Violet's Garden Diary

Finally planted up the strawberry containers, 6 x each of Cambridge Favourite and Mara in self-watering long rows, plus wild ones in the special strawberry job.

First crocuses opened in the sunshine. Cyclamen are resplendent. Achimenes are sprouting, and so is the second amaryllis.

Harvested some more carrots from the tub, they are thinnish, and a little frosted at the top, but mostly clear of fly – I found a few pretty big larvae, and the chickens didn’t seem to want them. Shame.

The pond is finally officially completed! All the gravel spread around, rockery re-built, with a lot more planting space on a flattish top, rather than north facing slopes. Can’t plant the actual wet banks yet, too cold and they need to settle. But it’s already inhabited – found half a dozen frogs while tidying away the piles of old liner. Also found a whole big family under a stack of folded up landscape fabric by the fence yesterday.

White amaryllis is flowering (one spike, three buds. only two flowers, because of certain clumsy people). The others are not showing much sign. A blotchy aloe is also flowering, and most exciting of all – Harry’s Venus fly-trap! Still in bud, so don’t know what the flowers actually look like yet.

The last few beetroots have been made into the last borsch of last year. They were in pretty good nick, considering they had sat under a foot of snow for a week.

And the chickens are coming…

Harvested two sweetcorn (the ones that were planted out slightly earlier), as the tassels had gone brown. One was still white, the one quite ready, if a little short. Needless to say they did not get as far as the cooking pot.

Tomatoes are slowing down, and also splitting in all the rain. The last handful of green beans, and some Swiss chard for supper.

Harvested the globe artichokes, one huge and two smaller ones. They took a lot longer to cook properly than suggested by Hugh Ferny-Witteringon, but were utterly fantastic. And a hit with the kids, too.

Epsom salts totally rock. Have been watching the yellow blotches slowly shrinking, and pink leaves suddenly acquire green veins, from just the one application. I think the Galante must be particularly susceptible to this deficiency, as they look the worst, and it may have weakened them too much to survive any attack.

And the pond work is finally going to start, hopefully next week, honest gov.

Finally got round to planting out the Kale (just the purple ones). Also planted out Monarda that I got from Hardy’s at the Wisley flower show. It was quite a laugh, although we weren’t really there for long enough, but never mind. The voting for best flower arrangement was a particular hit. And I managed to restrain myself to ONE plant and a couple of packets of seed. And proper Epsom salts for the raspberries, which have now had their first dose. They are fruiting very well so far, although the yellowing between veins is still present.

We’ve had a couple more people have a look at the “pond”, which is now utterly horrific, overgrown with grass and yuck; still waiting for the quote…

Florence fennel is a pathetic disappointment. Most of the beans are over now, a few odd runners to come. Have ripped out the cucumbers, they went all mildewy and the fruits weren’t growing. There is a huge global artichoke, have had to fight the black fly off this one. Apples have been lovely, big and very juicy. Strawberries are still carrying on, although there is increasing evidence of weevil damage.  Sungold tomatoes have been great, and got one or two good ones off the Black Krym, the rest went down with blight. Can’t get through the one tiny row of beetroot, have to give it away.

Overall, looking quite lush and healthy, but badly in need of more weeding, clearing and tidying. The new compost bin is buzzing with fruit flies, which is not great, but hopefully will settle down soon. Have started using the contents of the old one. And have got nearly a dozen packets of seed waiting to sow. This is worse than the spring! Just picking and watering and feeding takes up all the daily time, sigh.

Half the tomatoes blew over and had to be propped up again with lots of extra sticks. Remarkably, the plant stems were relatively unharmed, but all the bamboo canes had snapped off at the base.

Dispatches from the new netbook! I could be sitting in the garden with it, but it’s getting a bit chilly now.

Unfortunately, with too much time spent at work in the last few weeks, the garden has been a little neglected. But: a new, second compost bin has been procured and installed, much reducing the number of bags of stuff sitting around because it didn’t fit in the one-and-only. The first one is now left to rot down completely and be used, probably quite soon. Also found a bag of ready leaf-mould, most likely from 3 years ago.

Fruit and veg status:

• Tomatoes: Sungold picking regularly; the ones near the big toms have much more blight than the ones in a different bed. They also need to be much further apart next time. Two of the big ones have had to be scrapped already, although Black Kryms are ripening on the window sill, while the Purple Russians are rotting from blight.
• Just finished picking the first row of carrots, some slightly affected by carrot fly, but pretty good considering they had no protection at all. Fly Away doing its job.
• Beetroot has been great, somehow still too much of it, even with one tiny row. We’ve been eating it raw as salad with cream and garlic, as well as making borsch
• Purple beans have cropped well too, although they are more difficult to pick than the climbing ones, and they kind of flop over lots, and are more vulnerable to slugs. And the climbing ones do give so much more crop from the same area of ground. Runners just starting, although black fly has found them of late.
• Cucumbers: the remaining Crystal apple have wasted no time in filling up all the space, but have produced relatively few actual new cucumbers out of it. Maybe I am just impatient. The salted ones didn’t have nearly enough salt, but were quite nice anyway, and lost all bitterness; they are also very cute as they are so dinky. A bit like the netbook…
• Purple sprouting has fallen victim to caterpillars, despite my best efforts at netting them
• Kale seedlings are doing well, although I have had to regularly pick off butterfly eggs from them, and the ones I miss hatch and start eating incredibly quickly
• Hardly any lettuce sprouted. Herbs and strawberry seedlings are doing ok.
• Strawberry grow-bag has provided good picking of late; needs religious watering.
• Raspberries seem to be recovering on the magnesium diet. Have had bowls of enormous Polka’s.
• Of the direct sowings, everything probably germinated, but only the spinach survived the ravages of slugs, despite constant sprinklings of pellets
• Have eaten one of the two figs today, it was delicious. Sadly missed the first one, the ants and wasps had already got to it.
• Apples are coming on, not a very heavy crop, and quite a few slightly damaged ones are falling early.

Have dried some basil.

Sown 4x Kale Redbor, 4x Kale Frosty, 8x Lettuce Lobjoits Green (rather old seed), 6x alpine strawberry Mignonette, and a pot each of parsley, coriander and dill.

Planted out a few more sweetcorn yesterday, and purple sprouting a few days before that. They were quite overdue, and there was space ready, but could not get round to it with the endless rain. Tomatoes are being martyred by blight already, especially the big ones, they seem increadibly susceptible.

Broad beans are all finished and out, as are the main crop peas – they did quite well and then suddenly fell prey to something horrible, probably mildew. The sugarsnaps are still going, but only just, and are also quite diseased. Started cropping the climbing beans, beetroot and the first lot of carrots from the raised bed, which are free of carrot-fly so far. Eaten lots of frilly lettuce.

The much awaited Russian swedes turned out to be purple turnips, not at all sweet, so I ripped the lot out to clear the space for something better.  Also just ripped out the Bushy cucumbers, which were doing so well that were spilling out everywhere, swamping everything else, but tasted bitter, especially near the stalk end, despite my best efforts of picking off the male flowers etc. Trying to salt all the ones I’ve got so far, in the hope that it will break down (or at least mask) the bitterness.

Finally sown the next batch of seed: Giant Winter spinach (2 short rows), mustard (both red Frills and the Unwins ruby’s and Gold, that we liked last year), lettuce (mix of Lakeland and Pinokkio, to keep going into the winter), duchy-ever-so-organic Wild Rocket (having ripped out the overly butch garden variety and donated the lot to people who like that sort of thing), and little infills of coriander, parsley and dill.

Raspberries do seem to be recovering on their regime of intensive feeding, so let’s hope that’s all they were lacking. Pruned the apple yesterday, which had some mildew-infected shoots, and a fair bit of aphid damage.

Am planning to do lots of kale in root trainers to be planted out later for winter and spring.