Dealing with the harvest from the vegetable patch and preparing plants for next year

 As I write this article in early September, I am sitting in the garden in thirty-degree heat; what a crazy summer of weather we have had this year.

Most of my time of late has been taken up with the harvest on the vegetable patch. At least twice a week I am blanching and freezing Runner Beans and the bottom tray of my freezer is already full. They are a great vegetable to have on your patch and I would encourage everyone to grow them as they will supply you with beans throughout the summer and into autumn with plenty over to freeze ready for roast dinners through the winter months. The Tomatoes have been cropping like crazy and when not dealing with the beans I have been busy making Tomato Ketchup and BBQ Sauce. The Buffalo Steak tomato plants remain ladened and there’ll be a few more hours spent making sauce before the season is over.  

My recipe for Tomato Ketchup is pretty standard though I have tweaked it a little down the years; if you are interested it can be found below; Jamie Oliver I aint: 

3.5kg tomatoes roughly chopped

1 onion roughly sliced and diced

1 head of garlic peeled and chopped/crushed or 2/3 teaspoons of Garlic paste

110g salt

1kg light brown soft sugar

600ml red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

4/5 whole cloves

Few turns of black pepper

Little oil for cooking

Cooking really couldn't be simpler. Soften the onions in a frying pan then simply put all the ingredients into a nice big pan and allow to simmer for two-and-a-half, three hours, stirring occasionally - I tend to leave mine blipping away for three hours as this generally makes the finished sauce thicker. Allow to cool before whizzing in a food processor or with a hand blender if you have one big enough. Sieve and pour into sterilised bottles. You should end up with enough for around a dozen 190ml bottles. This Ketchup will keep for several months stored in a dark cupboard; once opened simply keep in the fridge where it will be fine for up to 6-weeks, if it lasts that long which it never does in my house! 

The six Agapanthus plants I have in pots are beginning to go over now having been flowering beautifully for weeks. An easy plant to care for, with spectacular blooms, they are another plant I would recommend anyone to have in their garden. They prefer to be constrained in a pot in gritty soil and can be left un-watered for several days so are a perfect low maintenance plant. I will be splitting a few this year to make extra plants for next summer. One has burst from its pot, splitting the terracotta straight down the side; there is an old saying that Agapanthus will tell you when they are ready to be potted on by doing just this. To divide I will remove the entire plant from the pot and literally saw in half popping the now two plants into their new pots in a gritty compost mix; it is that simple. I will keep the new plants well-watered for a few weeks until established. I tend to move my Agapanthus undercover in the Greenhouse in winter as even though they are fairly hardy, the extra protection sees them through the winter in good health.  

A couple of years ago I added some native Foxgloves to one of my shadier flowerbeds which have self-seeded, and a couple flowered beautifully this year. I have three seedlings growing well that self-seeded last year which should overwinter and flower next summer so that experiment has, thus far, proved successful. I decided to take some seed from one for the Foxgloves after it flowered this year to see if I could grow a few to add to the bed for next summer. The seeds were sown into a seed tray a few of weeks back. I simply scattered the seed on some moist compost and pressed into the soil, rather than cover with compost, to imitate how they would fall to the ground naturally. I am happy to report I have a few seedlings coming along nicely and have in fact already potted on some of the larger ones. I will overwinter these either under the cover of the large log store that I use for the purpose of hardening off plants or in the Greenhouse. They will be planted out into the bed early next year. 

Cheers 🍺