Astounded by Peas

Its Friday night, most people when they finish work would be enjoying a nice glass of wine and relaxing... except for the avid gardeners of Birmingham - I would guess that quite a few wandered over to the new Urban Veg garden at Winterbourne Botanical Gardens to have a nose at the new project.  Its an amazing space.  I can't wait to see how it develops and I had a lovely chat with the Birmingham Organic Group.

Such beautiful edible pea flowers.  Easy to see their relation to sweet peas

Arriving home in the dark and still with the glow of having seen such beautiful vegetable specimens I thought I'd wander over to my veg patch.  With the recent rain the patch is looking very lush and I'd weeded recently so it looks good - just lush lovely veg.  (We won't talk about the winter squash with pitifully small fruit for the moment!)

I was particularly impressed to see that the peas are very much alive and still producing.  Other things have performed poorly but I've never known a summer before when peas haven't died off in July.

The purple coloured pea pods in this picture are the HSL Purple Pods

Its especially the purple peas that don't seem to want to give up.

A delicious flavour to have at this time of the year when I wouldn't ever expect it.  Thank you for surprising me peas!

They are called purple pod and I first got hold of them from Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library. This is the second year I am growing them and this year they were from the seed I'd saved from last year.

I shouldn't be so surprised I suppose, the sweetpeas are still looking lovely and fresh in the autumn garden with their delicate fragrance.

Has any veg surprised you this season?

From the garden today

I love this time of year when you get all this coming into the kitchen after pottering around the garden in the sunshine

Successes and poor performers in a challenging summer

Despite the long awaited sunshine we have even enjoying this week, we have had a rather challenging year garden wise so far this year with many commenting "what summer?"!

Which got me thinking - what is doing well in this cool, wet summer?

We are a good few weeks past the mid year mark so I thought now would be a good time to reflect.

So my stars of the patch so far are definitely all the beans (broad beans, peas, French beans) these were slow to start and were impacted by the lower than usual temperatures but perhaps not so much by the lack of sun and they would have certainly enjoyed all the rain once the temperature was warm enough.

Parsnips also are doing well, as are the Egyptian walking onions and the globe artichokes have been steady. Kai Lan is quite happy in these conditions, as are salad crops and the HSL rat tail radishes have done really well whilst adding a lovely floral display if you like that kind of thing!

Of the low performers it has to be the tenders - I am still waiting for the big luscious leaves of the squash plants and the flowers haven't made an appearance yet - that's the ones that escaped slug and snail fest! And I've been feeding those squash lots of worm tea feed but I think the rain washed most of it away! Beets,chard and carrots have been incredibly slow growing and I don't think I'm going to get a tomato glut this year!!

It will be interesting to see what the top performers will be in August after they've all settled after our current heat wave.

How are your veggies faring?

How do you protect yours?

As the weather has been so challenging lately, I thought it might be a good time to write about ways to protect plants.

So far this year, my garden has presented to huge challenges that I didn't really have the experience of dealing with before.

You see pigeons didn't really seem that interested in a small patio garden in South London with high fences and winds didn't seem to be that much of a problem either.

But now I have a much more exposed garden up in the Midlands - I thought a larger garden would be the answer to a lot of my previous limitations - I can now grow roots in open soil along with many other opportuntities.  However, I did not anticipate the challenges. 

There are 2 main challenges with being more exposed, the first being the neighbourhood birds and the second being the weather.  The weather is so challenging to work with this year not just in my garden but the country as a whole.  Its mostly wet and windy.  It is the opposite extreme to last year.  We have to try and work with it, whatever it is ... but it does not look like we are getting much of a summer this year!


When the forecast mentioned another rainy storm with high winds was coming this week (this will be the third or fourth so far this year) my thoughts went straight to how do I protect my plot?  The birds have also been pinching young tomato fruit so I need to think about protection on 2 fronts - pest and harsh weather.  The tomatoes are now in a tall fleece tent kindly built by my boyfriend and the heritage peas are under netting - that should stop those pesky pigeons eating my peas!  The fleece should help the tender tomatoes along in this years cool climate.

To bring the seeds on to germination, I've learnt this year about putting fleece down.  The idea for this was when I saw agricultural fields covered with rows of clear plastic and I thought that they must have done this to warm up the soil to speed up germination.  Well the fleece worked a treat.

So far the squash are under cloches or upside down plant pots in harsh windy weather.  The main issue I am having with these is a common one - snails.  Snails is something I have plenty of experience with!  The other issue is that they are finding it too cold.  One cucumber plant has completely perished.  I'd been wondering why the leaves were looking yellow - this time I don't think it was a lack of nutrients but that the plant was completely perishing.  When the squash look big and strong enough I shall be removing their cloches, but not before!

To protect against bird damage, I've been thinking of making willow weave cages to fit over the tops of my plants.  I have a plant in the garden which grows branches very similar to a willow tree so I need to learn this skill.

Last year, I built a kind of a fleece tent around an aubergine that was struggling in our cold summer last year and that worked a treat.   Perhaps this year I will make the cages and then if necessary drape the fleece over the top of that.

What methods of ingenuity have you found to protect your plants?

June Storms

Recently we've had some pretty changeable weather to deal with.  We've had a 10 day summer inbetween lots of unseasonally cool days, followed by lots of rain and then an intense windy storm.

I hope you all fared better than me with the storms!

Prior to our 10 days of summer, I had put fleece over all my germinating seeds to stop the birds from eating them before they got a chance to sprout.  And then the sun came.  With high temperatures averaging 26 degrees C.  The week before we'd had temps around 12 C.  I took the decision to keep them veiled with their fleece as I thought the sun might scorch them and I think I was the only person waiting for that heat wave to end to unveil my little beauties!

And it really did feel like unveiling my patch!  All of a sudden the areas I'd planted were fully populated with seedlings of salad, roots, onions, radishes (including baby rat tail radishes), leeks and the peas finally germinated.

On Jubilee weekend I decided its now June - I can start planting the tenders out.  Naturally I made some bunting with some ribbon, old scraps of blue/white/red cloth and my sewing machine so the whole weekend was not just dedicated to gardening but I did find myself (inbetween watching the Jubilee celebrations on TV) trying to make a start on planting the tenders out. 

I planted out 4 sunflowers, 12 french beans and 4 winter squash.  I didn't have quite enough time to plant out the tomatoes and the remaining winter squash and sunflowers.  I also left some flowers to plant out later.  They were all residing in my plastic greenhouse.

Then the rain came down, and it carried on coming down all week ending in a great big finale of a storm on Friday with very high winds.  I came home to find the greenhouse flat on the floor.  We were devastated!  We love tomatoes!!! 

I rescued all the seedlings one by one, my boyfriend helped me with the carnage.  It was hard work as I'd just come down with a cold and cancelled a weekend to London where I would have been helping my friends at Transition Town Wandsworth's Bramford Community Gardens with their Open Squares event. 

I moved them all the rescued seedlings into a shed, safe from the wind and naturally lost a few squash and some sunflowers - surprisingly all the tomatoes escaped unharmed.

Yesterday, I inspected the veg patch after the winds and all the supports were fine - naturally my boyfiend had done a sterling job with the plant supports a week earlier.  I only had one casualty on the plot - one of the winter squash had perished in the Friday storms.  Luckily I had germinated two of this italian pumpkin variety and this was one variety that had not perished in the greenhouse calamity.  So despite all the drama, I think the population of veg with all the heritage varieties amongst them had lucky escapes.

(I do realise in the grand scheme these are small problems in contrast to the people in Wales who had their homes completely flooded)

However, after all the doom, gloom and vegetable carnage, yesterday was a pleasantly sunny day with the elder flower in bloom and the blackberry bushes budding up with their flowers of promise.  So it was a day of planting - all the tomatoes are now in the new, slightly more secure home of the veg patch (that is providing we don't have another blight epidemic this year and with recent weather patterns this is highly likely!)

And today we are blessed with another sunny day - I really hope it follows true to the forecast today as they are predicting light showers in the evening.  If it remains I shall be planting out all the remaining seedlings currently in refuge in the shed and any seedlings that haven't made it will be laid to rest in my wormery to help those who made it with nutritious worm tea and worm cast!

I do hope the weather's going to start to be a little kinder to gardeners - it must be really challenging for those of us who are just starting out.

Project New Veg Plot Continues

Half a month on from my last post about the new garden and the veg plot has been fully deturfed and the rhubarbs been slightly thinned out!  (It was a very scrummy rhubarb crumble)

We then had that really harsh wind storm and I thought the next door neighbour's eucalyptus tree was going to come down on our garden, it was being whipped around like it was a bendy twig.

I was very relieved I hadn't planted anything into the veg patch by then or I would have been watching my poor veg being destroyed by the winds from the upstairs window or worst still traipsing through the wind and the rain with all manor of contraptions to try and save my poor veg.  This has happened before, sometimes during rain storms in the middle of the night and now I don't plant my beloved squash until after the 1st June for that very reason!

As quickly as the wind and rain came, within about 6 hours they abated and the following morning we had a really warm spring day with sunshine and temperatures in the plastic greenhouse reaching nearly 30 degrees.

This was most definitely a gardening day!!  I turned all the soil in the veg patch to loosen it up and get some air in and added all the worm casts my wormery to offer (and some bits that weren't strictly quite ready to use!) to add a bit of nutrition to the soil.  I dug this in to the upper layer of soil and then raked the whole bed.

With time I won't dig the patch so much, using spent roots to rot into the ground and add their own nutrients and not digging were possible.  However, this patch of ground has been grassed over for what looks like a considerable amount of time, certainly a few years so my thoughts were to initially loosen the soil ready for the population of veggies that will soon find their home there.

I then popped in for a cuppa and a sit on the sofa.  All that exercise had made me tired!  But I was still in gardening mode and on a roll so I didn't want to stop when I sat down for a rest.  I reached for a pad of paper and drew up a plan.

The plot is roughly 4m x 2m and can be neatly divided into 6 rows.  There are planks conveniently stacked against the fence at the end of the garden which I will use to make my paths.  Each of these rows I will divide into 4 squares (about 50cm square).  I got the inspiration for this plan from the square foot gardening idea.

Today its windy and rainy again but I'm itching to plant some peas, carrots and spring onions and get this plot started!!

Maybe the surface needs to be raked once more before I'm completely ready... Patience is a difficult thing when you're itching to have your own crops growing in your back garden!

2011 saving money with a small garden

 

In 2011 I saved £172.45 through growing my own food.  With what I have learned over the last year I am sure I can increase that saving this year!

I only recorded savings between May to December as that was when I was initially inspired to find out how much I actually save with growing my own food.

May

In 2010 I hadn't really learnt to grow many things to eat over the winter months as yet with chard being my main winter crop so until May this was really all that was growing outside together with the perennial herbs.

The saving for this month was £2.21 which consisted of salads, herbs, peas, turnips and some cabbage.

June

Things were starting to pick up a bit in June and I was able to more than double those savings to £5.34.  The spring sowings were planted out and starting to crop.

Crops I was eating in June were salads made with kai lan, chard, nasturtium leaves, pea shoots, mustard leaves, squash flowers, etc.  I was making herbal teas with mint and lemon verbena.  My crop of early potatoes were ready to eat and the potato bag produced nearly a kilo of salad potatoes - now that was a crop I savoured!  I was also eating french beans and peas.

July

Savings continued to grow in July when I saved £7.90.  I had similar crops to June except for the potatoes - I was then waiting for my second batch of earlies which were being grown for my boyfriend's  rest & recouperation break from a tour in Cyprus in August.  There were also some new crops that came in to season: courgettes started to crop, patty pans and strawberries in hanging baskets.

August

The savings took a wapping jump to £72.51!  It includes gifts of 800g chard and 3kg of tomatoes saved from blighted crops which were given in return for volunteer gardening maintenance in a community garden.  As this was free food I included this in my savings.  In addition, it highlights one of the major benefits of joining or helping out in community gardens - free food!

What was eaten in June and July continued to crop and with the addition of  chillies and sweet peppers, aubergines and tomatoes.  Interestingly these are all in the same crop family - Solanaceae.


September

The savings were pretty similar to August coming in at £62.53.  Again, a little generosity inflated my crops as a friend gave me 500g windfall apples which I turned into my first ever jelly - it was delicious and set marvelously.  All the crops in season in August were still producing in September just slightly less prolifically.  We had a really hot week at the end of September/early October - unfortunately I had already removed my tomatoes due to the blight experienced in August which would have done really well in that heat.

October

Things really started to tail off this month at £15.81.   Although, keeping that saving value high were the winter squashes.  The summer in 2011 was disappointing with not much sun but in mid to late autumn, temperatures were remaining stable at about 15 degrees centigrade which was ideal weather for the winter squash to fully finish on their vines before being cropped.  With the mild weather, tomatoes and chillies were continuing to finish cropping and winter salad was starting to be substantial enough to eat.

November

The year was really starting wind down now with £6.17.  Chillies and sweet peppers were still cropping and kale, cabbage, kai lan, nasturtium, chard and winter salad were this month's crops.

 

It has been a brilliant exercise recording all my crops and their weights.  Its given me something solid to reflect on.  Through the data I can see which months things were cropping in a challenging summer with little sun.  It also made me realise what foods were expensive and which ones were less expensive.  It told me that with a container garden it makes more sense to grow the high value crops that I can get a good yield from.

For 2012, I have decided to capitalise each season on getting the most value from my plot.  I will grow the expensive Solanceae through the summer and concentrate more on brassica types through the winter.  I will grow what grows easily in pots and not invest too much space in those crops that don't fare well in pots.  I found turnips were a disaster and peas were difficult.  However, I think I will still grow a pot of peas as they are like sweets in the garden!

From the summer, I will be planning my winter crops better - I was starting to do this in late summer 2011, but I will give this more focus in 2012 and sow some kohl rabi good and early.  I will experiment with a different variety of kale to see if I can find a favourite as this grows so well in winter and I find it easier to grow in containers than cabbage.

Lets see if I learn from 2011's data and really improve my savings and crop yields this year.  Watch this space!

Here's the Spreadsheet if you would like to see the results in more detail.

Have you done an exercise to record your crops?  I'd love to hear of your experiences.

October Gardening

I haven't been blogging much of late.  Its not that I've stopped gardening... I've just not been gardening much in my own garden.  Maybe because I have a container garden and there's so much more to do in the community gardens I help maintain.

At the school garden we've been doing lots of weeding, harvesting beetroots, chard, beans and grapes.  Some of the pupils were even inspired to make juice out of the grapes!  We've also been planting green manures on the patches of ground that will remain vacant until next spring.  We chose Phacelia as it is not in any of the crop groups we are using in our crop rotation plans.

At the Community Garden we're planting a winter wheat section.  So far we've been turning the soil (with forks I might add as we didn't have a rotavator!)  As we have quite a large area to sow this has been very much fat burning work with towels to mop brows and water bottles on hand!  Next we will be raking the soil and then planting the seed.

At home, I do still have jobs to do... Planting the garlic!  This is a job my boyfriend sees as very high on my todo list as he would be devastated if there wasn't any fresh garlic to go with the fresh tomatoes next summer!!  I'm also going to plant some broad beans.  I've never grown them before but have an eye on a broad bean hummus recipe I'd love to try and I'm sure it just wouldn't be the same unless they are fresh from the garden and young beans.  I'm also thinking about moving the salad boxes into the plastic greenhouse when the final chillies have moved out.  I have some Hatif d'Annonay Peas http://www.realseeds.co.uk/peas.html which is a fast growing dwarf pea which can be sown now in October/November so that's another of my intentions.  I will have to bring my Zapallito de Toscana winter squash in soon but as we haven't had any frosts in South West London yet I'm letting it stay on the plant as long as I can.  The plant is still very much alive so have been letting it stay on the mother plant for as long as possible.  Please let me know if this is the right thing to do or would I be better just bringing them in now as this is the first year I have grown winter squash with a hard outer shell.

I've also been busy in the kitchen baking muffins with an oversized 600g patty pan, making nasturtium pesto, cooking roast squash and chilli, rosehip and apple jelly to name but a few concoctions.

Recipes coming soon to clairesculinaryadventures.blogspot.com

I'm still trying to find something exciting to do with a bumper crop of beetroot from the school garden.  Any delicious beetroot ideas?

Autumn Sunshine

Autumn has finally arrived to the garden here in South London, the squash leaves are looking tired, the sunflowers are starting to look a little sad with their bowed heads, lots of leaves to clear up off the patio and pots to spruce up.  Time for the autumnal tidy up!

Zapallito de Toscana (Cucurbita Maxima)

I love all these new gardening jobs as the summer season moves on to the next chapter of autumn.  The new light levels, the warm sunshine, spaces made where the summer crops have finished doing their thing, the garden is starting to look a lot less congested!  Whilst I absolutely love the jungle look that summer brings in our garden thanks to all the squash plants I like to grow I also love the new space that we get as autumn moves in.

Aubergine "de Barbentane" (Solanum Melongena)

And in the new spaces I've been busy sowing!  Winter radish, variety of turnip greens, peas for peashoots, tree onion bulbils (a perennial onion), onions from seed, Kai Lan and various winter salads.  I'm determined to keep the patio awake with edibles feeding us right through those cold winter months and into the hungry gap.

Against the south facing wall I have new spaces so have moved the sunloving herbs like rosemary, lavender, thyme, sage, marjoram and camomile which really seem to be enjoying their new home.

Citrus Lime (Citrus Latifolia Tahiti)

That's the beauty of the container garden, you can just keep moving your pots around through the seasons.

Another event in the garden is the migration of the heat lovers back inside the flat (chillies, peppers, the lime tree, the aloes...).  I keep an eye on their leaves and as long as they are not yet showing any sign of stress am letting them stay outside to make the most of any sunshine available.  However, I am keeping an eagle eye on the forecast and a daily check of these plants to make sure they are still happy outside.  Whilst we had a rather disappointing summer, we do seem to be blessed by a warm and gentle September.  As soon as those temps start to go towards 10 degrees C or below, I will find homes for the tender ones inside the flat.  I have a feeling that it might be a bit crowded indoors this winter!

Looking in my seedbox, the only month I can't find anything to sow is December.  Any suggestions?

Seeds to sow in the summer

Over the last fortnight, I've been asked to produce lists of what can be sown now. 

These questions have originated from the community gardens I support and Twitter.  Its a good question to ask just as we are on the brink of the glut season.  Times will be good for the next 6 weeks or so, but if we don't plan now there won't be much to eat from the garden come early autumn. 

I've also heard it mentioned that we Brits are very good at sowing seeds in spring but don't tend to keep the habit up through out the year!

So here are my suggestions:

Brassicas:
Pak Choi
Kohl Rabi
Komatsuna
Red Russian Kale
Turnips (for autumn crop)
Winter Radish

Salad:
All types of salad can still be sown, especially with the wet weather we've been experiencing
Corn Salad (for winter crop)
Sorrel
Mustard
Pea shoots (for summer salad crop) - in a week or two you will start to get shoots big enough to add to your salad

Solanaceae:
Spuds - quite like the idea of eating some home grown spuds with my Christmas dinner.  Home grown roasties...yumm!

Beets:
Chard
Beetroot

Roots:
Carrots (there are many more colours than the orange variety we find in the shops - I'm trying Pennard Plants rainbow carrots this year)

Real Seeds have also prepared a selection for summer sowing.  Here's their Summer Sowing Ideas

Happy sowing!

Leaving the garden for a holiday away

I have just returned from a holiday with my boyfriend who is currently working away from home with the UN.  It was a lovely week's holiday but I could never have relaxed and enjoyed myself had I not had my lovely neighbour, Mic do the watering while I was away. 

This is the first holiday I have returned find a garden full of healthy plants.  Usually I spend the holiday checking the UK weather forecast trying to find out how dry it is in the UK and not really focusing on enjoying my holiday.  Before I leave for the airport I put upside down bottles of water contraptions in all the containers and heavily water everything before I go and then return home to find everything desperate for a drink and at least one casualty.

I have to say that Mic has been a star and everything is much bigger and bushier than I left.

My strawberries have not started producing fruit yet but there are plenty of flowers with promises.

Have to admit that my tomatoes have gone beserk!  Which is of course an amazingly good thing.

Really have to get these potatoes out of the bag now I think and find out if there's any goodies at the bottom - this is the first time I'm growing potatoes so it could go either way!

I think I may have some peas ready to eat.  Just need a closer inspection....

Looks like these guys have bolted... probably not suited to container growing as the turnips we've been growing in the Bramford Community Garden were all around golf ball size a fortnight ago.  I will experiment with eating the flowering heads in some salad instead.

Now the Kai Lan has got to be about 3 times the size it was a week ago.  I can see this might be this year's favourite super discovery.  (Last year's was chard).  I think a welcome home salad is in order.

I also found these beautiful radishes - perfectly rounded and ready to eat.  Another veg that has at least trippled in size in my week away.

If you'd like to see what else ended up in the welcome home salad... here's a link to the recipe garden salad

Peas Please!

I am impatiently waiting for some pea flowers because the arrival of flowers means the promise of pea pods and I do love fresh peas straight out of the pod.  So does my boyfriend but he won't be able to compete with me to eat the fresh peas this year as he will miss the season - more peas for me!

I have loved eating raw peas out of the pod from childhood when I used to hide in the middle of my father's pea patch feasting on the peas straight out of the pod.  I bet I left a bundle of discarded pods in my wake!

As I am so impatient for peas (and many other crops) I keep a gardening diary.  I've been keeping a gardening diary for 3 years now and I really need them!  They help manage my expectations.  In my diary I record date of sowing, date of germination, date of first flower, date of first fruit and I also record quantity of yields per edible. This year I have started to record the temperature and whether sunny/rainy.  It can all have an impact on the growing season.

In my impatience to see pea flowers yesterday I hit my 2010 diary - pea flowers first sighted on 22nd May... that's just over a week away.  Not long now and I'll be devouring my own pea patch.  I will try and not eat all the pods of the Heritage Seed Library variety or I will be letting them down!

The varieties I am growing this year:  Duchy Originals - Ambassador F1, Heritage Seed Library - Purple Pod http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/, Real Seed Early Dwarf Pea Hatif d'Annonay http://www.realseeds.co.uk/peas.html, Mic's Peas (Mic Linz my neighbour's saved seed). All seeds sown 25.03.11