the great green giveaway

Well, that went better than expected...

As previously mentioned, I did neglect the plot a bit toward the end of summer, and by the time the August Bank Holiday had been and gone there were a few large marrows lurking under the excessively spikey leaves of this year's courgette plants. Since we have tried, and got bored of, virtually every courgette recipe we could find over the last two years, they continued to lurk in the fridge for a couple of days. They sat there taking up a whole shelf, blocking out the little light, a brooding reminder of my culinary incompetence, before I hit upon the idea of taking them in to work as a 'holiday gift.'  I promptly piled them into a basket and set off, to see what would happen when I let my unsuspecting colleagues assume the responsibility of what to do with them. Surprisingly they all went within a couple of hours, and I was even asked for more; amazing bunch, my colleagues. Suggestions ranged from Zucchini Bread (for the smaller fruits), to an ambitious-sounding marrow and ginger jam, some of which I was promised if the recipe went well (it did not).  I went home with an empty basket and a light heart, finally relieved of responsibility for the blasted things and having made a change from all the packs foreign sweets and shortbread that appear in the shared kitchen at this time of year.

I very much enjoyed reading this humorous article on marrows in The Telegraph today, it seems I'm not alone in wondering what the hell to do with the things. People all across the land must be having the same thoughts. I think I will quietly forget to plant any courgettes next year. No-one really knows what to do with them anyway.

STOP PRESS: Apparently you can also use courgettes as bear repellant. You  heard it here first:
Woman fights off bear with courgette

Autumn bargains

I've been letting the allotment manage itself for a few weeks, and to not much ill-effect thankfully. I've been very busy re-styling my back garden at home, and won another award for my front garden over the summer too. Luckily a couple of hours weeding and mowing and it looks quite neat again. Perhaps because I started my allotment at this time of the year, I always see the end of the main summer harvest as the start of the new gardening year. So here we are again.

This year's plan is to be a bit more careful where I source my seeds etc. I tend to buy online from the biggest suppliers but I want to be a bit more frugal.  First off, seed potatoes. I read in a magazine that there are only a few companies that actually grow seed potatoes, and they do sell direct - so I'm going to try and track them down, as when I've ordered from Thompson and Morgan I find they take ages and don't give me an ETA.

Second, this is a good time of year to visit the garden centre, just before they get their Christmas stock in. My favourite local centre, Wyvale Woburn Sands, are running an offer for their loyalty card customers of all packets of seeds 50p each! At that price, it makes sense to buy what they've got and not worry too much about specific varieties. They also sent me a £5 voucher recently, so I went and filled my boots with 10 packs of seeds, net cost, FREE! As a result I will be growing mangetout peas and dwarf green beans in 2011, along with a selection of flowers for cutting. Can't go wrong really, all of them have 2012 'best before' dates. The garden centres just want to have fresh stock at this time of year.

One packet was onions - I'm going to try them from seed. I'm always anxious to do some gardening at Christmas when it's too cold to go outside and I've heard boxing day is the best day to plant onion seeds.

Finally I'm going to grow some garlic from my own bulbs this year instead of buying them in. It's supposed to be the best way, and I've got plenty spare.

The wonder of peas

My pea harvest is now over. I have been growing a variety called 'Kelvedon Wonder' for three seasons now, and I have realised where they get their name, it is because I am always left thinking 'I wonder what's happened to all my peas.' Time for a change next season I think.

A ridiculously small harvest again this year, I suspect mainly due to drought. No pea moth attacks this year though, due to my ingenious mesh cage, created from bamboo canes, held together with old drinks bottles to stop the canes poking through the net. Excellent fine grade insect mesh purchased online from Harrod Horticultural. Best not to think about how much time, effort and money went into growing about 5 grams of peas.

This is an ex-worm. Thhhhhpppp!

Well I found out why my supply of worm fertiliser has dried up, as my worms have shuffled off this mortal coil, are pushing up the daisies, have f**king snuffed it. So off to the worm farm for more worms. Meanwhile my nettle tea seems to be doing the trick.

Also today I just thought I'd write that I'm sick of raspberry picking, every time I go to the plot to do something there are hundreds more ripe raspberries to pick before they go over-ripe. I shouldn't moan, really, should I, but I've only got a small freezer. Just wizzed a load of them up with some ice cream to make fresh raspberry ice cream. Yum.

Garlic Harvest

July is the time to harvest garlic, as the foliage turns yellow.  Here is one of my first, a variety called Iberian Wight, next to a golf ball to show how big it has grown. Pete, who has the plot opposite mine, said it was the best he'd ever seen (I promptly gave him a bulb to take home for that). That was very nice of him but to be honest, I can't remember seeing anyone else growing garlic anywhere near by, so not sure what he based that on... it is pretty good though.

June update: Underground biscuits and the beans have gone nuts

I earthed-up my potatoes recently, to ensure a greater depth of soil directly over the plants. I used my azada to draw soil from the edge of the beds to the middle. After the first couple of scrapes I found a bit of plastic in the soil - no great surprise there, I often find buried rubbish - so, assuming it was an old compost bag I gave it a tug. Up came half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. I'm not sure if I can adequately describe my shock at that moment, since they were actually quite fresh, a good 4 months off their sell-by date. I went and showed them to my neighbour, who was equally bemused. I can only assume some animal (squirrel? fox? the beast of Wolverton? The Moog?) has buried them there for safe keeping and will be disappointed to come back and find my potatoes instead.

Overall the plot is looking very healthy at the moment. The broad beans, in the ground since last autumn, have been threatening to produce useable pods for some time now. I kept checking but they were always too small, until about the second week of June when they finally reached maturity - all at once. So I have a bit of a broad bean glut on my hands. Luckily they freeze well whilst I find things to do with them! You can see clearly in the picture below the notches on the edge of the leaves, this means the plants have suffered the attention of 'Pea and Bean Weevil' again. These little beetles' sole purpose in life is to eat peas and beans. I wonder what they ate before I started planting peas and beans on this plot?

I have been quite careful to defend my crops from attack this year, but have still made some mistakes. My kohl rabi has been decimated by something, all leaves stripped to stalks. I assumed slugs, and liberally applied pellets until the same thing happened (quite literally, overnight) to my nice row of radish seedlings. they were coming up well, after I companion-planted them inside a ring of garlic. I called in my neighbour John for his opinion, and  he suggested birds are to blame, probably pigeons. This makes sense, and on checking my reference books I drew the same conclusion. So, more netting and wire have been employed, plus my rather jolly scarecrow has been brought out of his winter hiding place to look after everything when I'm not there.

Worms and horse manure soup

The worms have gone a bit quiet in my wormery, producing less liquid feed than I am used to. Really I need to face up to the job of emptying the whole stinking, festering mess out and returning the worms minus the compost they've made, but for fairly obvious reasons I've been putting that job off. Therefore I have been trying other ways of generating my own fertiliser. The first is to collect some of my comfrey and stinging nettles and submerge them in a bucket of water. I am led to believe the resulting 'tea' is a good tonic for plants. Second, I have put some horse manure in a trug and covered that with water too. Drawing off the resulting brown ooze is not for the faint hearted, and only marginally beter than tipping out the wormery, but I've started mixing that in to my watering can at a rate of about 1/4 brown ooze, 3/4 water. I got the idea from Terry Walton's book 'My Life on a Hillside Allotment', although the technique is not described in detail he does mention making fertiliser from bracken and sheep manure. Hopefully my version will do some good and not totally burn my plants, time will tell.