Fruit, Veg, Flowers and Slugs

With autumn well and truly upon us jobs in the garden and the vegetable patch become fewer and much of my time on the plot recently has been as much about tidying-up and clearing away as anything else. I have four compost bins and try to add as much as I can from what I am clearing from the greenhouse, vegetable patch and flower beds to these at this time of year; if you don’t have compost bins I thoroughly recommend getting at least one. With my four bins I can produce two or three hundred litres of compost in a year, great for simply spreading around the garden or for use in potting mixes and with the price of store-bought compost rising constantly at the moment, you can save yourself a tidy couple bob at the same time. As I am clearing the greenhouse I am also preparing it to store the more tender plants over winter; the seven Agapanthus I have in pots will go in there for the colder months for example. Talking of Agapanthus, any regular reader may recall I mentioned I had sown som...

My tomatoes have been cropping particularly well of late so I have been busy in the kitchen making BBQ sauce and Tomato Ketchup; the 'Super Sauce' variety supplying fruit of 1½lb each regularly. I am no Jamie Oliver but I haven’t given anyone food poisoning yet. I am not the tidiest of chefs and chopping up 7½lb or so of ‘Bloody Butcher’ tomatoes, my kitchen resembled a crime scene at one point but I now have several bottles of both sauces tucked away in the cupboard waiting to be used over the coming months. More will be made before summer ends.  September can bring some warm sunny days and there is plenty to be getting on with in the garden in the late summer sun. As well as continuing to harvest various vegetables and deadhead plants such as my Agapanthus I am starting to think about next spring and what bulbs I want to plant. Over the coming weeks it is the ideal time to be planting spring bulbs such as Crocus, Daffodils, Hyacinths, Bluebells and Tulips in pots and borders....

It has been a while since my last post for one reason or another so I have quite a bit to report on.  I mentioned in my April posts some of the experiments I had undertaken for the growing season, taking Olive Tree cuttings and sowing Clover into my lawn; so far so good with both I am happy to report. I have two Olive Tree cuttings that appear to be coming along nicely; it is of course a slow process as they are so slow growing, but two of the three cuttings appear to be forming roots. The Clover has germinated pretty well and I plan to add to it over the coming weeks hopefully leading to a lawn that is as much, if not more, clover than grass by 2026. I have also sown some Purple Creeping Thyme seeds as another little experiment to add to the garden all being well. The seeds were sown thinly onto a potting mix of peat-free compost and perlite in a seed tray and gently pressed into the mix to ensure good contact; the seeds were not covered with any further compost or vermiculite, ...

In the lovely spring sunshine we experienced in early April, as well as enjoying the blossom on the Cherry tree and the display of the Tulip Fire Wings amongst other things, I have been experimenting somewhat in the garden.  I have taken three cuttings from the Olive trees I own, I have five in pots on the patio at the end of my garden, in the hope that I may be able to grow two or three new trees from these. I have never tried before so it is very much trial and error. From research I discovered the best time to take Olive tree cuttings is in the late spring or early summer when the tree is actively growing and have the highest chances of rooting successfully. Each cutting taken was roughly 6-8 inches in length and I removed all the leaves from the bottom of the cutting, leaving only a few leaves at the top. Each cutting was then dipped into rooting hormone and the cutting placed into a terracotta pot filled with a potting mix of peat-free compost and perlite, about 75/25 percent ...

 At the start of the growing season 2025 there are many things to do on the vegetable patch and in the garden. For personal reasons I have been unable to update the Blog recently but I have been busy 'behind the scenes' and much has been going on.  For the last few weeks there has been little spare space on windowsills around my house with various seeds germinating here there and everywhere. Greyhound cabbages and Lancaster F1 leeks have been residing on the windowsill of the spare bedroom, four different tomato variaties were on the front room windowsill and the Scarlet Empire runner beans were threatening to take over the conservatory. Lavender cuttings and Agapanthus seedlings (seeds saved from one of my established plants) were also to be found in the conservatory. The Salvia cuttings I took last year from an established plant had been moved to the logstore at the bottom of the garden along with the Geranium cuttings in March ‘hardening off’ along with some Nasturtium seed...

The Christmas Potato experiment, for those of you that have been following developments, was a bit of a damp squib. A Christmas cracker with no crack, the Christmas present you smile about but really, did not want; a toilet roll dolly, a jar of wrinkle cream, comedy socks! I got a few spuds, but nowhere near enough for a festive feast as you can see from the photo; the Eskimo Carrots you will note from the picture have been a success again and they are on the list of seeds I am ordering for 2025. I think I probably sowed the seed potatoes too late. I will try again next year. Cheers 🍺

With the British weather really doing its worse of late there has been very little time or chance to actually get in the garden or on the vegetable plot to get anything done, other than checking fencing and clearing debris that has blown in! I will begin sowing seeds soon and over the next few weeks every spare inch in the conservatory and on windowsills around the house will be taken up with seed trays full of seedlings as ever in January and February. I do have another little project though that I will be working on in the potting shed out of the wind, rain and cold temperatures. There are, apparently, over 250 types of bee in the UK, there are twenty-four types of bumblebee alone, and they are incredibly important little creatures. Around 90% of UK bee species are solitary bees, a group that includes mason bees, mining bees and leaf-cutter bees amongst others. Solitary bees aren’t like honey bees that live in hives. As their name suggests, they make their nests on their own and lay ...

It has been a year of successes and failures on the plot in 2024, due in no small part to the ever-changing British weather. One thing that has occurred this growing season that I have never experienced before happened with my Strawberry plants. I cut back the foliage on my plants in early autumn after they had finished fruiting, and they grew back with a vengeance in the warm, wet weather we had through late September and October. I actually had Strawberries forming on the plants again in November! The first proper frost in late November appears to have done for them, no surprise, and I will now give the plants a second trim and a feed of chicken manure pellets to see them through the winter.  The Runner Bean bed has been thoroughly weeded, lightly dug over and a compost bin full of compost (around 220 litres) added to the soil along with two 50 litre bags of Farmyard manure. The bed was raked over and has been covered in tarpaulin, weighed down with bricks, to hopefully keep it i...

The autumn tidy is well underway on my plot with more and more bare soil becoming visible on the vegetable plot as crops are harvested and cleared and less and less blooms appearing across the flower beds. The leaves are beginning to fall from the Cherry tree and with the clocks having gone back a few days ago the nights are, of course, drawing in. The outdoor tomatoes are long since finished and those in the Greenhouse also now cleared away and composted replaced with the Agapanthus in pots that will overwinter under the cover of glass. With the relatively warm weather we had in September, and at times almost monsoon-like bouts of rain, the runner bean plants were still producing into October and I actually ate the last of the fresh picked beans in the first week of November. Those plants have also now been cleared and composted. An entire 'Dalek' bin of compost has been added to that bed. once it was weeded, with some manure to be added yet. The bed will then be left to rest ...

Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening………. By the time you read this dear reader Christmas will be but 15-weeks or so away. Aside from Bing Crosby on the radio, the goodwill to all men, family gatherings, presents under the tree and general feeling of joy that Yuletide brings, there is one thing that matters at Christmas time - a really good roast potato!  I am experimenting with growing potatoes for Christmas dinner this year, not as I would usually growing through the spring and summer harvesting in autumn and storing in hessian sacks until needed, but by planting in August to actually harvest in December. I have some Maris Piper seed potatoes, the best for roast spuds, and have thus far basically treated them exactly as I would if sowing in March, left them on a windowsill to chit for a few weeks before planting, except I sowed the tubers into 30-litre pots during the first week of August. I wouldn’t usually recommend growing main crop potatoes in p...

It is that wonderful time of the year, the middle of summer. I have spent as much time as possible lately simply just being in the garden; not that easy a task at times with the rain we had in early July, but late July and early August have been lovely. I have mentioned before here and in the regular Newspaper column that I strongly believe there is little point in gardening if you never really get to enjoy the garden, and now is prime time to enjoy it, weather permitting.  I have two designated areas for seating in my garden. One under the pergola on the patio directly outside the backdoor of the house; perfect for when family and friends visit. I have a second area, a table and a couple of chairs, on the top patio which is slightly raised at the end of the garden. This is an area often only used by me. I also have the BBQ patio in the middle of the garden set off centre slightly to the left as you look from the house and laid on an angle but this is used primarily for barbecuing ...

Say it quietly, whisper it even, but it appears that summer has arrived. Following the wettest spring in nearly forty-years that big yellow ball in the sky has finally poked through the gloom; well at least for a few days.  It is that wonderful time of the year, the middle of summer. Astronomical summer began on Thursday 20th June 2024 and ends on Sunday 22nd September 2024 if you are interested in those sorts of things. I have spent as much time as possible lately simply just being in the garden; not that easy a task at times with the rain we had in July! I have mentioned before in this column that I strongly believe there is little point in having a lovely garden if you never really get to enjoy it, and now is prime time to enjoy it, weather permitting.  In between the occasional glass of something nice in the sun or a snooze in a chair there are plenty of things to be doing on your plot at this time of year. Watering the lawn has not been a concern of late, far from it, but...

What a strange spring we have been experiencing this year. Apparently, we have just gone through the warmest May and spring since records began in 1884 provisional Met Office figures show; the figures especially influenced by high overnight temperatures over recent weeks compared to the norm. It was also the wettest spring since 1986 and the sixth wettest on record with some areas in the South receiving over a third more rain than would be expected.  My garden is certainly in a different condition from what I would expect for this time of year, a number of plants flowering later, but there has been some success stories, nonetheless. The native Foxgloves have been particularly beautiful and stood up well to the wind and rain; I had one at nearly seven-feet tall. The climbing rose on the other hand, that is usually covered in blooms from late May through June, is noticeably less floriferous this year following the battering's that took through the winter winds and unpredictable sprin...

May can be one of the very best times of the year to be in the garden. Beds, borders, veg plots and containers are alive with new growth and the earlier flowering varieties of plants are in full-bloom. Thankfully, the weather is finally warming up, the evenings are longer and you can now spend time relaxing in your garden rather than just doing jobs. I strongly believe there is little point in having a lovely garden if you never really get to enjoy it. I take time just to be in the garden as often as possible all year round and can often be found sitting by the chimenea with a coat on in autumn and winter but through spring and summer, especially, make sure to take a seat, kick back and relax, and simply enjoy being in your garden. Reclined in a deckchair, eyes closed, listening to the bees and hoverflies buzzing around the Lavender blooms on a sunny evening is time well spent as far as I am concerned. It is so easy to always be doing something in the garden, over the coming weeks and ...

I have for one reason and another unable to update the blog as regularly as hoped so far this year, all being well usual service can now be resumed.  In my monthly column for the Romford Recorder I have spoken earlier in the year  about how with the somewhat wild weather we have experienced through late winter and early spring a lot of my time in the garden has been spent repairing wide damage to fences and the climbing rose trellis along with retrieving a compost bin lid that had flown two-doors down and collecting various flotsam and jetsam that had landed on my plot! Between the numerous rain bursts earlier in the year copious amounts of homemade compost, farmyard manure and blood, fish and bone were added and dug in across the veg patch beds and a sprinkling of chicken manure pellets was also added.  The soil in the Greenhouse was similarly refreshed again with some fresh compost, farmyard manure, blood, fish and bone, chicken manure pellets and in there potash as wel...

Tis the season to be jolly and all that , and tis also the season to begin planning for the garden in 2024. I have been thumbing through the seed catalogues, a pastime almost as dangerous as Christmas shopping . I always s eem to find something that I had never heard of , but now knowing of its existence , simply now must have! Rarely does a year pass that I am not growing a vegetable or flower completely new to me; for me it is one of the great pleasures of gardening, there is always something new to grow.    I have been busy clearing the ve g beds removing the remnants of the Butternut Squash plants and Runner Beans to be composted and digging out the inevitable Dandelions , trying to get the entire tap root out as I do so. I will be adding quite a bit of compost and manure to the beds over the winter so having cleared and slightly dug over the bed where I grew outdoor Tomatoes this year, I have placed tarpaulin over this bed for now to keep weed seeds out . I will...