I’m back to updating The Little Green House. I’m not promising daily updates, but I’ll see how I go. I have missed it. The latest news is that we have given up our allotment. We’ve instead decided to move our vegetable growing to our own garden, to allow for easier care of the plants, and some other projects that have come up and are taking up more of my time. We have scaled back our vegetable growing accordingly, but are still growing garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, butternut squashes and potatoes at home, as well as plenty of fruit. We have two apple trees, a pear, a green gage, a kiwi, a cherry tree, raspberries, blackberries, grapes and strawberries. I’ve also made sure that I source more of my bought vegetables from very local sources as a way to assuage my guilt. My hunt has delivered some unexpected treasures and led to my meeting some amazing people.
Hard to believe it’s March. The winter was very short this year. I finally got down to the allotment on Thursday to take stock, and pruned the fruit trees in the garden today. We still have leeks and beetroot going at the allotment, but that’s about the sum of it. The sprouting broccoli has been decimated by slugs it seems. So slim pickings for the spring. The garlic in our garden is doing well, I look forward to harvesting that in a few month’s time.
Our plan for this year is to grow fewer types of vegetables in bigger numbers, and I’m taking more into the garden to protect from pests/diseases that are rife at the allotment site. I will be publishing the growing plan on the blog soon.
What would you like first, the good news or the bad news? I always like the bad news first, so here goes… It doesn’t look like our Christmas potatoes are happening. With all this warm weather we’ve been having I expected to have lots of growth and have added at least another two tyres to our potato tyre tower. But alas NO! There is only one little potato-ey leafy bit sticking out above the straw, the straw on the other hand is doing well and sprouting lots of green bits.
But, directly on to the good news… I don’t mind all that much about the potatoes not working out for Christmas, because if we did have a bumper crop, that would mean I would have to eat them. Let me explain. I am on a no-nightshades diet. That means no tomatoes, no potatoes, no peppers of any kind, and no aubergines. This diet is going to stop the dreadful pain in the knuckle-joints and wrist of my right hand, oh yes it is, I have no doubt at all.
I nipped outside between thunderstorms this morning to plant Spanish Roja garlic in our back garden. Going in now it should be ready to harvest in July, and by planting it in the back garden instead of at the allotment, I’m hoping to avoid the rust problems that have beset my last two year’s garlic crops.
The last week has seen a bit of action down on the allotment plot, after a number of weeks of allotment avoidance. Since I planted the Xmas potatoes back in early September, a combination of rain and laziness has kept me away, until last week Monday. I am "giving" one of the beds on our plot to a friend who can’t plant any vegetables at home for big dog reasons, and also because I quite fancy the idea of having a friend to weed and water with sometimes. So we headed down to the allotment last week Monday for her to take posession of her bed, and I started with clearing the sweetcorn, horrible celery, courgette and cucumber plants. Pete mowed the paths on Saturday, and I planted Autumn Champion onion sets and White Lisbon onion seeds to overwinter. I also put in some winter hardy Chinese cabbage to harvest in December, and some mustard greens. Along with the winter lettuce (can’t remember which now) that is doing pretty well, we should have lots of greenery on our plates for the next few months. We also still have some of our Kilaxy and red cabbages, as well as chard and perpetual spinach ready for harvesting now. This is the first winter that we’re trying to keep our crops coming through the cold months. Why not?
We continue to work at improving our home. We have replaced all the nasty old manmade fibre carpets with 100% British wood carpets, and have fitted curtain rails in Ayrton’s and our room to hang our curtains for extra insulation this winter (up until now we’ve only had blinds in these rooms).
Our back garden tomato crop has been harvested, and I will be planting out onion sets at the allotment as soon as the weather allows. I am waiting for the delivery of a blackberry to plant out in our home garden. I have been a bit neglectful of our allotment lately, partly because of the weather, I think.
I received my long awaited evengreener order, only to find that they delivered the wrong size waterworms and my compost trowel was missing. Hey! Ho!
This post has been a long time coming, mostly because we are still waiting for Pete to build the steps from the deck to the garden, and fix the metal trellis to the top of the screen on the one side of the deck. But we are already enjoying the deck, so I thought I’d share some pictures.
The deck is made of hardwood that we ordered from a company called Eco Choice, who provide FSC certified hardwood decking that has been thermically modified (a chemical free, environmentally friendly process) to improve its durability.
Above you can see Piper having her lunch on the deck. And to the right is the screen with the trellis waiting patiently to be installed. I am planning to put a grapevine in a large pot and train it up the trellis as soon as the weather permits next year.
Potato tyre tower put together
I put the potato tyre tower together a few days ago, using straw as the growing medium. Now we wait!
I hope I’m not too late for late potatoes, but the weather’s still quite warm so…
Today I went to the local tyre-fitting shop and asked for 5 old tyres to make a tyre tower with. I’ve dropped them off at the allotment and am going back tomorrow morning to plant my potatoes. I found these simple instructions for a tyre tower at the Ravenswood Community Garden website.
If you have some old car tyres you can grow some potatoes.
Spread some newspaper on the ground.
Stack two tyres on the newspaper, and fill them with straw or soil.
Bury ten potatoes in the straw or soil and water your tyre tower.When potato sprouts peep through, add another tyre and fill up with more straw or soil. Keep doing this as your potatoes grow, until you have at least four, five or six tyres in your tower. After the plants flower, take the tower apart and count your potatoes.
Photographs to follow and potatoes for December (I hope).
The next picking of cherry tomatoes from our crop of tumblers will be the last. I picked a large bowlful for our dinner of roast cherry tomatoes, courgettes and pasta tonight. And so we are now into cherry tomato decline.
But the next lot, the beef tomatoes, are starting to redden, so we’ll graduate to stuffed toms and greek salads by next week. Mmmm!
I have finally taken the lead from my friend Ilse and am siphoning bath and shower water into the garden to water the parched lawn. Ayrton and I have it down to a fine art already after only two go’s.
The easy no-sucking way to siphon water from your bath to your garden (you need two people):
- Cut a piece of hose long enough to reach well into your garden, all the way up the wall and through the bathroom window into the bath.
- Person 1 is in the bathroom and holds the hose to the tap until the water runs through to the other end of the pipe.
- Once the water is flowing through, Person 2 in the garden puts their thumb over the end of the hosepipe and shouts up for Person 1 to switch off the tap and submerge their end of the pipe into the bathwater.
- The vacuum created will suck all the water out of the bath and into the garden below.
Last weekend we pitched a tent in the garden for Ayrton to spend his first unaccompanied night "in the wild". He loved it, and both he and Piper are enjoying playing in it during the day, so we’ve decided to leave it up for a while. It has also sparked an idea of planting a live willow rod dome for them this winter as a permanent hidy-hole feature in the garden.
Spending time in the tent with the children over the weekend gave me a completely new perspective on our garden, and I enjoyed it so much that I have taken breaks from hanging up washing in the past few days just to lie amongst the vegetation for a 10-minute rest while the weather is so hot. Here are some other good ideas that I found on the internet for staying cool during the hot weather.
I’ve also taken some photographs to show you what’s good to eat (and look at) in the garden at the moment.
You’ll see our pears are fattening up nicely. As the tree is still small, I’ve reduced the number of little pears to just fifteen (we only had two last year) so that the fruit that we do get is of a bigger size.
The tumbling cherry tomatoes in pots on the (soon to be replaced with a lovely FSC hardwood deck) patio are starting to ripen. I await the first taste with anticipation. Apart from big beef tomatoes, cherry tomatoes are my most favourite tomatoes of all.
And speaking of beef tomatoes, it seems that last years harvest of zero beef tomatoes was no indication of my beef tomato growing skills. The largest beef tomato plant is as tall as I am, and the tomatoes are fattening up at a most agreeable rate. I’m already having visions of August evenings on the new deck eating the copious Greek salads that our gardening efforts will provide.
Our first grape vine looks set to have at least one bunch of grapes this year, hopefully the first of many, and we are so delighted with it that we are going to plant another vine on the trellis screen that Peter will be building into the deck. I originally ordered a blackberry vine for the deck, but we will plant that elsewhere in the garden when it arrives.
We decided to go for dessert grapes to increase the edible fruit in the garden, and I wouldn’t have the patience for making wine when we have a great local winery in the area.
The herb spiral is looking more like what I intended since Peter helped me dig the giant lemon balm plant out of it and I transplanted it beneath the forsythia. I’ve replaced it with some dill, and have added a Greek basil, curly parsley and sweet basil to the rosemary, flat-leaved parsley and tarragon already there.
We still haven’t seen a flower on our kiwi vine, and so continue to hope that next year will be the year for kiwi fruit, and I’m working on relieving our two apple trees of their aphid infestations. So, with the good the bad, and lots of lessons to be learned as we go.
Another five cauliflower plants had to come out this morning, following the two I removed last week. I still have about 15 plants left, so I’m hoping hard that they’ll escape the horrible disease. It seems that our allotment plot is riddled with club root, and I will have to review my planting choices next year to include more F1 hybrids with club root resistance, or give brassicas a break completely.
On a more positive note, the F1 Kilaxy cabbages that I planted (in the same bed as those pesky cauliflowers) have grown extremely well and are nearing eating point.
Two of my cauliflower plants at the allotment have developed club root, and so I’ve taken them out carefully and sealed them in a plastic bag to deal with them later. You are supposed to burn infected plants and so I guess that’s what I’ll do. Fortunately, and touch wood, the rest of the plants in the bed seem to be okay. I’ll be watching them like a hawk!
I finally returned the Dithane that I decided not to use to the garden centre today, and part-exchanged it for a grape vine for our home garden. I went for a black dessert grape variety that is self-pollinating, and have planted it against the south-facing fence in the hopes that it will be warm and sunny enough there to bear lots of fruit. I was inspired to buy the grape vine after watching Bill Mollison’s Global Gardener video yesterday and admiring the great grapes being grown in the Village Homes community in Davis, California.
