Clearning up after the summer




SFG after an intensive tidying-up.

Spent a happy two hours in the garden clearing out the overgrown nasturtians and doing the odd bit of weeding. Picked most of the last of the purple runner beans - the few remaining ones I'll leave on their netting to dry for replanting next May. It all looks MUCH tidier. I'd neglected it sadly over the summer.

The small green containers are slug traps. I put beer into them and leave them standing around the beds. They also trap other beasties to great effect.

The grids on the two large 4x4 beds were almost rotten, so I removed them and will replace them with new ones in spring. The reason why they're rotten and the others aren't is because the slats were just a bit too short and some ended up resting on the soil, which of course meant that they retained the damp, unlike the others which dried out. I must be more careful next time. This bed still has some autumn lettuces, a few leeks and some chives and purple basil in it (which seems to like the soil better than the usual green basil, for some reason. I think the normal basil prefers a drier soil and this soil retains the moisture for longer.)

I might even decide to use lengths of plastic washing line instead of wooden lathes - it might not look quite so nice, but I can make loops at the ends and loop round the screws at 30 inch intervals along the wooden frames. Then I can remove them more easily than I can the wooden grids before the winter. The practical effect will be the same.

 The other bed with the grid removed. All that remains here are a few garlic plants, some rocket, which I have harvested several times, and which keeps growing back, to my satisfaction, and some lambs' lettuce, which I grew from seed a few weeks ago. The tall plant is a Mexican cucumber (a present from a pupil) which has the tiniest cucumbers I've ever seen, about the size of a kumquat and very prettily striped, pale and dark green. They're edible and rather crunchy. I'm thinking of pickling the remaining ones.


A 2x4 with more lambs' lettuce coming up.



We've got 33° in the shade here at the moment, so the SFG is looking rather wilted despite copious draughts of water every evening. It's only the top layer that's dry though, and all the plants seem to recover well.  The SFG on the right is empty - I harvested all the lettuces this morning, which were shooting upwards, and have planted garlic cloves in one of the squares. I need to go to the garden centre and get some more rocket seedlings, as the ones I bought in spring are ready for picking. I haven't done as much in the garden this year as I did last year, but at least I've managed to have a couple of courgette plants,  a cucumber and a butternut squash, which, as I grew it from seed, rather late, I don't know how well will do. We'll see.

This one has a broccoli plant, an artichoke and some nasturtians in it. I cut off the top of the broccoli and am gradually seeing a few small shoots coming at the sides. The ants seem to love the artichoke, for some reason. I thought that it would flower this year - it's already a year old - but I've not seen any flower budding so far. I'm going to get some more bark chippings and repair some of the worn patches where, after a year, the weeds insist on breaking through, despite weed cloth and bark chippings.

This one, for some reason got off to a bad start - I think it was the deer which jumped over the fence from the wood and nibbled all the tops off my mange-tout before I got round to covering them up. But interestingly, the bush tomato plants dropped a lot of seeds, which are now coming up, so I've got a few extra tomato tiddlers for free. They're rather late in flowering of course - we had  such a long cold winter and spring - but I've moved the one which is furthest on, to the terrace, in the hope that we'll have a few tomatoes which won't be mulched by rain falling on them, which is what happened last summer. Rain, and the garden sprinkler system, which is impossible to keep off certain areas. That's why I have the tomatoes, peppers and aubergine on the terrace this year. 

Two big courgette plants, the cucumber and the butternut squash - dwarfed by the zucchinis as yet, but eventually it'll be massive. I couldn't believe how enormous it grew last year. I'm going to have to train the branches on wires and poles over the potato bed, I think. The 'pots' are coming on well, although I planted them rather late - they're in flower anyway, which is a good, so when they've wilted I'll start digging them up.Right are my carrots!! I didn't sow them in a SFG bed this time because they just didn't like the soil - too much nitrogen (horse manure) and they seem to be doing much better in the normal sandy soil. I haven't pulled any yet. 

Donna's Square Foot Garden

I am really sorry to report that Donna's Square Foot Garden is no longer going to be airing from Destin, Florida, USA, as they have moved to the mountains, having put their house (and garden) on the market after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These videos have been a source of inspiration to so many and I'm sure that many will miss their presence. Perhaps once Donna is settled in her new home, there will be a new series. Let's hope so.

Square Foot Garden: tidied up for new planting and sowing. Plus we've dug a new bed for potatoes, which one isn't supposed to grow in the same place for at least two years. Better to circulate every three, from what I've read, but I'm not sure that we'll be able to dig another bed for potatoes next year - we'll have to see.

The wooden frames have weathered a lot in the last year and lost their new look, but I prefer them this way. I've planted broccoli and kohlrabi and two sorts of lettuce, and sown spinach, chard and beetroot. In half of last year's potato bed I've sown carrots and onions in the hope of getting a better crop than last year. Apparently they don't like too much nitrogen, which they got from all the horse manure which I dug in, and they like a sandier soil - so I'm hoping for better results. In the other half of the bed will go a courgette plant. Last year's under the peach tree got so little light that it really was hardly worth the one large marrow which resulted. I'll dig lots of compost in and see what happens.

Last year's artichoke plant didn't survive the winter. I was too busy writing that I neglected to mulch it and the frost killed it off. But it took up rather a lot of room in the one square, that it may be a blessing in diguise.

I'm hopeful of getting a lot of jostaberries on the bushes which I transplanted last spring. There are loads of flowers on them this time. Neighbours told us that they wouldn't survive the transplanting, but they've done very well.

Plus I've put up another raised bed in stepped style on our terrace to grow herbs and lettuces and carrots. Carrots need deeper soil, so I'm experimenting with them this way this time, as well as trying them out in sandy soil further back in the garden.

Hard cheese with cranberries

One of two recent cheeses I made in November - one with sage and this one with cranberries. Both were better than previous ones, even though this one is a bit bland. Toasted cheese with this one, though, is scrummy - slightly sweet. I bought a 10l saucepan so that I could warm bigger amounts of milk than just the 4,5l which I'd been doing previously, and the resulting cheese size is far more satisfactory, and probably more cost effective. Some herbs - sage and lovage, which I cut back in early October to dry and keep. I have to shred the leaves and jar them soon. Should have done it long ago but writing the book on Jezebel was taking up all my time last autumn.

I also harvested the stevia rebaudiana plant, dried it, and then pounded the leaves to powder. It's now in a little pot. I use it for putting on muesli instead of suger or honey. It's amazingly sweet.

Black Woodpecker

Saw a male Black Woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) this afternoon while out for a walk in the woods. Its pitch black plumage and deep red crown were incredibly striking against the white of the snow on the ground, where it sat, watching me as I approached, having interrupted its meal of grubs, which it had been pecking out of a rotten pine stump. I stood watching it for a good ten minutes only about 20 feet away. It didn't appear to be afraid, and finally hopped onto a pine tree close by where it perched, quite still, at one moment observing me out of one white-rimmed coal-black eye and the next, hiding behind the tree stem, until I finally moved away.