Harvest season

So I guess you're all wondering where we have been these past couple of months?! I started a summer job in the middle of July so with both of us working a full week we were not quite so up for spending our weekends tending to the garden.
It was also extremely hot and dry at the start of the summer so without an outside tap we struggled to water everything sufficiently and kind of lost heart a little. The rest of the summer, however, has been pretty wet for Norfolk's standards, futher dampening our desire to look after our crop.
As a result we let the garden do its own thing for a while leading to it becoming rather overgrown in places and not really knowing what kind of a crop we would get.

We (O.K, mostly Matt!) have spend this last weekend clearing the garden ready for the winter which does already seem to be on the way. We have ended up with quite a good harvest but I'm sure it could have been better if we had kept a more beady eye on things:
We dug up one of the three bags of potatoes which produced enough to fill an old sweet tin although they were quite small.
Most of the peppers had gone off but we managed to get a handfull before they turned which I used in a vegetable lasagne tonight.
The sweetcorn wasn't quite ready for picking so we only kept one cob but we'll remember for next year!
There was another bag of carrots which should keep us going for a few weeks.
We cut some of the spinach leaves but its a cut and grow plant so it should keep going for a while and also found a marrow growing off the last courgette plant.
We have pulled up the onions and hung them in the kitchen, they are quite small so either needed to be planted deeper or spaced further apart.
Finally we still have a squash plant which we should be able to pick soon and some brussel sprouts and more potatoes in the ground for the winter.

Looking back we can see that plants tended to grow better in the soil bed rather than the grow bags. We will also probably not do as many tomatoes next year as they went a little wild and became quite unmanageable once we stopped having time to keep an eye on new shoots. We have also kept the herb plants we bought as most of them are perennials and the fruit plants (strawberries and blueberries) as they should do better next year.

We probably won't do much over the winter as it gets bitterly cold here but planting will definitely resume in the spring!

We have now been able to enjoy produce from the garden with almost every evening meal for the past week or so! We have plenty of mangetout, french beans and courgettes as well as a variety of fresh herbs and sweetpeas which we have been picking to put in vases - they smell lovely! 

We think the onions are almost ready to come up and can see some tomatoes growing on the plants. They have gone a little wild though and tend to fall over as the supports we have got don't seem to be strong enough. The pepper, melon, cucumber and spinach are also doing well and we had the last of this batch of strawberries with some home made scones, very yummy! 

We can also finally see some cauliflowers growing amongst the leaves although we have also spotted the dreaded white butterfly so don't know how eatable they will be - watch this space for the verdict! We'll try and put some photos up soon aswell as the garden looks very full and lovely and green. A friend that came over exclaimed at how we had managed to keep so many plants alive so we must be doing something right!

In bloom

Well we now have our first actual courgettes growing - two of our courgette plants have been sending out baby courgettes with lovely big yellow flowers on the ends. We have about half a dozen on each plant which is great. In other news the tomatoes are adjusting well to being in grow bags and the bean plants are beginning to flower.

Another busy saturday out in the garden! During the week we noticed some mini courgettes growing and lots of flowers on the mangetout which are climbing up the netting well. The strawberry plants have sent out lots of new leaves and some more flowers so we are hoping for a second crop after the current ones have ripened. 

On saturday afternoon we headed out into the garden and got to work. Matt put 9 of the tomato plants into growbags as well as some of the pepper plants from the greenhouse and has made a prototype watering device from an old squash bottle. Another sweetcorn plant was ready to go into the soil aswell and we have taken the herbs out of the greenhouse as the coriander and thyme have started to flower.

Whilst Matt was busy with the plants I put on an old pair of gloves and de-weeded the soil bed and gravel strip. The gravel had become seriously overgrown with weeds despite a black protector sheet underneath the stones. It was satisfying work although I found two slugs, one of which I almost picked up along with some weeds so Matt fed them to a frog that was hiding next to the fence! We also discovered some baby caterpillars munching on our cauliflower plants and a bigger, fatter green one and lots of eggs on a couple of the plants! We picked up the caterpillars we could see and put them out the front door for the birds and have brushed off what we could of the eggs so hopefully the trauma of that will stop them hatching. We will see what happens over the next few days but might need to get some form of pest control.

A Rainy Day in June

Well we've had some pretty wet weather recently with a couple of thunderstorms aswell so most of the plants have shot up. The cauliflowers and potato shoots especially enjoyed the watering but we moved the strawberries and some of the smaller plants out of the bowls that they were sitting in in case they drowned, quite a contrast to the previous few days where everything was incredibly thirsty due to the hot sun!

Luckily there seems to be no evidence of slugs since the downpours apart from a snail that tried to get in the front door, most traumatic bringing Fran flashbacks of slug invasions when left at home alone in the holidays! 

Some of the tomatoes are ready to go into growbags now so we are experimenting with making drip irrigation systems from old plastic bottles. We are also looking for good homes for some of the tomato plants to go to so let us know if you would like one!

This week we found that the tomatoes on the lower greenhouse shelf were growing upwards instead of making new leaves because they weren't getting enough light. Marvel if you will at the cleverness of nature but it gave a new urgency to needing to build the second greenhouse. This has now finally been done and the tomato plants are all in the new greenhouse at the bottom of the garden next to the shed. 

Some of the other greenhouse plants - sweetcorn and peas - have been put into the ground along with some extra mange-tout that we had been growing in a seed tray. The potato sets have also been planted into three separate sacks half full of compost, which you gradually fill up as the leaves grow taller. 

Over the bank holiday we had some unusually heavy rain and a bit of hail so were a little concerned for some of the plants but it turned out to just be a shower and it all seems to have survived. Hope you have had some nicer weather!

Our garden in May - An Illustrated Update

Now that it is getting much warmer the plants are all enjoying the weather and shooting up nicely. A lot of the plants have come a long way since being inside on the windowsills so we are more hopeful of a decent crop soon! Here is an illustrated update of whats been happening...

First of all we bought two mini greenhouses as we were running out of space inside and we have built and filled one of them already! Everything is growing much better in this new environments, the peas (top shelf) and sweetcorn have done especially well and are almost getting too big for the greenhouse so they will be hardened off and planted in the soil before too long. You can also see some pepper plants which have been repotted in individual pots, our tomato plants and herbs. We have found that takeaway trays are perfect for putting pots in so that they don't get overwatered

This is a view of the whole garden from the house, you can just about see the soil bed on the far right and the grass needs cutting, any volunteers?!

Below are the onion and shallots sprouting lots of lovely green shoots, the mangetout which we have set up some netting for as they are beginning to send out tendrils and the cauliflower plants which are still growing lots of leaves but no vegetable yet!

This is the two lettuce seed mats that we have grown so far, it's the only thing that is ready to harvest and is very tasty which is hopefully a good sign for the rest of the garden!

We planted a couple of gourgettes in a grow bag a few weeks ago and as you can see they have grown lots more leaves and seem to be holding up well being outside.

This next one is the first pot of carrots that we planted, the second planting is also growing well but needs thinning out. Hopefully there are lots of mini carrots growing beneath the soil!

Ooo yes the sweetpeas are doing really well, they too have sent out tendrils so we have tied some string between the supports to encourage them to grow up the poles as at the moment the tendrils are wrapping round adjacent plants! We also got some plant ties this morning so have tied some of the outer stem to the poles and string.

Below are some pictures of our fruit plants which have been busy growing flowers - various types of strawberry plants, a Chandler blueberry plant and one of our tomato plants although the latter doesn't have any flowers.

This last picture possibly explains the lack of slugs and pests in the garden although there are plenty of spider! We noticed this little frog whilst doing the pea netting before it hopped under next doors shed.
Other than that the sprouting potatoes are just about ready to be sown so we will be doing that this weekend and as well as some weeding and setting up the second greenhouse.