Garden update

[halojedha]

 I neglected the garden for a couple of months apart from watering it. Here's how it's faring:

Tondo courgette - We had a little glut of fruit in June.  Then the hot weather made all the plants crispy and a lot of the leaves died. I've finally pruned them and the recent rains has perked them right up, so they're all flowering now and starting to fruit again. Hoping we get another little glut before the season ends. 

The fruit are beautiful and round and sweet and delicious. If you leave them too long they turn into tiny footballs that go squishy when cooked, with visible white seeds and tough skins.

Black beauty courgettes - none of these were in the big planters, so the plants haven't had enough space in their pots. We got one dark little courgette which was delicious, but nothing since.

Meruhen Squash: one plant died. The other has thrown out an epically long tail which is about eight feet long. One tiny fruit so far, on the dead plant, which only got to about three inches wide. We harvested it but haven't eaten it yet to find out what it's like. Two new green fruit right on the end of the long vine - no idea if they'll ripen before we move in ~6 weeks.

Blauhilde beans - flowering and beautiful, scaling their poles. One has reached the very top! I'm harvesting a handful at a time as they come through and using them in pasta and salad. They're beautiful dark purple which go dark green when cooked, and the taste is exquisite. Tender crunchy pods with small pale beans inside.

Green beans - never made it. Courgettes blocked their sun and they got stunted. No harvest.

Spinach - thriving. Loads of little plants. I'm using them as cut and come again, harvesting the biggest leaves each time, and they grow back valiently each time. We've had three harvests so far. Leaves are a little fibrous and benefit from being cooked. We've also been using them in pesto. Baby leaves would probably be more tender.

Cabbage - growing well, again I've got lots of different plants in small tubs. I've had a few cut and come again crops, but recently they've been monstered by something (caterpillar? Snails?) so we didn't get the last lot of leaves, the bugs did. The leaves are tasty but need quite a lot of cooking -, they're too fibrous to eat raw.

Tomatoes - finally fruiting, have had the first handful of tiny red fruit and they are SO sweet and flavourful, my goodness. Having a bit of a tendency to split on the vine which is annoying. Lots of green ones coming through!

Strawberries - less good crop then previous years. The dwarf strawbs did well for a while but then suffered in the heat. They're perking up after the rains. The bigger strawbs were chosen by the cat as her designated outdoor litter tray and have suffered for it. No fruit since that started happening, although the ones we got before that were lovely. Not sure how to put her off.

Mint - voluminous, we've been making tea, getting s bit aged and long in the stem now.

Sorrel - doing well. I've not had it before, I like it. We've been using the leaves in salads and pesto. They have a fresh, sharp, savoury taste.

Tat choi - three plants all seemed promising, but succumbed to aphid infestations. Very susceptible to wilting and suffered in the heat. Haven't got to eat any.

Basil and Thai basil - have had a couple of rounds, second one is doing well, first went to seed a little while ago.

Coriander - first round bolted before we got to eat it, second round wilted in the heat. Going to plant the seeds and try again.

Rocket - have had two rounds and been cropping steadily. Incredibly flavourful and the plants survive well even after being thoroughly harvested.

Dill - haven't managed to get any to survive long enough to eat

Lettuce - not seen a single seed germinate for some reason

Might plant one more round of rocket and basil this month, but otherwise I'm going to be winding things up and getting ready for the move.

Suggestions for October planting in the new house?

 

Comments

[juliet]

I think tomatoes splitting on the vine suggests insufficient water? (Tomatoes need LOADS of water and in recent weather I'm not sure it would have been wholly possible to keep ahead of that tbh. Mine often split too.)

If you chop the mint stems short they should regrow from further down the stem / from the root, btw.

And coriander bolts like mad in almost all situations, wretched stuff.

Autumn planting! Nov for broad beans and snow peas if you want to overwinter them (means you get an earlier crop in the spring); and for garlic. You could try doing another catch-crop of rocket. Kale can be planted in the autumn, too (and possibly some spinaches?) and tends to get less attacked by caterpillars at that time of year IME.

[ewt]

Cat: get some bamboo skewers (the kind you might use for skewering vegetables before cooking them on a barbecue) and put them into the soil (sharp side down) in a grid with 5cm spacing. Make sure they're sticking out far enough to be taller than the cat's legs.

Making sure there are other, designated cat facilities available outside can also help, I think.

Autumn planting: garlic, elephant garlic (actually a bulb-forming leek), shallots, round-seeded peas if you can protect them from mice and birds nomming them, broad beans ditto.

[ewt]

Oh -- there are winter radishes, too. And you might get a crop of some quick autumn ones in the new place.

You might get away with "Quarantina" cima di rapa (available from Franchi Seeds, which is allegedly ready in forty days, depending on warmth.

If the new place is somewhere you're interested in keeping perennials, autumn and winter are the time for transplanting fruit trees and the like.

[watersword]

Psst, your cut-text is borked.

I always plant bulbs in the fall, but that's decorative rather than edible.

[kaberett]

<3 Thank you for the update!