must have made about five or six pasta/chilli con carne dishes solely out of fresh, home-grown tomatoes (with a dash of tomato puree for good measure). As I write this on October 2nd, the tomatoes have definitely “peaked”, but we’ll still be eating fresh ones for the next couple of weeks, I think.

At this time it’s a good idea to review what went well in the garden and what didn’t. So here goes:

Tomatoes: huge success
Salad leaves (rocket, spicy leaf mix, oak leaf lettuce mix, sorrel): big success
Chard: Not bad
Rhubarb: success. It was definitely worth planting some in a corner of our raised bed, which doesn’t get much light and wouldn’t have supported much else
Spring onions: success. This is another crop (like salad leaves and tomatoes) which is well worth it, even if you don’t have much space. You can pick them a couple at a time, rather than buying a bunch from the shops and throwing half away
Runner beans: got some nice ones, but on the whole a huge disappointment
Carrots: epic fail – an unidentified pest ate all the leaves.
Courgettes: almost complete fail, although we did get a few small ones
Herbs (mint, chives, thyme, sage etc.): success.

Still picking plenty of salad leaves even now, and am looking forward to next year!

Me and carrots don’t go :(

I thought I was being clever when I improvised a cover for my container of carrots, which consisted of an upturned empty hanging basket covered with fine net curtain. However, whatever it was that had nobbled my carrots before must have found a way inside, because the leaves have been completely eaten. Not just nibbled a bit, eaten. I just have to face up to the fact that I don’t have orange fingers (:sigh:).

On the upside, the tomatoes keep on coming. If there are some tomatoes at the tail end of our crop that refuse to ripen, a neighbour of ours has offered to take them off our hands and make green tomato chutney.

Runner beans are nearly over – they’ve been a real disappointment. The beans themselves have been gorgeous, but there just haven’t been as many of them as last year.

It’s raining tomatoes! (Amen)

Look at these beauties! They’re gorgeous, aren’t they? Whether it’s fresh tomatoes in salad, or a handful of tomatoes in boeuf bourguignon (as cooked by other half tonight… he does a very tasty BB), or in chilli con carne or spaghetti bolognaise… they’re fantastic. I will be sorry when they finally come to an end, I really will. Roll on next year though. Am going to push the boat out next year, tomato-wise, and grow Gardener’s Delight, Tumbling Tom and some “heirloom” varieties. I’m intrigued by a variety called Brandywine which is supposedly grown by the Amish in the USA and bears large, late, pinkish-coloured fruit. Oh, and I’d like to try a golden and/or black variety as well. I’d better stop now ‘cos I’m starting to drool LOL. BTW, that wrinkly brown object in the middle is one of the last of the figs off our fig tree. They’ve been really tasty too, although I can take no credit as the tree was planted by our landlords (although I’m sure the tree’s proximity to our compost bin can’t be doing any harm).

Carrots: still hanging in there

Two months ago I planted some carrots (Autumn King) in a deep bucket filled with spent compost. They came up OK, but some insect or slug (identity unknown) finds the leaves to be delicious, so I’ve had to resort to some extreme measures to protect them. Namely, an upturned hanging basket – minus the hanging chain thingies – covered with a fine net curtain. As it says in the title, the carrots are still hanging in there although I have no idea if I’ll actually end up with any actual carrots worthy of the name. On the plus side, I am in tomato heaven at the moment. Last night I made pasta sauce for the two of us, entirely out of home-grown tomatoes plus a squirt of tomato puree. Fingers crossed, we will be eating home-grown toms until the end of the month. Almost makes up for the courgettes (lousy) and the runner beans (less so, but still not exactly stellar).