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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: raspberries

This month in the garden…

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by sallynex in this month in the garden

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Tags

apples, blackcurrants, broad beans, compost, fruit, garlic, kale, onions, quince, raspberries, red onions, sweet peas, winter, winter vegetables

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I left my overwintering broad beans and sweet peas outside this winter and they’re doing much better, far less leggy than usual – so as I suspected, it pays to grow them hard.

I have definitely been having a bit of a slump in the garden just recently. This occasionally happens, even to obsessive gardening types like me: you just sort of get out of the habit, somehow.

It’s usually in the dog end of the year that I lose heart. December is a prime month. By the time I’m home from work it’s getting dark anyway; the mornings are cold and dank and there are grumpy teenagers to boot out of bed. More often than not it’s raining, the ground is soggy and all the jobs that need doing at this time of year are easily put off till later.

January, though, is a different matter. I’m not sure why, as the weather is still foul – worse, if anything, than December. Maybe it’s just the symbolic beginning of a new year. And the turning of the solstice has a lot to do with it: it’s as though the extra few minutes on the end of every day tinge the ends of my fingers a deeper shade of green as the month wears on.

So I begin to steal half an hour after work, or just after the kids have left for school, to catch up on all that is left undone and stir into life the embers of another season. Here’s what I’ll be up to this month:

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Still plenty to pick: this is my ‘Dwarf Green Curled’ kale, and there’s sprouts, leeks, kohlrabi, cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli too.

Climbing apple trees: Not for fun (though it actually is, quite a lot) but to snip back last year’s growth and encourage as much fruit as I can. I only have one apple tree at the moment, my beloved Devonshire Quarrenden, and it’s a very early one so must be guzzled straight off the tree. Which is why I shall also be…

Planting new trees: I am planning three new apples for the top strip, where my orchard is sputtering into existence at last after several livestock-related setbacks. I’m after a cooker, Warner’s King – in tribute to a legendary apple tree which grew in my mum’s garden once – plus James Grieve, my all-time favourite storing apple, and Egremont’s Russet just because I adore russet apples.

Pruning blackcurrants: And autumn-fruiting raspberries: the fruit garden is in for a stern talking-to this month as it got well out of hand towards the back half of last year and became more impenetrable thicket than chi-chi fruit potager.

Sowing onions: An experiment this year, as I feel like having a go at some really good red onions, the kinds with pink flesh rather than just the red skins. Carmen sounds like a good one; or perhaps Red Brunswick. I haven’t yet found a good red onion from sets, so I’m thinking seed is the way to go.

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Freshly-turned compost, covered with cardboard to keep weeds out and moisture in: this will be ready to use come March.

Turning the compost: A great job for a frosty day, as you invariably end up in t-shirt sleeves and glowing pinkly: not only good for the circulation but also very cheering as it makes you feel like the weather’s much warmer than it actually is. I turn my bins about every four months, using the compost as mulch at six months old: the next batch will be ready just in time for the March feed’n’mulch routine.

Mending greenhouse glass: The football club next door has been using my greenhouse as a goalpost again and I have two or three panes to replace. I am determined to get this done now, in the quiet stillness of January, rather than leaving it till I’m filling up the greenhouse in May and everything moves into panic mode.

Building new beds: The very last corner of my veg garden is proving stubbornly difficult to get around to finishing. I’m at that pesky 90% done, 90% left to do stage: all it needs is three boards fixing into place and I’m there. This will be the month I manage it. I hope.

Raking up leaves: The otherwise robust and rudely healthy quince tree in the chicken run developed a nasty case of blight last year and I didn’t get a single quince off it. So this year I’m paying particular attention to raking up the leaves after they’ve fallen, to try to scoop up at least some of the overwintering spores in the hope that they won’t come back again next year.

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Garlic seedlings ready to go out: but how will they cope with the rust this year?

Planting garlic: I have had my little garlic cloves growing away in a module tray since I sowed them in November, and now they’re bursting out of the drainage holes in the bottom so I think they can go into the ground. These are the cloves I saved from the plants that held out for longest against garlic rust last year: with luck, they’ll have a smidgen more resistance this season and I might have half a chance of actually eating some.

Planning, planning, planning: The great veg garden plan for 2017 is well under way. I am religious about using the colder months of the year to plan in detail what I’m going to do next season. It’s a good way of keeping yourself optimistic through the dead days of December; and it also saves a lot of trouble next year, too, as you know what to sow and how much of it. It is the gardening equivalent of a hot chocolate by the fire while leafing through a holiday catalogue. You just know things can only get better from here.

This month in the garden…

02 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by sallynex in kitchen garden, this month in the garden

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Tags

apples, caterpillars, cherries, fan training, hedges, onions, raspberries, tomatoes, Weeding

Onions about to come out of the ground and be turned into fetching kitchen ornaments

Onions about to come out of the ground and be turned into fetching kitchen ornaments

Here’s a thing. I like September. August is either sweaty or disappointingly rainy (the former, this year); and there’s not much going on in the garden. September, on the other hand, is usually balmy and gentle, with just enough rain; the veg garden is pumping out produce and there’s a new energy about my gardening what with the start of the autumn – and so the end of one gardening season and the beginning of another. So here’s where you’ll find me this month:

Picking beans: and how. I think I may have slightly overdone it this year. Six wigwams, three French (Blue Lake, Cobra and a heritage variety with pink seeds) and three runner (Moonlight, Lingua di Fuoco and a rather badly misjudged variety of bog-standard stringy). I am picking Every. Single. Day.

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More beans…

Removing caterpillars: there is – again – a plague. Great rows of them on the nasturtiums I so thoughtfully supplied as decoy plants: well all I can say is that they eat the nasturtiums, then move on cheerfully to my kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. So that’s one companion planting idea that doesn’t work, then.

Planting onions: specifically, autumn-sown, Japanese or overwintering onions (you’ll find them under all three names). There used to be a very limited selection of these but I’m gratified to see that’s now changing. I look forward to sampling a few new varieties this year.

Drying onions: and as the next crop goes in, the previous crop comes out. My maincrops have done pretty well this year and have died back nicely – time to hoick them out of the ground and plait them prettily to hang in the kitchen.

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Now these I will never tire of. Pick and pop in the freezer straight away and they come out as good as the day you picked them.

Picking raspberries: see beans. I am not meant to be able to grow raspberries in my chalky soil, but my rampant ‘Autumn Bliss’ have clearly failed to read the rule book. They look a little yellow around the gills in places, but it hasn’t affected the harvest one jot.

Pinching out tomato sideshoots: I think they get a bit annoyed at the constant pinching out earlier in the year and start redoubling their efforts, sending up stems straight from the base of the plant. It feels mean – but I want toms, not green growth.

Weeding: it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, you know. And she seems to have lost her voice just at the moment. I am fighting a losing battle that only cold weather will end.

Processing apples: I can’t help feeling slightly resentful at this time of year that I spend more time in the kitchen than in the garden. But so be it: the apple crop is particularly good this season so I’m making stewed apples, juice and crumbles.

Summer pruning cherries: It’s a bit past summer but actually this is the very best time to summer-prune fans and espaliers as they don’t have as much time to grow sappy new frost-prone growth. Just don’t leave it too close to October. My fans have got away a bit, but I’m hoping to wrestle them back into order.

Hedges: We have half a mile of wild Somerset hedgerow around our garden, loaded with brambles, hawthorn, blackthorn and just about anything else with a prickle. ‘Nuff said. I try to do it just once a year: more often and I think I’d just move.

 

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