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Kitchen garden: October takedown

October 17th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

And now, more fabulous foodstuffs on a shoestring. The kitchen garden is amazingly still giving us a few plum tomatoes and a lot of green beans, although most years these would have been finished weeks ago.

The cherry tomatoes are finished, so I’ve cut them all down and composted them.

This year I’m trying out different seeds for ‘green manures’, to see whether they will partially or fully revive the compost in the planters, and stop weed growth and nutrient loss in the bare patches of ground. It’s a bit late to sow most types of these seeds after the unusually long growing season, but I have some ‘grazing peas’ which are OK to plant in October and November, so fingers crossed.

Canes have been pulled up and cleaned, small pots have been emptied, washed and rinsed out with scalding water, and dead leaves have been raked and swept up. But that doesn’t mean that the garden is shutting down for winter. Far from it…. The big brassicas are only just getting going. The white sprouting broccoli has started its growth spurt, and is already monstrously big like Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors, (shown here with gigantic cat nearby for scale):

And the brussels sprouts should be ready for December. The stems have buttons on them already. Here they are before I took away the dead leaves and gave them a bit of mulch:

The mini-greenhouse is still giving us sweet peppers and chillies, but I’ll bring them back inside to the sunny warm windowsill at the end of the month. Then I’ll plant out my remaining dwarf kale and purple sprouting broccoli seedlings and give the greenhouse a good scrub out with detergent. I’m hoping I can keep a few herbs and hardy salads growing under cover though the colder months, but will write about that later.

Meanwhile, here’s what I brought in at lunchtime: chillies, green sweet pepper, tomatoes to ripen indoors, salad burnet, French beans, fennel, spring onions and radishes. Not bad for the middle of October.

Are you growing any herbs or vegetables at the moment? What have you been doing to get things ready for winter?

Tags: British seasonal food, grow your own herbs, grow your own veg, kitchen garden, windowsill kitchen garden
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Early September in the Kitchen Garden

September 5th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Golightly Gardens has been producing lots of food over the last six weeks, and hopefully most of the current crops will be going strong until October.

We still have lots of cherry and plum tomatoes on the go (luckily no blight round here this year), along with cucumbers, courgettes, French and runner beans, chicory, spring onions, mizuna, rocket and cabbages, and plenty more. The mini greenhouse is home to some very happy cayenne and Hungarian hot wax chillies and Traffic Light sweet peppers, and some Thai lemongrass grown from seed.

Although there’s still a lot to come from what’s already been planted, I’ve found myself looking at this month as the last window for getting some key sowing and planting done. It includes:

Last sequential sowings of rocket, lettuce, radishes etc
Autumn sowings such as Spring cabbage, oriental greens, winter varieties of carrot
Winter-hardy salad and things that might be happy growing in the greenhouse

Since I can’t grow spinach and chard outside thanks to virulent local leaf miner infestations, the indoor windowsill has come to my rescue. There’s baby leaf spinach, rainbow chard and leaf beet growing away happily indoors, along with more tomatoes, dwarf beans, chives, parsley, basil and American land cress. Once the tomatoes have finished for the year, there will be room for lots more microgreens on the windowsill, and the chillies from the greenhouse can come in for the winter too.

I’ve also cleared the gone-over sweetcorn, added new compost and planted out a couple of small purple sprouting broccoli plants in their place. Again, not the most efficient use of space in a small garden, but it’s one of my favourite veggies and tastes best freshly cut. They should grow away quietly over the winter and give a crop in March or April, hopefully.

It’s also the start of the season for planting next year’s fruit bushes and trees, and I’m looking into the tastiest and most cost-effective options at the moment, along with non-edible plants to sow as ‘green manures’ to revive and protect the compost in some of my larger containers when they become vacant in October.

There hasn’t been a glut of anything yet, but I suspect that if we’re in for weeks of rainy, unsettled weather then there’ll be lots of green tomatoes left at the end of September. If that happens, I might get a little W.I. on you and make some spicy green tomato chutney. I draw the line at jam, but chillies and onions and a bunch of spice are right up my street… Does anybody have any nice recipes?

How’s your garden growing? Are you growing any food outdoors, in pots or on a windowsill?

Tags: garden jobs in September, kitchen garden, seasonal vegetables, windowsill kitchen garden
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Kitchen garden update

July 24th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Plenty of green growy things to keep you up to date with this no-space grow-your-own experiment. Throwing a few seeds around, hoping for the best, trying to remember things I’ve forgotten and learning something new almost every day.

There’s still a lot growing on the windowsills, including cherry (Garden Pearl) and plum tomatoes, sweet Genovese basil, baby leaf spinach, rocket and land cress. I was told that all the tomatoes would ripen at the same time with these varieties, but instead we’ve had plenty of fruits each week and there are still flowers here and there as well. That’s much better for a kitchen garden, as it’s better to try for a continuous supply of fresh produce rather than a glut that needs using up or preserving.

I think next year I’ll be less lazy with what I grow and have some cordon type toms, instead of the bushy types. Longer growing seasons and higher yields should make better use of the limited space, even if they aren’t the sort of plants you can chuck in a pot and forget about.

The windowsill is warm, sunny and pest free, which is handy for most plants. The garden has had lots of problems with beet leaf miners which have ruined most of the outdoor spinach, leaf beet and chard, but baby leaf spinach is just fine on the sill. The dwarf beans are happy here too, away from this year’s swarms of greenfly, and still flowering and making full sized french beans every few days.

The windowsill herbs here are mint and parsley, and they’re doing fine. No need to spend stupid amounts of money for very little at the supermarket…

Most of the pots had to be moved outside in the end. There’s almost no topsoil here, but they’re doing OK on the decking. Here we have different types of basil, lemon balm, marjoram, a cucumber plant, autumn sprouting calabrese, thyme and some toms with an incredible amount of fruit on them. There are some mixed wild flowers in there too, to get bees to pollinate the plants, and to attract hoverflies to eat garden pests.

I’m experimenting with some more unusual foodie flavours I’ve never grown before, including giant red mustard, sorrel, russian tarragon, salad burnet and golden purslane. To keep a regular supply of the things we eat the most, I’ve also been sowing a few seeds of parsley, radishes, stubby carrots, coriander and spring onions every couple of weeks in small pots. Very easy to throw together and it really keeps the grocery bills down because you don’t run out of your favourites.

This looks like a raised bed, but it’s just more knackered decking with the wood taken off the top and the rubble removed, plus some cheap compost chucked in. This monster below is white sprouting broccoli, and it’s basically the only thing that the cat hasn’t dug up (I suspect it secretly threatens to eat the cat when I’m not listening). Thanks to my be-clawed ‘little helper’, the almost-raised bed hasn’t been much of a success and the only way it’s going to work is if I plant things in it that are already pretty large. I’ve been growing a few things in modules in the mini-greenhouse so let’s see how the next batch of plants get on.

The front of the decking has an older cucumber plant with some salad leaves at the base, the non-stop courgette plant and some almost-ready salad potatoes. They have all done me proud and been very easy to grow with hardly any care needed.

The back of the decking is where I got a little over-confident, with some sweetcorn, a butternut squash plant and all kinds of beans growing up the trellis (which saved on buying canes). Take it from me, sweetcorn and Hunter squash are not ideal for most small gardens – they’re nutrient hungry and low yield, and thirsty. Don’t try this at home. But the seeds were free and if it all goes to plan they will probably be delicious. To get the best yield from sweetcorn you have to plant it in clumps rather than rows, there are 12 in this picture.

The sweetcorn variety is a new one that grows about 4 to 6 mini sweetcorn per plant, but if you miss the baby corn stage, unlike some others, it goes on to give you a couple of nice fat corn cobs per plant as well. Sounds too good to be true, and it is – to get the baby sweetcorn out you practically have to rip the plants to pieces so although they were tasty I am letting the rest of them become full sized cobs.

Hardly any beans so far - a late frost got half of the first lot and karate kitty got the second lot. Thanks kitty. The borlotto beans are the only variety outdoors to produce anything edible to date. Fingers crossed for the rest of them, which were a late sowing.

There are a few crappy old windowboxes left behind by the previous owners, and these are now filled with herbs, various salad leaves, beetroot, mini-cabbages, fennel, and a few other goodies. There are also some marigolds to cheer the place up and bring in the bees/scare off pests.

The hanging salad baskets have grown a lot of food from very little compost, including red and green salad bowl lettuce, herbs, radiccio, juicy spring onions, and Tom Thumb lettuces. This one also has edible flowers which allegedly double up as pest control (marigold and nasturtium) but I like the splash of colour as well.

That’s all from the garden for the time being. What have you been growing? Any success stories?

Tags: bad kitty, British seasonal food, grow your own herbs, grow your own vegetables, growing food indoors, growing vegetables on a budget, keep this up kitty and I will be serving you up as a side dish, kitchen garden, windowsill kitchen garden
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Kitchen garden catch up

July 5th, 2010 by Penny Golightly

Here’s a quick catch up for what happened with the windowsill kitchen garden last month. First of all, the cherry and plum tomatoes set their first trusses and gave us some tiny toms. The cherry tomatoes ripened quickly and lived up to their tasty reputation, giving us about 14 tomatoes between two plants with more still to come.

The plum romas are not quite there yet, so I can’t tell you if they’re as good as people say. We’re still getting 2 or 3 French beans each week from the dwarf bean plant, and the cut and come again salad pot containing land cress, rocket and baby leaf spinach is on its third round. I’m also sowing sequentially in little pots to make sure we have fresh supplies of parsley and basil.

The cucumber plant went outside. It is very healthy and has given us three chunky cucumbers during June. Here’s what it looked like last month:

People say you should peel outdoor cucumbers to remove the tiny spines, but I’ve found that giving it a scrub with an ordinary pot scrubber does the trick perfectly and with the minimum of waste – the skins are completely edible that way. The baby lettuce round the bottom of the pot helps to retain water, and the peas seem to be helping the cucumber and lettuce grow stronger too. Three crops in one pot, quite handy for a small garden with almost no topsoil.

The courgette not only got too big for the windowsill, it outgrew the mini greenhouse too. Here’s what it looked like in June, when it started giving us two green courgettes per week. It hasn’t stopped since. The small flowerpot is sunk into the compost, which sends water straight to the roots on hot days, rather than evaporating off. We should be OK if the proposed hosepipe ban happens at least.

I did originally say that I wasn’t going to grow potatoes because it’s very hard to make it cost effective – it’s my first year here and there’s no home made compost, and the combination of large container, bought compost and seed potatoes usually works out as more expensive than buying the spuds in a shop. Fortunately I was given some free seed potatoes and a potato grow bag by Beau’s Mum, who had a spare set after a bulk buy:

This is what they looked like directly after their final ‘earth up’. I’m looking forward to a bumper crop of Charlotte salad potatoes some time during July, and there’s also a way to recycle this year’s compost by sowing enriching plants in it during the Autumn and letting it overwinter, so there should be very little waste.

Quite a lot of people have given me free seeds or done swaps with me, so there’s plenty to try out this year, including a pot of borlotto and runner beans, and some rocket. Here they are as baby plants:

I’m also making good use of the things that we find, Womble-stylee, things that the previous folks left behind. This includes a shed full of pots, planks, perspex sheets, plastic window boxes and hanging baskets. The window boxes turned out to be good for lettuces, rocket, radishes, round carrots, pak choi and mini cabbages. Not sure how the turnips and beetroot are going to turn out, we’ll see at the end of July.

All the hanging baskets needed was a water reservoir and a £1 pack of gel retainer liners and hey presto, salad bowl hanging baskets with lettuce, chicory, spring onions, and edible marigolds and trailing nasturtiums: