Plantpassion

Garden Clearup - Tidy out the Greenhouse

If like me, you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse to shelter yourself and your small plants in, you may find, that when it gets to this time of year, when the weather has stopped being quite so benign, that your precious space is taken up by all manor of sheltering plants and tools.

 

Cabbage caterpillars (get off my winter veg)

In the past, I havn't had the room to grow winter vegetables, - my tiny raised beds at my last house only had enough room for my precious winter salads and herbs, and Cabbages, Brussel sprouts and Calabrese take up too much room, but this year i've got some space, - so imagine my horror when I saw that the leaves of my sprouting broccoli were looking like this

I looked closer, wondering if my circle of bran around each plant hadn't kept off the slugs, but then I found these

Harvesting and sowing for October

This Sunday, I spent a couple of hours on my veg patch harvesting the last of the late summer crops and putting in more overwintering ones.

My haul consisted of Beetroot, salad potatoes, courgettes, beans, and some wonderful full sized carrots (she says in amazement as it's the first time i've grown any to full size) I also harvested some more of the Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato, which is still going strong in the pot, but the ones in the ground were too far behind, so i've harvested them in the green to ripen on the kitchen window sill.

Totally loving my tomatoes

last week after 8 weeks of school holidays, the topic of conversation in the playground, was... The Weather?, Activities that kept our children out of mischief?  Beaches that were safe to lie on while our children played, - no.. the topic of conversation was tomatoes.- The plant sale that our parents association ran in May which I contributed rather a lot of seedlings to, meant that other parents (and their offspring) had grown tomatoes for the first time. The overwhelming consensus was that homegrown tomatoes tasted better, were sweeter, and were easy to grow, - well i've know that for years, but it's great to know others share my view.

This year I've grown 5 different types of tomatoes, - this first photo is of the larges type, Alicante. It's an old variety, and has grown really well, - it's put up with me not watering it every day, and has produced 3 really big vines of tomatoes, plus a few extra. An extra bonus is that they've stayed on the plants for a long time ripening, so have been really juicy when i've picked them, - great for pasta sauce.

Making more strawberry plants

Oh no not another fruit post, but it is the time of year to make more strawberry plants, so let me show you how.

my strawberry plants fed my son well this year, (and I got the occasional berry) but most of them have now decided to reproduce by putting out "runners" which are mini plants, which are still joined to the main plant. 

Fresh Figs - how to grow and enjoy them

 

Until a year ago I hadn't ever eaten a fig fresh from a fig tree, i'd had a couple of fresh figs in hotel room fruit baskets (back in our traveling on airmiles points days) but mostly i'd only had figs as a dried fruit.

When a client that I visited in Dorking last September picked a fig from their huge tree, that was growing up their house and hadn't been pruned or attended to that year, and I tasted the sweet fruit that you could eat skin and all, I knew that I had to have a fig tree.

So I put it on my Birthday and Christmas list, and my mum came up trumps and got me a fan trained Brown Turkey fig from the Wisley Plant Centre.

When I got it last November, we were concentrating on painting and carpeting the house, so it was ignored in its pot at the side of the house until March, when I bought a large pot for it, and planted it up in a mixture of homemade compost and John Innes Compost.

I put it on our lovely sunny patio, against my Greenhouse, and watered it occasionally, and lo here we are mid august and i've harvest 7 figs from it this week.  The first one swelled overnight, and I got very excited and picked it before it was really ripe, - i've been leaving them a bit longer now I know the deal, and although the late Christopher Lloyd suggests putting a plastic bag over each fruit for 3 days to prevent wasps and birds getting to them, I haven't had time to do that, and they seem to have been ok so far.  I think i've got about another 6 that should ripen over the next few weeks, they suddenly seem to swell and change colour very quickly so it could be less time than that.

There are also some baby figs developing that are currently about pea size, If I was in the Mediterranean these might give me a 2nd crop this Autumn, but here in southern England, i'm very unlikely for them to ripen this side of Christmas, and if they've got to the size of the other figs in this photo, i'll have to take them off as they won't survive the winter.  If there are any pea size figs left in  November, they may make it through to be next years crop.

As this was a fan trained plant, that was fairly mature, I won't have got back my (mum's ) investment this year, - but with four figs costing £2.50 this week at Waitrose, with no named country of origin -i'll be enjoying my English figs for breakfast this week, - I think Honey and yogurt will go nicely.

If you didn't want to buy a fan trained plant you can get a small fig in a 3 to 5 litre pot for under £20 (the smaller the pot, the longer you'll have to wait for figs) Brown Turkey is the most widely available variety, but Brunswick and White Marseilles are often listed and a specialist may have even more. Figs actually appreciate having some restriction at their roots, and will become very large trees if they are in fertile soil.  The large leaves are great for providing shade, but don't forget they are deciduous so you will have lots of leaves to sweep up if you put one over a border or lawn (voice of experience having had a client with a large tree in their lawn.)

i'll leave you with a picture of my plant shading my greenhouse

Harvest time - save money on your food bills

i'm excited this morning as i've harvested my first fig (yes my posts are mostly about food at this time of year) - i've just eaten it with breakfast, - and it was tasty, although I probably should have left it until later as it wasn't quite sweet enough.
As you can see from the photo, i've harvested quite a mixture, and although I love growing vegetables, it's the fruit that i'm really excited about

Top recipe for using august garden harvest

Warm Chickpea salad (original recipe from BBC Goodfood magazine, but i've amended it for me)

This is one of my favourite recipe's for using August vegetable garden harvests. This evening, I used yellow courgette, Cherry tomatoes, and 6 types of herbs (2 x mint, thyme, Parsley, Rosemary and Chives) from the garden. plus pepper and onions (mine have been hopeless this year!)

Successional planting (or what to plant now to keep you eating veg longer)

It's July, the days are long, the sun is hot, and i've just come in from having a BBQ in the garden with a salad of Lettuce, Radishes, Carrots, Mangetout and Rocket as an accompaniment.  I've had lunches of broad beans and peas this week, We've had the first new potatoes, and i've munched my way through plenty of berries, but i'm not content with only having Vegetables from the garden in June to September, - i'm greedy and want to eat my homegrown produce all year round, - so as well as harvesting this weekend, i've been sowing and planting as well.

Out came the Broad Bean plants, and in have gone my Leeks, which i've been growing in cell trays. Out came the spent Mange Tout and Pea plants, and in their place went more beans and peas that have been waiting in the greenhouse in Guttering 

it's too late to sow peas and beans now according to the seed packets, but mine have a 3 week head start from growing in their guttering trays, and I can now just slide them into prepared trenches in the garden.

I've resown coriander, lettuce, radishes and carrots so that when the summer holidays arrive they will already be small crops, and after the summer holidays, i'll start on the winter vegetable saladings of Corn salad, Mizuna, and winter hardy lettuce.

Next week i'll order my late salad potatoes, - they're not widely advertised, but you can buy seed potatoes over the next few weeks by mail order that have been kept in termperature controlled conditions so that they don't sprout, - these can be planted for autumn (and even Christmas day) harvesting, -as my first earlies are just cropping, this is excellent timing for me as they can go back in to my potato bags when the harvested ones come out.

i'll keep you updated of what else i'm sowing, - please let me know what your favourites are so I can add them to my lists

How to plant out and support your Tomato plants

I love homegrown tomatoes, ever since I was bought a greenhouse as a present 14 years ago, i've been stuffing it full of different types and trying out different growing methods. After failing miserably with grobags and growing in the greenhouse borders, I now use ring culture with recycled florists buckets with the bottoms cut out, - these are on their 6th season and still going strong, so well worth seeing if your local florist will part with any.  Although I love growing tomatoes and don't mind the pinching out, I don't like tieing in plants to canes, but also on my 6th season are my gro spirals

these sturdy metal bendy canes can be pushed into the ground or the compost and the growing plants can be trained through the middle of the spiral as they grow, - for the first couple of weeks it is a good idea to check every few days and encourage the plant to grow up the centre of the spiral, - the leaves will still be flexible at this stage and can be moved round to help the stem grow upwards. No extra tieing in is needed.  They also make it easier to see shoots that need pinching out between stem and leaves.

Plants that are Cordons not bush types, - i.e. most greenhouse varieities need their sideshoots pinching out at regular intervals, - this insures that the energy of the plant is used for growing upwards and creating flower buds, rather than creating extra growth stems.
Pinching out is best done when the shoot is small, as in the above photo, and with a thumbnail while the material is soft and parts easily from the stem