2015 summary report

What's been good and what not so good.

Garlic.  -  brilliant.  Easy to grow and comes up a cracker.  Self sufficiency beckons.

Broad beans. -  shaky start but pretty good in the end.

Courgettes -  again a bit shaky but a good crop in the end

Potatoes. -  good but we don't eat enough of them.

Strawberries.  -  OK but not as good as the first year.

Tomatoes. -  disappointing compared to last year.  Trouble ripening.

Sweet peas. Brilliant   Pity you can't eat them.

Sweet corn.  Waste of time.  Need to start them earlier and keep them in the greenhouse for longer.

Artichoke. Nice plant.  Never tried to eat them, let them turn into flowers

Rhubarb.  Good

Blackberries.  Brilliant.  Freezer full of them.

Leeks.  Not so good but still time I guess.  Reports of leek moth but I don't think that's the problem.

Manure

Been quiet for a while but it's all kicking off with the arrival of manure.  Sharing a pile with Alan again, although a 'half' is still a massive amount.  Did a shift of 10 barrow loads early on in November to break the back of the job and then realised that was a barely a scratch on the pile itself.  Digging it in rather than just spreading it - on Alan's advice.

No pictures here, as it's just too unpleasant - not smelly, just mucky!

15 barrow loads yesterday (OK, OK, 14 - I just couldn't face the last one) and 5 today in the wind and rain.

I estimate about 25-30 barrow loads left (sigh).  Started a sub-pile on my plot as I can't face digging it all in.

Ripening tomatoes (continued)

Picking and ripening as we go and a get a nice tone scale from green to red

How to ripen tomatoes

Trying out the banana trick here. Bananas cause other fruits to ripen quickly because they give off a gas called ethylene (apparently).  So you put a banana next too fruit you want to ripen and, hey presto! (apparently).

We'll see.  If these look like working after a couple of days I'll try it with a load more of my green crop.

Plum tomatoes

Please go red!

Last potatoes

Last of the Nicolas harvested (actually a week earlier than the date of this post).  Very few bad 'uns.

Black chillis

September sun warms

Chilli plants garden growing

Black fruits to turn red?

Potato Hash Browns

Good potato harvest this year (Nicola's - you can't beat them) and I'll be scouring for potato recipes to make sure we eat them all.

Here's the first which Tom and Rachel were making during this morning's Skype call.  Hash browns - grated potato, egg, flour and mustard - randomise quantities of each.  I decided to make them into patty-shaped things which probably spoilt them a bit as they weren't cooked so well inside so, a bit stodgy in the middle. I'll try them loose next time.  Interesting that they egg was a double yolk, the first I've ever seen actually.

First ripe tomato

Plenty of green tomatoes, in the greenhouse and in the open air, but here's the first ripe one.  Framed with a few other bits and pieces including some garliic bulbs that have opened a bit and won't store for long.

'Spring' Onions

OK, I know it' a little past Spring but I've only just got round to picking these from RaisedBed1.

I think I probably planted too many, or probably should be harvesting more frequently rather than all in one go.

Courgette > Marrow

A week away in Galicia, Spain and tomatoes and courgette maintenance was always at the back of my mind.  Tomatoes watered by my allotment neighbour Alison, but courgettes left to fend for themselves.

Here's the scale of results (knife added for scale.-  the big one is very big!)

Now checking out marrow recipes.

Spring onions (in Summer)

A bit plump but nice 

Beets continued

Ready for roasting,roasted and peeled.  Might even get round to eating them this week.

Beet

Not exactly sure what I am going to do with this. Roasted with balsamic vinegar sounds nice.  Or soup.

The leaves are supposed to be tasty too

Garlicky R us

Starting to plait up the harvest.  I think I did plant too many.

Broad beans

Amazingly they seemed to get through the slug and black aphid attacks this year and were as good as Year1 (we don't talk about Year 2)

Picked most of them, still a few left to fill out, blanched and frozen - that's us sorted for the long harsh Yorkshire winter, well for Broad beans anway.

Strawberries

Slugs seem to be having a bit of a field day with these this year, or something that burrows through a strawberry eating eveyhting until it comes out the other side.

Still starting to pick enough for a meal at a time rather than huge bag fulls which you end up giving away anyway.  Breakfast and snacks a-plenty tomorrow!

Sweet peas and mini-cucumbers

Sounds like a fancy meal combination!  

Sweet peas are starting to come thick and fast and I'm not exactly sure how big a 'mini-cucumber' gets?  A bit bigger than this I imagine (7.2 cm - second time I've heard that measurement this week . . )

Garlic harvest begins

Supposed to be lifted on longest day but I think you have to modify these timescales when you're 'Up North.  Left to dry out in the shed which now smells very strongly of garlic.  I don't think any vampires will be nicking my strimmer!

Still a few more to come but they'll be OK for a couple of days.

Artichokes

They look fantastic this year.  Not sure about eating them but when they turn into flowers they do look superb.  Maybe I can sell them to someone who pretends they like them!

8 beans in a line

First 2 pods-worth

First Early Potatoes - Maris Bard

Quite a bit of research and asking around on how you know when to pick first early potatoes.  It seems that, because they don't store very well, you should get them up as soon as you can and eat them as you harvest them.

Apparently for second early and main crop you wait until the leaves are dying a bit. But with first earlies it's as soon as they flower.  Anyway I dug one plant up and got a nice little handful.  Very cool. A few had the telltale creepy crawly hole in but most are OK.

Got a couple of strawberries, spring onions and beans for the first 'basket' of the season.

Even more tomato plants

Moved the second staging out of the greenhouse to get a few more of the plum-type tomato plants in

Aubergines in July

Plants beginning with the letter 'A' seem to have got a bit mixed up in my brain.  I keep calling this an avacado but I do really know it's an asparagus.... no it's an aubergine!  Loads more flowers on this plant (present from Elaine earlier this year) so we should have a good crop of artichokes over the summer.

Impromptu patio

Got a load of free slabs which I've laid fairly quickly to get them out of the way.  They're a bit rocky but not too bad.  I'll tidy them up later ... honest.

Moved one of the staging shelves out the greenhouse to squeeze a couple more tomato plants in.

Process mid-June

Strawberries 

Progress mid-June

Tomatoes (about the same as last year)

Straw for the Strawberries

A couple of bags of straw to give the strawberries a nice soft bed to ripen on.  May have overdone it slightly on bed number 2.

The Tomato factory (continued)

Mini-cucumbers

Only just moved to a larger pot and they're coming on nicely.

Water Butt repositioning

Decided to move the water butt from the front of the shed to the back of the shed.  I know, I know but it's something to do isn't it?

Now looking for paving slabs to pave the space between the shed and the greenhouse.  I could buy them but I'm not that desperate.  I prefer a bit of slab-scavenging!

Fields of garlic

Sting sang about 'Fields of Barley'.  I think 'Field of Garlic' sounds much better!

Planted on shortest day, looking forward to harvesting in longest day.

The Tomato factory

Lots going on at the moment especially as it's warm and raining.

Tomatoes not getting the rain of course but doing better than I know what to do with.  I think I need about 8 plants if last year is anything to go by.  I planted a whole packet of seeds and they pretty much all came through so I now have a tomato factory on my hands.

And

About 100 or so, so at a pound each that's erm . . £100!

Construction

Raised bed number 2 complete, no idea what I'm going to put in it yet.

Also got a couple of pyramids built, 1 for runner beans (I know, I know, no-one likes them much but they are really nice to grow).  2nd one is for Sweet Peas which are coming on nicely in pots inside and outside the greenhouse.

Second raised bed in the making (45% complete)

First one was a triumph of 'measure twice, cut once'.

Second is bit more 'let's see how it goes'.  Thinking of raising one side on bricks - radical!

Rhubarb for dessert

'Forced' rhubarb doesn't sound very humane does it.  Grow rhubarb in complete darkness and the young shoots are very sweet, apparently.  Sounds similar to the production of veal and, seeing as I love  veal, I figureI'm going to like forced rhubarb.

Looked at few cool forcing pots in the green centre but decided to use an updsice down flower-pot instead 'cos I had a flower-pot and didn't fancy spending £40 on a 'forcer'.

Here's the results; the rhubarb uncovered; the harvest; ready for the oven; puréed; and the finished dessert.