The Harvest

[jacey]

The Harvest
(No not the Buffy episode, but the garden one...)

So today I have done bugger-all except spray myself with 'Deepwoods Off', brave the mozzies and harvest stuff out of the garden. This is my first year of growing veg and I'm so pleased with myself...


This pic says it all, really. Dinner tonight is roast chicken with home grown new potatoes, broad beans, runner beans and carrots

Except... Have you any idea how to safely control a massive infestation of cabbage white butterfly on broccoli, and brussels? The caterpillars have all but ruined my enthusiasm for the broccoli (purple sprouting) because I'm really not sure I've got all the little bastards out of it. Apart from that...

Potatoes are not plentiful, but they're perfect - nary a blemish. Carrots and broad beans are a delight and the runner beans are just coming in and look like they'll be terrific. I've got enough for dinner today, but they are covered with flowers and plenty of little beans on the way.

The swedes are swelling to great-big-enormous-turnip proportions, but I tried one as a baby and it was so strong we couldn't eat it (and I like swede). I'm assuming they'll be a bit better for letting them mature and the frost get at them. If not I've grown the wrong variety - but at least I know I can grow swede and will experiment with a milder variety next year.

I planted the beetroot way too close to the broccoli and brussels and they have suffered from lack of light but I'm hoping that they'll perk up now that the broccoli has been cleared. I can see the roots swelling, but they're still small. Next year I must remember to plant stuff further apart because it grows like buggery. By next year we'll have two more raised beds in production. (Three beds this year, five next. The raised beds certainly help when it comes to weeding.)

The onions are swelling well. Unfortunately the seed pack says they are not brilliant 'keepers' so I may have to chop and freeze them once they're ready rather than plait them and dry them. Since I've grown them from seed instead of sets I'm congratulating myself that I have onions at all. I think I might try red onions next year - preferably a better keeping variety.

My tomatoes have become a family joke. They are enormous plants - six or seven feet tall - growing in the porch. I had two of the earliest ones (seeds planet in February) fruiting from mid-June and those two plants (in the living room in front of sourhwest-facing patio doors) have finished now - after yielding steadily for the last six weeks. But you take your life in your hands when you pass through the porch. BB wants to know if they are tomatoes or triffids.


I think they are very interesting, but stupid...

And anyone who doesn't get that is too young to remember Rowan and Martin.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Back when we gardened, we used BT (Thuricide or similar brand) biological spray for cabbage worms on broccoli -- no idea if it or equivalent is available in Britain. Still had to pick the occasional boiled worm out of the finished product. Didn't affect the flavor, but some visitors found them unaesthetic.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I've shaken so many caterpillars of the purple sprouting broccoli this afternoon that it's quite put me off eating it. Even when I thought I'd got them all, I blanched the broc in boiling water and shook the spears hard against the edge of the sink and got a couple more crawlies out - one of them quite big. How did I miss it first time? Their camouflage is brilliant.

But the potatoes, beans and carrots (and tomatoes, of course) are making up for the broccoli bigtime.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Heh. Did you forget to pinch out the growing tips from the tomatoes, or are they just natively giant?

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

No, I pinched out the growing tips after the fourth truss and I take of all the side shoots, too. Maybe they are a bit 'forced' as they reach for the light, but they are in a porch with a clear roof and two (mostly) clear walls. The stems are pretty strong and not overly leggy. The outdoor ones (planted at the same time and put outside in June) are not really doing much, though. That's not surprising, however, as we're 1000 feet above sea level and even in summer get some ferociously brisk winds.

The little cherry tomatoes in the background of the bottom shot are '100s and 1000s'. Supposedly you can put them in hanging baskets and you don't pinch them out at all - just let them spread. The tomatoes are tiny, but you can pop them whole, just like sweets, every time you walk past.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

So they are just giants, huh?

I grew little cherries in hanging baskets, for a couple of years. They were lovely: sweet & flavourful and tumbling over the sides. Why on earth do I not do that any - oh, right, I remember. The cats ate the seedlings, before they were big enough to go outside. Sigh...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I like cats, but I couldn't eat a whole one.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

A very impressive harvest!

[ferlonda.livejournal.com]

Well done! The tomatoes are amazing. I remember when you bought the bags to put them in. Very wonderful indeed.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

The potato bags worked well, too.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

We had to just go round and squish caterpillars last year, inspiring our co-gardener to new realms of apoplexy.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Well, at least in ensures not feeding accidental meat to vegetarians via the broccoli. Some of the leaves I yamked off today had ten or a dozen caterpillars lined up like trains in a mainline station. I'm not too bad with caterpillars because they're slow and stately, but in general I don't like things that wriggle and squirm. (Yes, I know, a gardener who can't bear to touch worms is a dead loss, really... and maggots give me the heebie jeebies.)

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Netting with enviromesh is really the only cure for cabbage white - either that or picking off every darn caterpillar by hand. (we buy enviromesh from the allotment society - it's a very find mesh netting that keeps out the butterflies)

We netted all our brassicas this year and it made a massive difference.

Well done on the sweede, we've done very well with beetroot but fail totally with sweede.

I'm impressed that you grew onions from seed. I haven't tried that yet.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

You seem to have green fingers. I'm envious - I can't keep a pot plant alive and I loooove tomatoes and the smell of them when they are growing is one of my favourite scents I think.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I've never thought of myself as having green fingers - but in all honesty I've never really applied myself to serious gardening other than for brief and soon diminished fads. I'm OK at planning and planting but I soon find things to do elsewhere when the digging and the weedeng call. (Motto: When the going gets tough, bugger off. Or: No pain, no pain.) With the raised beds, however, the weeding is much easier on my back and I have found myself wandering up the garden for five minutes at a time to pull a few weeds. On a daily basis that seemed to be enough when the seedlings were small and once they grew they virtually overcame the weeds themselves.

I'm pretty good at things like fuchsia cuttings but I don't have too many indoor plants because our house is dark and cool at the front. I've concentrated on putting the tomatoes in every suitable window space(and the seedlings on the south-facing bedroom windowsills.

The trick to tomatoes seems to be huge pots (some of mine are in big black buckets with holes drilled in the bottom) and lots of water. Once the plants got big I gave them a litre and a half a day (most days) and sometimes a splash more when the sun heated up the porch to tropical levels. Plus tomato-feed once the first truss had set. And nip out the side shoots (of most varieties) concentrating on just one stem per plant with four good trusses.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've never heard of enviromesh. Do you have to 'tent' it above the brassica patch or is it enouch to throw it over the plants as they grow and peg it down? Since we have a raised bed the tent thing would be possible as we could build dupports into the wooden sides of the bed.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

You need to tent it. You can use fleece as well, but it isn't as robust. (I believe they may have used old sacks in hte past)

You'll find enviromesh for sale via the web if your local gardening/allotment club can't get it. It's expensive, but it will last a lot more years than fleece. If you build a good 'tent', then you'll be able to move it between beds as you rotate the brasscias.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks It gets retty windy up here even in summer. Hopefully the holes are big enough for the wind to blow through so it doesn't act like a sail.