Tag: harvest

September Sunshine and Storms

September has always been one of my favourite months, usually offering a gentle transition from summer into autumn, as the last of the warmth and light fades into crisp cool mornings and darkening evenings.

It’s also one of the loveliest months in the garden. The hardy geraniums have passed their best but they’ll stubbornly continue flowering until the first frosts, the roses have caught a second wind, the pink aster has flowered and there have been butterflies fluttering around the garden in the sunshine.

In one week I gathered over 600g of cherry tomatoes and my husband has conceded that I was right to salvage the plants he’d given up on. I’ve picked a single sweet sugar pumpkin, as always slugs and snails appear to have gotten most of the others before the skins had a chance to harden. Most exciting of all was harvesting a dozen small cooking apples from our Grenadier tree planted in 2018, enough to bake a pie or eve’s pudding.

Time outside at this time of year feels precious before the cold, dark and inclement weather sets in. We’ve been enjoying trips to the park kicking a ball around with our energetic three year old, gathering fallen leaves to press and acorns for the squirrels that visit our garden. We’re an outdoorsy family but it’s easier to get out when the weather is fair than foul, and I’m determined to find ways to get outside through the winter months.

After the mini heatwave earlier in the month, the weather has definitely turned this week bringing the first named storm (‘Agnes’) of the season, so we’re making ourselves cosy at home until it passes. Take care and have a lovely week. X

Summer Harvest

I’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch lately, but trying to find little joys everyday, and one place that I can always find a sense of purpose and peace is our garden. As summer is almost over, it seems like a good time to reflect on some of the successes, failures and lessons of the growing season.

We’ve built two new raised bed in the front garden, and filled them with soil from digging out the pond. We had dried peas from ages ago, so decided to use them as a cover crop to improve the soil in one of the new raised beds. Next year, my husband plans to turn this bed into a permanent strawberry and asparagus patch.

I find courgettes and pumpkin will grow almost anywhere so I’m growing some in the other new raised bed in the front garden. The slugs got quite a few of the early yellow courgettes so we’ve only picked a handful that made it to a reasonable size. Next year, I might grow them in the greenhouse.

Our oldest daughter is always an enthusiastic little helper in the garden, we let her plant carrot seeds in some tubs, which turned out to be one of our biggest successes. I’ve never had any luck with root veg, but we were all thrilled when my daughter pulled up the carrots she had grown all by herself.

The biggest disappointment were the brassica, the sprouting broccoli, brussel sprouts and kale that all got devoured by the slugs.

We’ve been gathering handfuls of strawberries through June, then a few blueberries and wine berries. The rhubarb has been disappointing, I suspect it struggled with too much sunlight and heat early in the season.

My husband lost interest in the tomatoes; some become pot bound, the ones in the greenhouse were dehydrated while the ones outside were drenched by the rain. I’ve never grown tomatoes before but I’ve taken charge of the survivors. My husband says we’ll get 10 tomatoes if we’re lucky, and I say challenge accepted!

August often seems like monsoon season in the west of Scotland, hot and wet, but I noticed rowan and elderberries, horse chestnuts and acorns on the trees, and I’m so looking forward to Autumn and hopefully harvesting a few pumpkins and apples too. Have a lovely week. X

Our Little Kitchen Garden

KitchenGarden1

I love this time of year when the sun is still warm, there is a slight chill in the air and the leaves are just starting to turn but the evenings are still light enough to tend the garden after work.

Our attempts at growing some of our own fruit and vegetables have been somewhat less successful than our wildflower garden, yet this year was very much an experiment and we have learned some valuable lessons that we’ll be able to apply in the years ahead.

My husband and I are both novice gardeners so we chose what we hoped would be simple vegetables, though we decided against onions, carrots and potatoes as our garden is fairly small. As we weren’t expecting anything to grow, we took a gung-ho approach, planting all our seeds in April and ignoring the advice to start the courgettes and squash off inside.

We were both surprised and delighted by how many seedlings appeared and we’ve had a respectable yield of radish, spinach and broad beans, all of which we plan to grow again next year. Despite not being started inside, three little courgette plants appeared and produced a modest crop, though the squash never surfaced. My dad gave us two little pumpkin plants that we planted in the same bed as the courgettes hoping that they would fertilize each other’s flowers, and two little pumpkins reached the size of tennis balls before the slugs got them. By far the biggest disappointments were the chard, beetroot and peas, none of which got past the seedling stage, and I suspect that overcrowding and a cool, wet summer were to blame.

In the herb bed, the sage and rosemary we bought have done really well, as has the little thyme my green-thumbed friend started off for us. The chives got leek rust but have bounced back after we hacked them back to the soil.

The tayberry, blueberry and strawberries have all done relatively well, and I’ve pegged down a few new runners from the strawberries. We struggled to find a suitable home for the rhubarb my mum gave us before settling for the partially shaded bed with the strawberries.

Over the winter, we’ll plant green compost to replenish the nitrogen and nourish the soil. We’ve started our own compost bin at the bottom of the garden, it makes me feel a little less guilty about the food we waste, but it’ll be a while before the compost breaks down enough to spread over the raised beds. My husband is also planning to build a glass box out of salvaged glass shelves because he wants to try growing tomatoes next year.

Even though our harvest was modest this year and our garden is too small for us to ever be self-sufficient, it has been so rewarding to grow some of our own food, and we’re both excited to start all over again next year. Have a lovely week!