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

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.

New Year, New Jobs in the Community Garden

This morning was the first 2012 Sunday session of Transition Town Wandsworth's Community Garden.  We had lots of jobs to do and 5 energetic volunteers so we got cracking with our spades and gardening tools.

We had a lovely mild day to work in.


We had several jobs to do:

1.  We have a mound of compost and either need to contain it or use it up rather quickly.  As our community garden is located within a public park we need to make our compost heap look more beautiful.  However, we have the dilemma of not being able to build a structure against the wall to contain it in a wooden structure and are not sure how to deal with it.  Gardening generates waste plant material and it would be great to be able to turn it into usable material for the garden.

So in the meantime, we buried the partly composted material from the compost heap into trenches where the soil is not so rich and fertile.   

Any ideas on a remedy for this?

2.  We had a separate mound of fully composted material kindly donated by the Council so we distributed it as top soil for the raised beds. 

3.  We removed leaves from the base of plants to try to prevent botrytis on the lower leaves of plants.  Botrytis is a fungal condition which occurs in damp environments and is commonly found on strawberry plants. The fallen leaves bunched up at the base of perennials and keeping in moisture is prime breeding ground for this condition.

With 5 volunteers we were able to make a good stab at the jobs but weren't able to complete them all so will have to finish them off in next Sunday's session.

We need more to come and join us, its great fun and the more the merrier!  Bramford Community Garden is a big site in Wandsworth's Bramford Park.  If you want to join us - please get in touch! Email: ttwandsworth@hotmail.co.uk
 
For more information:
Bramford Community Garden Project Dirt 
Transition Town Wandsworth 

Obviously hard work must be rewarded so we shared out the harvested veg :)  Not bad going for January!

Off to warm up in a nearby cafe with a well deserved hot chocolate.

2011 Gardening Year of Trials and Tribulations

What a challenge 2011 has been for us gardeners but with challenges comes resourcefulness and problem solving.

If we look back over the past year we've had an extremely warm start in spring with April reaching over 20 degrees centigrade.  In May, temperatures dropped (but I find they do most years so waited until early June to plant out the cucurbitaceae (squash)).  Then the summer didn't really come.  July was grey and wet through some of the weeks.  Then August came and didn't really bring summer either ending, certainly in the South East with a day of severe rain that swiftly followed with blight attack on many tomatoes (the community gardens and school garden I support suffered this more than my small patio garden).  In September as there were so many green tomatoes being given to me I learned to make chutney for the first time.  Followed by a crazy Autumn and really high temperatures in the first week of October when lucky people who hadn't cropped yet got a week's summer.  And now we are experiencing a rather warm winter - in fact, I'm not sure whether to call it winter at all.  Usually the nasturtiums have died off by now but my sheltered patio garden hasn't really felt the bite of a frost yet.

So a rather challenging year to garden in but his meant lots of adaptation and resourcefulness.

Early in the year my boyfriend bought me a plastic greenhouse.  It was absolutely fantastic for hardening off seedlings in early spring and I used it for this purpose from March all the way through to June.  For a few months I left it vacant, but I've really got into growing chillies this year and our summer wasn't really a good one for them so as the weather started to disappoint in July I started to move them into the plastic greenhouse - and they loved it!  I didn't even have to water them that much as they would sweat off the excess water and it would stay in the green house.  I continued to use it all the way through to October.  If you don't have one, and don't have the space for a glass green house I really recommend getting a plastic greenhouse!

In the summer I also started to use horticultural fleece.  I've never used this before, not even in the winter but I bought some by mistake when I was buying some horticultural mesh for my cabbages.

For ages it remained stored in its wrapper and then when I started to see flowers on my aubergines I had little hope of them bearing fruit and I thought about the idea of using the horticultural fleece.  It worked a treat!

Definitely using it next year, especially if I get impatient with my tomatoes!

This year I stumbled across a really good variety of winter squash that seemed completely unperturbed by our disappointing summer.  They are called Zapallito de Toscana and I ordered them from the Garden Organic Heritage Seed Library Catalogue.  I am definitely going to be sourcing more seed for next year.

It was the first year I grew from seeds sourced from the Heritage Seed Library and I had some absolutely beautiful purple peas. 


I wouldn't recommend them for crops to be grown in a container garden as they didn't really give enough of a yield but the flowers were beautiful and I just couldn't help take photos of them.

I would definitely recommend growing Heritage Seed Library varieties and to learn seed saving.  Its a great source of seed if you like to experiment with unusual or old heirloom varieties.

I tried seed saving for the first time this year and found it tremendously rewarding.

Next year, I am going to grow more varieties that are perennial/biennial and/or are low fuss to grow. Varieties I found to be in this camp this year were nasturtiums (plant them anywhere you have a spare bit of ground - you can make pesto, a little chopped leaves on top of curries, flavour for salads - they are truly wonderful and add colour to small plots), zapallito de toscana (winter squash), kai lan, chard, kale and herbs, salad potatoes...  

I am also going to introduce more early varieties of tomatoes as these will probably be more UK climate friendly.  I'll also look for early varieties of chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines as these could be more suited to the UK growing season too.

In 2012 I will be looking for more varieties to add to this list.  I am still trialling Egyptian Walking Onions and broad beans.

A review of gardening in 2011 wouldn't be complete without mentioning my wormery.  It provided me with wonderful worm casts and the garden benefited so much from the worm tea.  If I didn't have my own wormery I would pay for worm tea.  So much more superior than bought organic fertiliser.

Next year I plan to be far more savy in July and August with my winter planting.  Its lovely having things growing in the winter garden and I think you should be able to graze and browse your garden no matter what month of the year it is.  I still have some winter salad growing and brassicas in my garden.

I think it so important to keep a relationship with your garden no matter what season and that includes eating/grazing from it as many days of the year as possible!

Fresh Veg from the November garden

I was just looking through my garden diary and noticed that I am still cropping food from the garden even now in mid November.  The other night I picked a winter salad to accompany some shepherds pie and last night I was picking chard for a curry.

In fact the garden has been feeding me steadily and hasn't taken a week off since April - thank you garden!

Considering I have a small patio garden and my growing is in pots,  I don't suffer gluts very often, but I am finding with time and learning about what works through trial and error that I have a steady supply of salad greens and these haven't had a week off for about 7-8 months, which I would never have guessed would happen in a small container garden, but what a blessing it is.

I am sure it is also thanks to this strange year of weather we've been having and we haven't had a frost in South West London yet.

The types of things that I am still cropping are:

• Chillies & Peppers (from the plastic greenhouse)
• Kale
• Chard
• Beetroot
• Cabbage
• Rapa de Senza (turnip green eaten as a salad leaf)
• Kai Lan (delicious raw in salad or lightly stir fried)
• Nasturtium (will definitely be popping these seeds around the garden anyway I find a spare bit of soil - such a versatile crop for pesto, salad, pickled seeds, flavour and it grows so easily in the UK.  So far from May - November)
• Mustard Leaf
• Garlic Chives (from last summer's garlic bulbs - I missed a few when harvesting and now have garlic chives popping up in a few places...delicious!)

Last night we made a flavourful curry with the chard from the garden and some potatoes and free range chicken.  It was simply delicious, made even more delicious by the garden chard and fresh from the plant chillies.  Even the mustard seed was saved from the garden.

I would never have guessed that even in November the garden would be inspiring evening meals.

Sowing in September

September is an interesting month in the garden.  Its harvest time with all the summer crops providing their bounty and there's lots to do in the kitchen if you like preserving all those summer goodies. 

September is also a good month to think about planning your way through the next season and there are a few things that can be sown now to help you through the sparse winter months.  Good planning and sowing now can also help make that hungry gap (between February - May) a little bit more bountiful.

Here's a few September sowing suggestions:

Cabbages (for spring hungry gap)
Chard
Corn Salad
Kai Lan
Kale (if you sow in the next week or so)
Kohl rabi
Komatsuna
Land Cress
Lettuce
Leaf Chicory
Mustard
Onions (from seed or bulbs)
Parsley
Radishes
Rocket
Shallots
Spinach

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!

An ornamental edible garden

Lately I've been pondering a lot about the ornamental qualities of an edible garden.

It could be my work at the garden centre that has inspired me.

It could be due to planting a few companion flowers in the garden to ward off pests (e.g. calendula and nasturtiums).

It could be recently reading Alys Fowler's book The Thrifty Gardener - I could not help but read this gardening manual cover to cover!  This book inspired me to look at the garden as a combination of a thing of beauty and an edible garden.  Previously, I had always been focussed on growing edibles.  It really got me thinking about combining the two aspects, not just the plants but the containers that the plants live within.

Since then shopping has not been the same - always on the lookout for potential plant containers where ever I go and what ever I consume.  Take a look at what the radishes are growing in, in the picture below.

As well as hunting for potential containers this also led to my sowing a few annual ornamentals which I haven't really done before.  Cosmos was the ornamental flower that crept in - technically speaking the rest of the flowers are recommended companions for an edible garden.

I find rainbow chard with its full leaves and colourful stems always to be visually beautiful as well as very tasty.  Virtues of growing chard

Another vegetable that I have always thought very beautiful are squash.  I grew crookneck summer squash last year and the leaves looked so lush, the flowers and the bright yellow fruit looked amazing. Wonder of germinating squash

This year I have simply been completely bowled over by the beauty of purple pea varieties.  I think their flowers are simply astounding.  The flowers look sweet and no doubt their peas will taste amazing too.  I have never grown these before.  They came in this year's batch of seeds from the Heritage Seed Library called Purple pod.  Just take a look at how it flowers.  Peas please

I had almost forgotten to eat nasturtiums.  I've grown them for the last few years but simply as a fodder for the aphids so that they would leave my more prized edibles alone.

The other day I was gardening at the Bramford Community Garden and one of the other volunteers ate a nasturtium leaf.  The penny dropped - of course, you can eat the leaves! So I picked a nasturtium leaf.  Immediately, I smelt a very evocative smell that reminded me of a smell I knew from my childhood and with that smell I remembered the taste.  I thought why didn't I do this sooner!!  Munched on the leaf and that leaf packed a punch of peppery flavour.  Ever since then, nasturtium leaves have appeared in my daily salad!!  And the leaves and the petals are so beautiful too.

Last week I planted a Globe Artichoke in the Bramford Community Garden for its beautiful tall thistle shaped flower and its multi purpose of being a beautiful and architectural plant as well as an edible.  (Not the one in the picture!)  It is just a baby plant at the moment but I am looking forward to it growing taller than me with loads of beautiful flower heads!

Another thing of beauty is strawberry plants.  They come in a range of flower colours from deep dark pink, to pale pink through to the classic white flowers.  They can be planted in hanging baskets where the ripening fruit can dangle down graciously.

Take a look at these radish flowers. 

If I hadn't neglected the radishes last summer, I would never have seen this beautiful display of white flowers.  Following on from the flowers came the radish pods which were delightfully crunchy in salad (a bit like very small mange tout). 

The virtues of growing Chard

 
I feel the need to extoll the virtues of chard as it is such a great vegetable for the hungry gap while you wait for the other crops to get started.

It looks good too.  Very lush looking leaves and if you invest in the "bright lights" variety http://www.organiccatalogue.com they even add beautiful coloured stems to the garden.  They can even be mixed in with the ornamentals for their richly coloured stems and their proud bouncy looking leaves.

They are a biennial and survive our cold winters.  So while nothing else is growing in the garden the chard will still be soldiering on.  They do prefer a sunny position but if you are short of space they will grow in the more shady areas of your growing space.

For the kitchen, the leaves can be eaten young (when about 2 inch long) in salads or they can be allowed to grow bigger and steamed a la spinach style.  In my container garden I am growing them in a rectangular trough and am going for eating them as a salad crop.  Every 3 days I have a fresh crop  of cut and come again leaves to make into a delicious salad - Now that's what I call reliable!!  And they are jam packed with lots and lots of vitamins, even more so if you eat them within minutes of picking.  I like to mix them with chopped salad onions.  I recently tried them in a fritatta and they worked really well (here's the recipe Fritatta with chard).

They grow incredibly happily in small containers making them a patio gardener's best friend.  Last year (the first time I sowed some seeds of chard) I grew them in a recycled portabello mushroom container and they are still growing strong (germination April 2010).  This was my first introduction to this eager lush vegetable and I have never been disappointed!

Working on the One Pot Pledge stand for Garden Organic a few weeks ago, children had the choice of potting up rocket or chard and the majority chose to pot the chard to take home with them.  So that just goes to show it's not just me, kids love it too!

Some chard recipes:
Chard and Calendula Salad
Chard Fritatta