growing vegetables on a budget

September and October in Golightly Gardens

October 2nd, 2011 by Penny Golightly

It has been an interesting couple of weeks in the kitchen garden, mainly because we’ve had a bit of a heatwave which has had a positive effect on some of the plants.

For starters I was convinced there would be no aubergines, then this happened:

The big butternut squash ripened, but it somehow got bruised so I had to cut it down and cook the undamaged bit. There were lots of small fruits that never made it to the flowering stage, then the plant decided to throw out seven healthy looking buds – I knew there was no hope of them all ripening, one would be a miracle at this stage, so I nipped four of them out last month and hand pollinated the remaining three to see if anything grew.

The Japanese onion squash (red kuri) had the same problem of fruit buds going yellow and not opening, so only one pumpkin grew on each vine. I’ve cut them today and put them on a windowsill indoors to start the ripening process, where the skin thickens and the flavour sweetens.

Both buckets of beans were still flowering in late September, but I think we’ve had the last proper serving out of them now.

The courgettes are still going, although they’ve had a bit of downy mildew (more about this another time). I’m hoping we might get one more to grow into a marrow, but we’ll see.

The crookneck squash plants are doing well…

… so are the cucumbers, after some hand pollination to make up for their well-hidden female flowers and lack of male flowers.

The tomatoes are still a law unto themselves, so I’ve had to cut some of the fruit and put it in the sunniest spot of the garden to see if more of it will ripen. Unfortunately it does look like blight has set in to a couple of plants in the last three or four days, but our neighbours have had it for several weeks already so all things considered maybe we had a good run here compared to most.

I’ll be writing about autumn garden tasks and planting soon, and catching up with the windowsill kitchen garden too. Might have to do a short series about garden pests and diseases as well, if there’s time.

How’s your garden growing? Are you thinking ahead to next year yet?

Tags: British garden kitchen, grow your own herbs, grow your own veg, grow your own vegetables, growing vegetables cheaply, growing vegetables on a budget, hand pollinate vegetables, kitchen garden, mildew on courgettes, seasonal fruit and veg, vegetables in season
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Vegetable garden update: End of Feb

February 27th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

There isn’t much to do in the garden at the moment, apart from tidying up a little, keeping an eye on the sprouting broccoli and spring cabbages, and giving the soil in the raised beds a good dig to finish breaking up the soil after the winter frosts.

Lots of overwintering herbs, salads and greens are sprouting away in the mini greenhouse, which is doing its job really well, and will eventually provide some overspill space for any windowsill plants that get too big for their boots in late Spring.

Today I’ve been digging, lugging bags of compost around and doing one batch of planting. Late February seems to be a good time around here for planting Early Onward and Sugarsnap peas, including a few extra ones to eat as pea shoots in March and April salads.

These have both been grown in pots, and I’ve sown a variety of different radish seeds in between the peas as a catch crop, plus some winter-hardy lettuces to add ‘living mulch’ and help keep the soil moist. The three different plants are traditionally thought to grow happily together, and my gardening experience last year seemed to bear this out.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the budget for the year, and it’s going OK so far:

The £10 for seeds has all gone now. If I need anything else it’s going to involve bartering or swapping. Or asking nicely for a few Sunshine F1 kabocha squash seeds for my birthday – hint hint, Beau. Subtle, huh? *cough*

My £20 compost budget has gone too. I managed to find a special offer on some nice peat-free organic compost at Harrod Horticultural, plus a voucher code and some cashback. Managed to get 250 litres of the good stuff, very pleased.

The remaining £10 for ‘general garden stuff’ has had £4 spent so far. I used £2 to get some extra-long garden canes so I could grow French, runner and borlotto beans on wigwams, and a few extra to train climbing squash plants up. Another £2 went on some heavy duty weed fabric. This is partly to keep weeds down in the raised beds, but mainly it’s a last ditch attempt to stop M-Cat digging every living thing in the ground up (and crapping on it as the final insult).

What’s left? There’s only £6 to go for the rest of the growing season. I have plenty of pots, bird-scarers and supports, so all that’s really needed is a little fertiliser and some tomato food. Nipping out later to get a packet of Growmore granules from Poundland. Rock and roll. Woo.

I’m going for a very low maintenance, high-yield bunch of crops this year, and have been looking into all sorts of ways to stop the soil in pots drying out. I now have various water reservoirs, recycled heavy duty plastic soil covers and living mulches sorted out, and am looking forward to lots of healthy eating and not too much associated faffing about.

Edited to add: now spent the last few quid on some Growmore to rake into the soil and prepare it for planting in a few weeks, plus enough vegetable and tomato feed to last until the Autumn. Hoping to keep the garden pesticide free, and will be planting some of the three packets of wildlife-friendly seeds I’ve kindly been given to encourage lots of pollination and natural pest control.

Are you growing your own this year? What are you growing? Do you have any tips for low maintenance (but cheap) gardening? Please let me know!

Tags: bad kitty, British garden kitchen, cheap fruit and veg, grow your own veg, grow your own vegetables, growing vegetables cheaply, growing vegetables on a budget, kitchen garden, money saving tips, seasonal fruit and veg
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Dealing with garden pests and diseases: Pigeons

February 11th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

I mentioned on Wednesday this week that I was going to write a few articles here and there about garden pests and diseases, and how to deal with or get rid of them cheaply and hopefully also organically where possible.

There was a little competition to see whether anyone could work out what had caused the mess below. This particular pest is a problem in January, February and March on brassicas, and in the Spring they like to attack pea plants as well.

… and the answer was pigeons. More specifically one very cheeky wood pigeon that is now so fat it can hardly fly, the greedy B. Here’s some more of his handiwork.

So, one birdy seems to have made short work of some of the sprouting broccoli and the last sprout top. I was amazed he had the nerve seeing as we have two free range cats, one of which is a good little hunter. Well, birdy’s smarter than you might think, because he swoops into the garden in the morning while the kitties are inside having their breakfast.

I’m not fretting too much though. First of all he doesn’t seem to be inviting his mates over, and secondly he hasn’t attacked the main growing points of most of the plants he’s pecked. Also, he seems to have gone for the weedier plants and has mostly left the big strong ones alone.

The RHS website suggests that you can shoot pigeons, but that isn’t practical or safe in a tiny garden and besides it seems cruel and pointless – other birds would fly in to replace him soon enough. I was rather hoping that my cats would scare most birds away but they seem to have spent most of February asleep indoors instead.

So it seems that prevention is better than cure. In future I will be guarding my brassicas more carefully, and maybe also my peas. One of the best things you can do is to use netting, but unfortunately one of the cats insists on getting tangled up in anything like that whenever I try to use it.

I’ve had to improvise with what’s lying around, including bubble wrap and string for the smaller plants (looks terrible but seems to work).

At the suggestion of Alys Fowler I’ve also used some upturned hanging baskets to protect the growing points, and this seems to be working too. What I like best about this is that the green wires and green twine don’t show up so much, less of the ‘municipal tip chic’ look.

It was time to bring in the last of the sprouts at the weekend, so I left the non-useable remains of the sprout top out for the pigeon to peck at in the hope that this will take his mind off the other plants.

One more thing I would say is if you suspect pigeon damage, take action quickly, in case they come back en masse later. A hungry flock of winter pigeons can strip your plants back to the stems in a few minutes. Prevention is better than cure and you can’t rely on nearby cats to keep the pests away in cold weather.

So there you have it – cheap and easy ways to stop wood pigeons eating your cabbages, broccoli and pea plants.

Do you have any other advice about how to keep wood pigeons out of your garden and stop them eating your crops? Please tell me all about it!

Tags: allotment gardening, common garden pests, dealing with garden pests, get rid of pigeons, grow veg cheaply, grow your own veg, growing vegetables cheaply, growing vegetables on a budget, how to stop pigeons, keep wood pigeons off garden plants, kitchen garden, money saving tips, stop pigeons eating crops
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Garden pests and diseases, and how to deal with them

February 9th, 2011 by Penny Golightly

Every new garden has its success stories, but it also has its problems. Here’s a quick overview of some of the troubleshooting I’ve had to do in the last 12 months.

Many problems can be overcome by chucking expensive chemicals at them, but it isn’t a guaranteed fix and you wouldn’t necessarily want to eat your veggies afterwards.

Let’s start with a little ‘murder mystery’, shall we? Look at the picture below and guess what disease or creature caused this damage to this sprouting broccoli plant.

Competition: The first correct ‘Diagnosis Murder’ answer left in the comments section below will win a mini-collection of vegetable seeds suitable for growing in a small garden. (UK entrants only). The answer will be revealed on Friday morning so you’ll need to be quick.

The garden has been very productive for the most part, but there have been problems with animals of all sizes:

pets (not all of them mine)
ants
blackfly and other aphids
slugs and snails
foxes
assorted birds
butterflies and moths
beet leaf miners
wasps

Amazingly there was no carrot root fly, but that’s probably because I did some companion planting and stuck to the rules about thinning and harvesting. I’ll write about those on another occasion.

Plus there have been problems with diseases, mainly:

Downy mildew
Rust
Mosaic virus
General stem rot

The one thing I was most worried about was blight, but the area I live in escaped somehow so we ended up with strong and healthy tomato and potato plants. That could have been because we had some long hot stretches over the summer, or it could have been blind luck.

I’ll be writing about all kinds of garden pests and diseases – and how to cheaply stop them destroying all your crops – over the next few weeks, as the gardening year starts to take shape. On Friday I’ll begin by tackling our mystery ‘friend’ from the crime scene above.

Have you had problems with any garden pests or diseases? Did you manage to deal with them without using harsh chemicals? Any tips for other growers?

Tags: allotment gardening, British garden kitchen, British seasonal food, common garden pests, common plant diseases, container gardening, dealing with garden pests, get rid of blackfly, get rid of slugs and snails, grow veg cheaply, grow your own vegetables, growing vegetables cheaply, growing vegetables on a budget, keep cats out of your garden, keep this up kitty and I will be serving you up as a side dish, seasonal food
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