Turnover

The 2018 season feels pretty much over now. There are still crops to harvest, but everything is moving towards what 2019 will be about. Already the first crops for next summer are in - elephant garlic planted where the courgettes had been - although some things that were planted a while ago will crop in early spring, like cavolo nero.

Above: various brassicas sown in spring and planted in summer. These are the few survivors fom hundreds of seeds - a lot were lost to a lack of planting space, many more to pest attacks. 

As you might gather from the last entry's harvest totals, a lot has been picked this month, and I may well beat my previous best. The greenhouse was stripped, all green tomatoes harvested and brought indoors, well over 12kg. And lo - most of them have ripened. Over about two weeks, I removed the ripest ones and processed them, mostly into sauce, keeping the rest together in the hope the riper ones would bring the unripe along with them. Also some bananas were kept with them, as the ethylene they release induces ripening. Whatever, it worked. Not the best flavour raw, but once cooked they had a sweetness and tomato aroma that was satisfactory, and the sauces were fine (I tend to fry onions and garlic in plenty of olive oil, then add roughly chopped tomatoes and herbs - say, fresh thyme and dried oregano - with a little salt, pepper, sugar, and balsamic vinegar, cook gently for a while in a pan, slow cooker, or in the oven, then purée, sieve, and simmer until reduced).

Above: all these tomatoes were green when I picked them. Below: a satisfactory parsnip!

I lifted some parsnips, because I just couldn't wait, and their leaves were flopping everywhere. They were big! The largest were over 40cm long, and the thickness was good too. Delicious made into a simple soup with shallots and stock. The sweetcorn never swelled, but the cobs were otherwise okay and I was able to use the tiny kernels in chowder. The winter squash outdoors didn't grow any more and started to rot, so I pulled out the plants and put in some dwarf kale. Courgettes stopped fruiting weeks ago so were likewise pulled out. The giant Greek beans did nothing, and early frosts damaged the runner beans; although they have continued to grow right to the top of the frame I put in to support them - maybe 7 feet tall - but flowering has been sparse and I have seen no pods. Time to pull them out and prepare the bed for planting onions. In the polytunnel I had sown dwarf runner beans, and they are flowering well, but it's probably too cold for a crop now. The sweetcorn under cover has produced a lot of baby cobs but no pollination has occurred.

Carrots look lush but are growing slowly. I have thinned them and will probably put fleece on as the weather gets colder.

Into the greenhouse I've started planting celery, oriental greens, and even a few cabbages. I got a small heater, but I'm short of fuel and won't fire it up properly until the weather turns colder. Peppers and chillies have ripened. The first huauzontle was harvested, but it is rather fiddly to process. Autumn raspberries have been abundant and large, but the flavour is insipid.

A minor success - the first lot of fennel harvested a few weeks ago was cut close to the ground, but the roots were left in the ground for possible regrowth. And lo - they have! Smaller but healthy shoots that I will pick for a late batch of soup.

I cleared a lot of the plants in pots because they had been ravaged by pests. Almost every cabbage sown in summer was destroyed by caterpillars. Too much to hope they would recover, it's much more sensible to compost them and start afresh (I have some sown much later that are still okay).

Some failures - above some of the lettuces have bolted, but they're still pretty. I've left them for seed but the flowers are stubborn to open. Below: This was a tray of perfect calabrese (broccoli) plants - until the caterpillars got to them.

What's next? Planting the rest of the garlic, onions, and shallots, cabbages, spinach and beetroot. Sowing broad beans, peas. A few more things in the greenhouse: maybe letuce, turnips and radishes. Clearing and setting things straight, gathering fallen leaves, and reorganising the compost heap.

The inevitable

Text written late Sept-early Oct, though I kept adding harvest totals for a couple of weeks afterwards.

Colours of autumn - a harvest of purple kale and aubergines, orange and red tomatoes and chillies, yellow and green courgettes.

Autumn is happening, whether I like it or not. The slightly warmer, drier early September conditions didn't last, and since then it's turned cooler, with more rain. Everything is decaying, sometimes with the pleasant smell of fungus, sometimes not. It's so hard to get anything done, especially as I have no waterproof footwear at the moment. Still, a few nudges in the right direction have occurred.

I started laying new paths in part of the vegetable garden. Up towards the house I'll use cemented paving, the same as I used for the greenhouse foundations, both because I have slabs left over and because it'll keep a level and be nice and solid. But I don't want to do that for the whole site - too expensive and much too much work - so the far half I decided on bark. It's cheap, easy to obtain locally (or as an add-on to my compost orders), soft underfoot and easily maintained, though not as weed suppressant as slabs. The best part is how fast it is - in an hour of work I got most of the first section done. I need to get some more bags to finish the route to the old compost heaps, and that should be enough for the winter.

My first ever watermelon! Only tiny and not fully ripe, but it smelled and tasted right.

Another sack of compost was delivered, but I haven't yet moved it from the driveway - a small bone of contention - because the weather has been so rotten. I almost regret getting it, but I had used up all but the dregs of the last lot, and I have (as ever!) hundreds of plants waiting for somewhere to go. With this batch, I can finish off a couple of beds that should provide a home for cabbagey things and onions over winter. I expect I'll need one more bag in the next few months before I take stock as we get back into prime sowing season in February-ish.

I've got most of my overwintering alliums, though some haven't been delivered yet. I'm going all out with garlic, shallots, and onions, partly because you can never have too many (and I never have enough), and partly to save time and space next year - by overwintering I should have them harvested a month earlier than a spring planting, and that means more stuff can go in next midsummer.

A meaty tomato, deep red after ripening indoors.

The outdoor sweetcorn is looking promising now - some tassels starting to brown, and the cobs are swelling. I hope for a couple at least. Alas I have no confidence any of the baby winter squash will continue to grow - the largest is just fist-sized, and the weather is not helping them thrive. The polytunnel ones have just sat and sulked for weeks. On the other hand, the huauzontle ('Mexican/Aztec broccoli') is looking great both outside and under cover, the latter having caught up several weeks' growth. Runner beans are tall now, at least six feet, and starting to flower; borlotti are flowering and setting minute pods. The gigantes (large Greek-style shelling beans) I sowed direct outdoors are way behind, but it was chancy putting them in so late (I did an earlier sowing in pots but never planted them, what a surprise). Leeks, cabbages, beetroot are all growing very slowly. Some of the kales are covered in caterpillars again. Carrots are doing what they always seem to - after germinating well, they've hardly grown. What am I doing wrong? Courgettes look healthy but are cropping poorly, once again I'm at a loss. Tomatoes are abundant, some are huge, and the ripe ones taste good when roasted, so that's a moderate success. The most exciting find a few weeks ago in the greenhouse was a watermelon. I sowed these in April without telling anyone, and really didn't expect to get a crop. Indeed, they were planted too late, so finding a fruit was a surprise indeed! But the plant has since died, so I picked it. It shows there is potential, so I will try again next year. The other melons never set any fruit, but it's still a dream to grow one.

With temperatures hovering below 15ºC most days, and between 5-10ºC at night, I don't expect much more growth. A storm is forecast soon, no doubt the first of many. I am reminded why I hate autumn so much... But I'm consoling myself with spring bulb purchases.

Harvests

17/09 - 100g watermelon, 250g aubergines, 570g tomatoes

18/09 - 300g tomatoes, 40g chillies, (160g raspberries)

21/09 - 560g tomatoes

22/09 - 270g courgettes, 125g kale

03/10 - 180g sweetcorn*, 5.795kg tomatoes

04/10 - 150g courgettes**, 95g sweetcorn, 6.22kg tomatoes, 50g pepper***

06/10 - 1.22kg parsnips

14/10 - 50g pepper, 10g tomato

15/10 - 105g spinach beet

18/10 - 5g carrots*****, 400g huauzontle

YTD total: 34.5kg

*two cobs, neither had large kernels but they had formed so I guess the problem wasn’t with pollination, but the poor weather we had while they developed.

**the last courgettes, harvested as plants pulled out.

***my first ever homegrown sweet pepper from seed.

****450g for largest individual.

*****thinnings

Autumn

Written early-mid September.

So somehow a draft entry was deleted. I have no idea how that could happen, but it's quite upsetting, as I note down my harvests that way, rather than on paper. So precisely what I picked in the last week of August is now lost. I've tried to reconstruct it below from tweets and photographs, but this is once again life slapping me in the face for thinking I could rely on anything. I'll put harvests down somewhere else before tallying them here in future.

What did happen? Well I picked my first aubergine. A second one broke off much too small, but there are a few more to come. Sadly, blight has started attacking the plants, so I doubt the dozens more flowers will get a chance - a pity, but I have at least proven to myself I can grow them from seed. Next year I'll start them much earlier, in January or February instead of April, and that will give them a head start.

I had sown shallots back in spring, and they were in small pots waiting to be planted out for several months. In the end, I decided there was no chance they would grow any more, so I harvested them as individual bulbs. A small quantity, but again I'd never grown them this way before. I'm hoping to pickle them, if I can locate a recipe similar to the one I used with great success on my homegrown shallots back in 2011 or so.

Back in the greenhouse, the tomatoes have plodded along. I tied a couple of bananas in socks and suspended them near to unripe trusses of fruit, in the hope they would encourage ripening, but that remains to be seen. There is a lot of fruit, but only now is some of it starting to take on colour - the suppressed temperatures throughout August really hit them badly. The weather has improved since then somewhat - not so relentlessly cool, grey, and rainy, there's actually been some warm sunshine, but still lots of showers and nights are increasingly chilly. As for the chillies, they remain green, and I haven't always watered them as much as I should - they were behind the aubergines, a little awkward, I'll need to revise my setup next year. But there are enough, and I don't use masses, so it should be sufficient - and again, I've never grown these from seed to harvest, ditto the peppers.

Elsewhere, things are growing but nothing is abundant, apart from plums. We didn't plant the trees, and they usually produce very little fruit, but this time both have, especially the formerly barren tree right by the house. I left the highest ones as they've attracted a range of birds, including what seems to be a family of four blackcaps, but all the same, I have plenty to process into treats. I made plum sauce to a recipe I used again in 2011, and although it lacks the deliciousness of that year (different plums), it should mellow as it matures.

I found a lot of leek plants in pots that I'd forgotten about, so they were squeezed in next to the last of the outdoor fennel, which will be harvested very soon as it's all bolting. I've pricked out pak choi, Chinese cabbage, and celery, all of which are healthy and abundant, but where I'll fit them I have no idea. In fact, this is the lesson of all my years gardening - I never prepare the space first, and often crops fail because I haven't managed to get them planted at the optimal time. It will get easier as beds are cleared and maintained, but I'm not there yet.

Much is still uncertain. The outdoor sweetcorn is in full bloom, but did the female tassels emerge too late? I keep brushing broken off male flowers onto them to encourage pollination, but I won't raise my hopes. The borlotti beans sown amongst them are just starting to flower. Courgettes are robust but not cropping much.

Harvests
26/08 - ~150g shallots*
27/09 - (2kg+ plums)*
29/08? - 85g tomatoes*
30/08 - 35g aubergine*, 300g courgettes*
(unknown date) - (2kg+ plums)*
02/09 - 5g aubergine
04/09 - (630g plums)
07/09 - 730g tomatoes, 610g fennel, 35g celery
11/09 - 345g courgettes
12/09 - 135g spinach beet
15/09 - 565g tomatoes, 65g courgette

YTD total: 18.005kg
*all estimated from memory, photographs, and tweets