2012 - disaster or not?

A lot of people have been saying that this year has been disastrous for gardeners and I have to say that the 2012 growing season has been difficult at times. For some crops it has been a washout but overall my quantity of food produced is roughly the same as previous years. Not as much of some veg. as I would have liked but good crops of others. Onions, beetroot, parsnips, radishes and carrots were better than average while potatoes, cucumbers and tree fruit were very disappointing. Strawberries were almost non-existent but the rasps are still producing and I still have tomatoes and peppers ripening in the greenhouse.

The plot still has enough to keep us going well into the new year but this is largely a result of my continual small sowings, made to ensure there was always something to plant when the space became available. When that eventually runs out we still have a big chest freezer packed with stuff so not really a disaster from my point of view. Tricky, demanding and sometimes downright difficult but gardeners are nothing if not resilient and optimistic.

This year’s harvest from greenhouse, plot and assorted containers is detailed below. Figures are approximate as I don’t weigh every single thing that I grow and I’ve estimated weights of what I still have in the ground. For those of you who think metric just divide by 2.2

Potatoes 170 lb
Onions/shallots/garlic 55 lb
Roots 55 lb
Peas/beans 35 lb
Brassicas 60 lb
Tomatoes 44 lb
Cucumbers/courgettes 24 lb
Peppers/aubergines 9 lb
Leeks 30 lb
Soft fruit 25 lb
Apples 60 lb

Salads: With the greenhouse I can manage an almost year-round supply of lettuce, spring onions, radishes and assorted salad leaves and micro greens. I like the idea of always having something fresh to pop into a sandwich, even if it is just a few sprouted seeds!

kale after its recovery from almost being stripped by caterpillars

autumn jobs

Bright but chilly autumn days mean that there's lots to be done around the garden and things are dry enough to move around without sinking up the ankles in mud.

First priority is gathering up leaves for the leaf mould cages. My own garden can't produce enough but there are plenty of trees in the village and along the lanes so when I take the dog out I always carry a plastic sack with me. It's easy enough to scrape the leaves into little piles with your feet and then just scoop them into the sack.

For some reason I didn't gather enough leaves last autumn to make up the shortfall due to settlement in the cages and will probably not have enough good stuff next spring. That won't be a problem in future as I've added longer poles to the cages and wound an extra width of netting around them to double the size. Thankfully dry leaves are not heavy and it's easy enough to lift the sacks over the top.

I'll also need at least 10 sacks of leaves to add to the cages as they settle but I've roped in some of the village children to rake them into piles on the greens then all I have to do is bag them. (the leaves, not the children!)

Another major task in readiness for the new season is making sure all the compost is doing what it should be doing. The two daleks are full to the brim and populated by thousands of brandling worms which are doing a fantastic job of reducing it all to dark crumbly goodness.

The open heap is now over four feet high and growing. I just keep piling stuff on and making sure there are plenty of air pockets to both aid decomposition and provide a winter home for the wildlife. Hedgehogs and toads especially seem to like the protection offered by the heap.

Spent potting compost from my many containers is either spread across the beds or piled on the heap. One thing I'm careful about is not not putting any material that has grown potatoes onto the new potato bed or into the daleks. That way, when I'm preparing my potato mix next year, I can be pretty sure there's no diseased material around to cause problems.

I find that getting as much work done as I can in the autumn allows me to concentrate on the actual growing process the following year. Hopefully it won't be quite as bad, weather-wise, as this one.

apple day

A day of glorious autumn sunshine and, as it was also apple day, I decided now's the time to harvest this year's crop. It wouldn't normally happen all on one day but only one of the four trees actually had any fruit this year so out came the steps and up I went.

Here we have it, 34 lbs of James Grieve and when I add in the windfalls I've been gathering over the last few weeks I'd say 50 lbs+ of smallish apples.  For anyone wanting a variety that performs well in the north-west I'd recommend James Grieve as it has given us a good crop every single year since we moved here.

After sorting out the keepers and the juicers/cookers I put them in their respective cardboard trays to be dealt with later. In previous years I've brewed big batches of cider but with only one variety it's not going to happen this year. Even the crab apple harvest is very poor so I'll leave what there is for the local wildlife.

And keeping with the fruity theme the autumn rasps are still producing big juicy fruit. Not as sweet as I would like but I guess that's down to the lack of sunshine.

I know I go on a bit about how easy I find growing parsnips but I've been amazed at my own results this year. It must be that the weather has been perfect for parsnips but I never expected to produce a monster like this.

I broke the root getting it out but even so it weighed in at 743g, well over one and a half pounds.  Parsnip soup, anyone?

cheeky chap

I keep a bucket at the back door to collect kitchen waste before dumping it in the compost bins. Normally I have it covered but this lunchtime I left off the lid and went back later to find this little fella in the bottom and looking a bit bedraggled.

young vole

He couldn't have climbed up the slippery outside of the bucket so I assume he must have jumped in from the privet hedge. Anyway, I lifted him out and sent him on his way to find an alternative food source.

Wildlife interlude over and now back to growing things. I bought a couple of bags of overwintering onion sets the other day and planted up some into containers in the greenhouse with the rest going outside. The greenhouse ones are close spaced to be pulled as salad onions early next year.

The picture was taken earlier and the week and already the first green shoots have appeared. These are in one of those supermarket mushroom trays.

In the greenhouse the big clean-up is still under way and I've managed to get half of it washed down with disinfectant. I still have the chillies and an aubergine plant in there but once they're finished I'll get on with the other half. Pots and seed trays are all neatly stacked but not cleaned yet. That's a job I like to do outside on a sunny day and I might have a long wait for one of those!

Out on the plot I still have beetroot, cabbage, carrots, chard, kale, leeks, lettuce, pak choi, parsnips, swedes and turnips so we won't starve for the next few weeks.

side-splitting parsnips

Some of you will know that I grow my parsnips in bottomless plastic flower buckets and generally get very good results. Today I was quite astounded when I lifted one of the buckets to find this amazing mass.

The roots had actually split the side of the bucket and it was only held together by the thicker rim at the top. One slit with a knife and it popped apart.

This is what came out, the ruler is twelve inches long!  Oh, and the variety is 'Dagger F1'

After trimming off all the thin ends and excess root I was left with 2.96kg or (6.5lbs) of parsnips from the one bucket. That, to me, is an exceptional yield  and one which has prompted me to start a little competition for next year. No prizes but I'd like to see just how big a yield of any fruit or veg can be achieved from one 10 litre plastic flower bucket.

clean up begins

It's that time of year again. What a daft expression, surely it's always that time of year, whatever time of year it is.

But I digress, it's time for the autumn clear out and clean up. For some reason over the year I just seem to accumulate mounds of stuff which ends up jammed into any odd place I can fit it. Under the potting bench, in the shed, behind the shed, hanging from the roof......

By stuff I mean containers and lengths of wood I find on the shore, empty compost bags, things I bought and never got round to using.....

So, with the tomatoes and cucumbers now finished and removed from the greenhouse I actually have room to turn round in there and make a start. I want to get it clear and disinfected before I bring the overwintering salads, etc under cover. The glass is quite dirty as well and it obviously benefits the plants to have as much light as possible in the winter months. The only problem with all this is that I hate throwing anything away so what normally happens is that all the pots/containers get sorted for size then stacked inside each other. This frees up space, makes everything look tidier and I get to keep all my rubbish.

That's what I've been doing for the last week or so with a bit of weeding and pruning when it hasn't been raining.  Not very exciting but then gardening isn't all excitement and anticipation. Anyway, doing something is infinitely preferable to sitting on my backside.

Today's picture is evening light on Skiddaw and the Northern Fells. While I was down on the marsh  taking pictures I found a broken scaffold plank. I'm sure I can find a use for it somewhere!

final sowing frenzy

I took advantage of some decent weather last weekend and had my final sowing frenzy of the season.

In went:
lettuce (winter gem and loose leaf)
rocket
spinach
turnip
pak choi
spring onions
carrots (Amsterdam sprint)

All but the turnips are in containers so they can be brought into the greenhouse over winter. They don't do much during the coldest months but once the sun starts to climb a bit higher in the sky they're off for some super early crops in spring.

Also pricked out some winter gem lettuce into individual pots which will be their permanent home.

These are in a rich compost but they will need a liquid feed boost to help them along once they reach a decent size.

Because the potato crop was later than normal due to the weather I had nowhere on the plot to put the first of my leeks so they were planted in an old plastic basket that I found washed up on the marsh. Sunday's chicken dinner had home-grown leeks which, although not large, were perfectly good. 

These will probably all be used before the first hard frost whereas those on the plot will stand through the winter to give us fresh right through to next spring. With much stuff harvested and not much left to go in it's now a time to catch up on all the jobs that were delayed from the summer. Some overdue pruning of the plum and cherry trees was number one as it needs doing before leaf-fall in order to avoid disease. I don't make a list of things to do but rather just wander round the garden and do things on a random basis. Perhaps I should be more organized but why break the habit of a lifetime?