Autumnal Colour

At this time of year the fruit and veg patch is definitely beginning to look a bit sorry for itself. The broad beans, runner beans, peas and courgettes have finished their cropping and have been removed. The tops of the main crop potatoes are dieing back and the Autumn raspberries have been picked and their foliage is turning yellow and beginning to fall. Amidst the greens and yellows the vibrant autumnal purple red hues of the blueberry bushes push themselves to the forefront of ones cognisance. Outdoor gardening is drawing to a close.

Runner Bean Ali.

I wasn't intending to take out the runner beans for a few weeks yet but storm Ali brought my plans forward. As in previous years I grew this year's vines up a nine foot high wigwam constructed of ash poles. Rather shortsightedly I had placed this growing frame within four feet of the greenhouse. When I was tramping around the garden at eight o'clock this morning it was very evident that the leafy vines were presenting ,"Ali," with a punchbag that was not going to be able to resist the storm's gusty punches for very long. Rather than have several panes of glass needing replaced I decided to crop the beans and dismantle their scaffold. Most of the pods were quite young and tender but I did discover several very mature pods which had escaped my earlier croping. These have yielded me with enough seed beans for next year's planting. I must remember to locate the wigwam further from the greenhouse!

Beetroot Store

Vegetables that can be stored add considerable value to the garden and the ideal of self sufficiency. Beetroot is one of those vegetables that should be lauded much more than it is. As a fresh vegetable it is available in NI climes from July until early October. Thereafter a mini clamp protects the excess crop from the extremes of winter weather and extends the climatic availability of the crop as of course does pickling. The yellow and candy striped varieties do I think look particularly good in their pickling jars. Perhaps another, "boiling," is required.

A Paucity of Cucamelons

I have to concede that my experimental growing of cucamelons has not been a wholehearted success. They proved to be quite easy to germinate and after transplanting the seedlings into three inch pots and growing them on for about three weeks I was able to plant the small vines into twelve inch rings which I had sunk in the greenhouse border. I planted a total of twelve vines - two per pot and erected a bamboo wigwam in each pot for the vines to climb up.

All the literature which I had read told me that if you can grow cucumbers then you can grow cucamelons. Both thrive in the same conditions and require the same husbandry. Taking this advice to heart I planted the cucamelon vines next to my six cucumber plants. The latter have done well. To date I have pulled an average of seven cucumbers from each of my plants and by the end of the season I would expect to have had in excess of fifty cucumbers. 

The cucamelon vines have been very vigorous in their growth and there have been hundreds of little flowers with embryonic fruit behind them. The problem is that the vast majority of these have failed to swell and have fallen off the vines. I am coming to the conclusion that the flowers have not been fertilised. My cucumber plants are self fertile. I have noticed that there are just not as many bees and other pollinating insects in the garden this year. 

So far I have pulled the grand total of seven cucamelons so definitely not a productive use of greenhouse space. I will have to decide if it is worth continuing the experiment next year.

Coloured Beets

T'is that time of year when the vegetable garden racks up the quantity and variety of its produce. I should probably grow more beetroot than I actually do. I like their sweetness when roasted and a shredded beetroot adds colour to a summer salad. 

Thinking back to my childhood I have memories of my mum pickling beetroot for winter usuage. She would also preserve boiled beets by cutting them into cubes and placing them in jelly along with several cloves to add flavour. I have to concede that I didn't like jellied beetroot. It must be nearly fifty years since I dissected cubes of purple beetroot from their clammy gelatin coating. The memory still makes me feel slightly queasy.

The archetypal beetroot is purple in colour and global in shape but there are cultivars which are white, orange, pink, yellow or striped and many beets are cylindrical in shape. I sowed a packet of mixed coloured beet seed for my first sowing of beetroot this year. Today provided me with my first meal with beetroot as the principal vegetable.

Cucamelons

For the past few years I have grown a small fruiting aubergine in the greenhouse in addition to the usual tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. If I am honest I don't really know whether I like the taste of the eggplant's fruit so this year I decided to replace the aubergine with an alternative indoor crop.

The plant that I selected was the cucamelon which is also known as the Mexican sour gherkin. Germination was practically one hundred percent successful and occurred within ten days of sowing. This left me with more plants than I probably needed. Not wanting to consign any of the young vines to the compost heap I planted two per ring, so sixteen plants. I expect that I have over planted by fifty percent but if so my error is not obvious as yet.

The mature fruit are described as being grape size. So far there are plenty of small yellow flowers but the fruit have not yet begun to swell. The books tell me that the fruits taste like cucumber with a tinge of sourness. Not a very appetising description! One feature of the cucamelon which does appeal to me is that it doesn't have to be grown as an annual. The roots can be lifted in the autumn in the same way as dahlias and over wintered before replanting them in spring.

Pea Green

I sowed my second batch of peas of the year yesterday.. Unlike the first batch I sowed them directly in the position that they will crop in, - hopefully at the beginning or middle of September. The first sowing of pea seeds took place in the greenhouse in March. They were sown in modular root trainers. I suppose that I ended up with about one hundred plants. These were planted out on either side of a stretch of netting wire in May.

In between today's heavy showers I was able to pull the first pods of the year. Their contents have now been consumed. Fresh peas from the garden are so much sweeter than their supermarket cousins which almost invariably have started on the downward slope to starchiness.

Nut Harvest

It is now three years since I planted four cob trees in the area which I insist on calling the orchard. Clearly this is the wrong nomenclature so far as these trees are concerned but as the remainder of the trees are all fruit trees it seems more sensible to talk about an orchard rather than a combined nuttery and orchard. This is the first year that there have been any nuts to pick. All four trees had a small crop, some very evidently smaller than the others. I was pleasantly surprised with the taste of the nuts and I am hopeful that next year will provide a much enhanced crop.

 

Courgette Chutney 2016

September's vegetable glut has necessitated the unearthing of the large chutney making saucepan from the cellar. It hasn't been a great year for vegetables but the courgettes haven't objected to the lack of sunshine and the very temperate temperatures. I have been picking ten or twelve courgettes every week for the past couple of months. With the best will in the world this is a number that I can't consume as courgetti, stuffed or fried.

Today saw the third batch of 2016 courgette chutney being manufactured. The template receipe for today's culinary experiment came from the National Trust's, " Jams, Preserves & Chutneys." This tome was originally published with an asking price of £18.99 but it had been discounted to £6.00 by the time I purchased it from the shop at the Argory this summer. The original receipe had the grated rind of two oranges as an ingredient. With no oranges in the house I substituted lemons for oranges, (I have never found a gin that needs an orange!). With a large supply of apples available from the roadside tree I decided to add in a pound of diced apple. The quantity of courgette was also increased slightly. Accordingly the following were the ultimate contents of the saucepan. I should point out that the courgette was salted overnight and rinsed under cold water before being tipped into the saucepan.

4 lbs diced courgette

1.5 tablespoons of table salt

1 lb of chopped tomatoes

0.5 lb of chopped onions

1 lb of sultanas

1 lb diced Apple

grated rind of two lemons

2 lb granulated sugar

Half pint red wine vinegar

Half pint malt vinegar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon.

 

Redcurrant Delight.

This time last year the produce from the redcurrant bushes was feeding the local blackbirds and thrushes. Once there was even a blush of red on the fruit they were spotted and devoured by my feathered friends. There was no sharing of nature's spoil. They saw red. They saw an easy meal. They stripped the bushes of their berries much more efficiently than any mechanical harvester. Now it is my turn to have the upper hand. The fruitcage is in place and the avaricious birds are kept at bay. I pulled about a pint of red currants this morning so probably something in excess of a pound. It does seem rather strange talking about pints of fruit. I expect that a few small pots of redcurrant jelly now require production.

 

Egg Plants and Chillis.

A bit late in the year but I have finally planted the aubergines in their final positions in the greenhouse. As in previous years I plumped on a variety which promises large numbers of small fruit. Todays's efforts also resulted in the planting of fifteen peppers of which nine were sweet peppers with the balance being of the chilli variety. All of these have been planted in pots sunk in the greenhouse border. I have several chilli peppers remaining and I expect that these will end up in pots on the greenhouse staging.

 

Tomato Growth.

 

It is now five weeks since I planted the tomato plants in their rings in the greenhouse. At that stage they were probably about eight inches high. Since then they have put on more than two feet of growth. I am always surprised at how quickly tomatoes grow. I shouldn't be. It's not that they are catching me unawares. After all I have been growing them for almost fifty years. But there is something so luxuriant and vigorous in their growth that never ceases to amaze me.

The plants have all thrown their third trusses and the lower trusses have begun to set their fruit. I will now have to start feeding them. Every three or four days I have been removing the side shoots so as to ensure that all the plants' energy goes into strong vertical growth and the setting of more fruit. Although I have what would be described as a large domestic greenhouse it doesn't have the height to allow me to get more than six trusses per plant even from the row next the central path. At the present rate of growth I would expect to be nipping out the leaders by the middle of July by which time the first fruit should be just about ready to pull. Tomato sandwiches beckon.

 

Fruit Cage Constructed.

The blackbirds and thrushes of the neighbourhood are not enamoured of me. I have now done what I had been threatening to do for three or four years. I have erected a fruit cage with the aim of retaining all my soft fruit for myself rather than providing my feathered friends with a self service restaurant.

To be truly accurate I assisted in the construction. A friend who is a builder/carpenter together with his son provided most of the brains and brawn in the operation. I did as I was directed. In any event the cage is now in situ. It took almost seven hours from start to finish, somewhat longer than all of us had anticipated. It is I suppose quite large measuring six metres by five metres and now houses my raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries, red currants and blackcurrants.

 

Prickly Plant Flowers

I have always found cacti to be rather fascinating plants. Maybe it's because they clearly aren't from our climes and represent a bit of a challenge to grow well and to prevent them succumbing to our winters.

Three people fostered my interest in these non native flora. The first was a foreman gardener by the name of Bill Porter. As a young boy between the ages of five and eleven I used to spend my holidays and free time following him around as he worked, asking questions, watching what he was doing and occasionally plucking up the courage to ask if I could have a go at the task in hand. He was always patient and always willing to answer my questions. The second was an elderly friend of my father called Ludwig Schenkell. Ludwig had managed to escape Austria shortly before the Anschluss. He was passionate and very knowledgeable about cacti and had three heated greenhouses devoted to them. I understand that when he died in the early 1980's that he left his collection to Belfast's Botanic Garden. The third person in the triumvirate was an elderly first cousin once removed who lived just outside Dublin and whom I visited on a regular basis during my university days. She donated her books on cacti growing to me along with her collection of mammillaria.

 

Tomato Planting Time Again.

Monday was hot. Too hot to do anything in the greenhouse until the sun had sank in the sky and the glare of light on glass had dissipated. However with the comfortable warmth of eventide I was able to plant out my tomato plants in their rings. It is just about eight weeks since I sowed the seed. I grew on two varieties this year Shirley (an F1 hybrid), and Ailsa Craig. The seed packet for the former only provided ten seeds whilst I ended up with about sixty seedlings from the packet of Ailsa Craig seeds. I think that it almost deserves the designation of heritage variety. It is now some fifty years since I first grew this particular tomato. I do have to concede that I did have to avail of some adult assistance for the first couple of years.

 

 

Bubble Wrapped Tomatoes

Last year I lost several seedling tomatoes thanks to late frosts. This year I have been covering the developing plants with sheets of bubble wrap at night. To date this has provided the necessary degree of protection. If the weather forecasts can be believed I am hoping that tonight will be the last time that I will have to create my bubble wrap tent in the greenhouse for this year.

Another fortnight and the tomatoes should be ready to plant out in their rings in the greenhouse border. Although the plants are no more than six inches tall I am already recognising that distinctive tomato plant aroma whenever I slide back the door and enter the shelter and warmth of the greenhouse. Summer may be still in anticipation but the tomatoes are its harbingers.

 

Orchard Days

 

My orchard is nearly complete. Finally! Only one space remains. At the moment this lacuna is more accurately described as a potential space as a pile of pea gravel occupies the area. By next spring the gravel will be used up and I will have to decide upon an arboreal companion for the present residents. This late winter/early spring I have planted a mulberry; two damsons, (merryweather) as well as four apple trees, (two bramleys and two eaters). When complete the orchard/nuttery will have a total of twenty eight trees. I suspect that it will be a few years yet before I need to start thinking of ways to use up surpluses! It will be good to be able to knock another couple of items off the supermarket shopping list.

 

Spring Has Sprung.

 

Easter may have been early this year but I don't think that Spring has been. It is only in the last couple of weeks that the daffodils and other spring flowers around the garden have been providing what might pass for a floral display. The winter months have been very mild albeit extremely wet. That leads me to the conclusion that length of daylight must be the most important determinative in the flowering of bulbs.

Most of my daffodils, even the minatures in the rockery, are traditional yellow ones. Mr Wordsworth would approve. Come Autumn time I think that I will invest in some white flowered varieties so as to provide some colour contrasts in the early months of 2017.

 

Caged Fruit

Up until now I have foregone the benefit of a fruit cage for my soft fruit. There didn't seem to be a great need for one. It is only in the last couple of years that the blackbirds have garnered more fruit than me. I have two short rows of raspberries as well as three gooseberry bushes, three large blackcurrant bushes, a red currant and a blueberry.

I have determined that I will have the benefit of all of the ripening fruit this year. It seems therefore that I must invest in protective measures. I will need a 6m X 5m cage. One of my friends recommended that I should contact a firm by the name of , "Knowle Nets." They provide standard shaped cages with dimensions available in half metre variables. They can also manufacture customised cages. All of the cages are two metres high. Depending upon whether one elects for aluminium or steel fittings and the quality of the netting prices would range from £336 to £518 so not an inconsiderable price. I will have to check on the carriage costs.

 

Nut Year?

It is now three years since I planted four cob trees in the area that I have decreed will be an orchard. Perhaps this will be the year that I will have a crop of nuts. The trees seem healthy enough but despite the presence of both male and female flowers on all four trees no fruit have set in the years to date. There are quite a few hazel trees in the nearby hedgerows so on the face of things there is no shortage of pollinators whether from the cob trees themselves or their wild cousins.