Penellype's 2016 Garden Diary

[Penellype]

After a few days of allowing the tide to go out from the weekend's deluge and just clearing up leaves, I managed to make a bit of progress today.

There are several things on my "hit list" for this winter, the first of them being a sick looking pieris bush in the corner of the sunny part of the garden. It was originally planted to cover a tree stump after a rampant thuja tree got far too big. Despite pampering it with ericaceous compost and mulches of cocoashell for about the last 10 years, the bush has always looked rather sickly and the new red foliage is usually killed by frost, leaving it a most unattractive dead looking brown. I decided earlier this year that it would have to go. I tentatively stuck a fork in nearby, expecting to hit tree roots and prepared for a battle to get it out, but the fork went straight in and the bush came out with a gentle tug. The roots were only about 3 inches deep - no wonder the thing looked sick! There is, as far as I can tell, no trace of the thuja stump, so I now have a couple of feet more planting space for tomatoes .

Having had an unexpectedly easy time there and with a root ball to take to the tip (along with a car load of recycling) I decided to double up and go for item 2. This was one of the ferns, which when bought was about a foot high, with unusually curled foliage and really rather pretty. Over the past few years it has got bigger and bigger, outgrowing its space and blocking the path, making getting at the strawberries on the seat difficult. The pretty curled up foliage has reverted to uncurled and really rather ordinary fern leaves, and it is always the first to die down and look messy. I decided to dig that out too. That was a bit harder, but I managed it and replaced it with a stepping stone between the clumps of previously hidden dwarf lady's mantle and cyclamen.

I was about to set off for the tip when the man turned up to paint the front fence, so that job got done too. When I got back I started on the tricky job of removing the self watering trays from under the planters, as they will split if the water in them freezes. All are full of water and the tops are heavy, so its going to take me several sessions to finish it, which is why I am starting now. The leeks were the first to lose their tray - they have been bitterly disappointing. I also removed the 2 smaller trays from under the strawberries, by which time my back had had enough. Hopefully I will be able to do some more over the weekend.

[Penellype]

This weekend

At my friend's:
More removing of old courgette plants, tomato plants, runner beans and nasturtiums.
Took down the pea netting now the nasturtiums have finished with it.
Took down the last bit of greenhouse shading which I couldn't get at earlier as it was behind a large tomato plant.
Swept the leaves off the greenhouse roof (again).
Rearranged the greenhouse a bit (more to do) and removed some of the string etc that was no longer needed. Whole thing needs a good clean out when the last tomato plant has gone.
Brought some of the strawberry plants into the greenhouse for a hopefully early crop.
Harvested the sweet potatoes from their bucket in the greenhouse. About 8 smallish potatoes, so I brought 2 home for me to try and gave the rest to my friend. Decided I like sweet potatoes, so I will grow 2 buckets next year
Harvested a celeriac root - about the size of a tennis ball, which wasn't bad as these plants were the stragglers left in the original pot which I kept "just in case" and used when the slugs completely annihilated the original plants. Mulching with strulch undoubtedly saved these from the same fate.
Also harvested the last of the Sungold tomatoes from the greenhouse, a couple of peppers (still looking very happy in their chiligrow in the greenhouse) and some windfall apples.

At home:
More leaf collecting and weeding.
Took the net off the gooseberry bush as it has finally lost its leaves (no more risk of sawfly).
Sowed some peas (onward) for pea shoots and some mixed lettuce.
Also sowed 2 kohlrabi, 2 chinese cabbages, 4 pak choi and 4 lots of turnips in the propagator, the last 2 of these in paper rolls. This lot is destined to be planted in a self watering Hozelock planter (bought to use for tomatoes next year) in the greenhouse once they are big enough to survive the wildlife. I have absolutely no idea if this will work, but as I have plenty of seeds for all of these, and I can use the spent tomato compost from the gro bed, its not going to cost me much to try.*
Harvested carrots, lettuce, corn salad, chinese celery leaf, calabrese, leeks, a few peas, alfalfa sprouts and a few straggly basil shoots - most of these had keeled over and died, presumably from damping off.

*You can tell I am getting bored with winter already. Unfortunately winter has not yet officially started

[Penellype]

A gorgeous, mostly sunny day (for which no doubt we will pay with a sharp frost tonight), and quiet on the work front so plenty of opportunity for gardening.

With the frost in mind, took the fuchsias and chinese cabbages off their water trays and put the trays to dry off ready for winter storage. Put a tennis ball in the bottom of the chiligrow and removed half the water. Hopefully this will work - the chiligrow is in a warmer position next to the house wall. Also put 2 tennis balls in the bottom of the Hozelock planter that is housing the strawberries - the top is too heavy for me to lift right off, but I did manage to tip out quite a bit of the water. It will be interesting to see how this survives the winter. (The principle behind this is that when water freezes it expands. If the ice has nowhere to expand to it will crack the container. The tennis ball has some give in it, and hopefully this will be enough to stop the container from cracking if it freezes, particularly if the whole thing is not full.)

Went to Wyevale as I had some vouchers to use. Bought a pack of hellebores to replace the chrysanthemums near the fence as these are looking rather worse for wear. Also stocked up on tomato seeds (Sungold and Shirley). Our Wyevale has a clothing shop attached, which still had the Black Friday sale on. I don't normally bother with sales but as I needed a new jacket I had a look. Came out with 2 - a warm but light one reduced from £50 to £15 and a waterproof reduced from £60 to £30 (both Regatta). Well worth a look if you have anything similar near you.

Potted up the hellebores. Weeded the patio and cleared up some more leaves. While ferreting for leaves under the white currant bush I noticed a couple of trusses of fruit that I must have missed in the summer. Some were obviously past it but about 6 were pleasantly edible - a big surprise.

Picked a few pods of peas - very small and really not making much progress now. They are soldiering on, still producing flowers, but I do wonder if they will survive the frost. Also harvested some carrots for tea.

The Sungold tomatoes picked when the plants were showing signs of blight are mostly turning orange now. None of them have gone brown and it looks like most will be edible

[Penellype]

A very quiet remainder of the week partly due to the garden being frozen solid on Tuesday and Wednesday and partly due to builders finally coming to mend that wretched gutter on Thursday and today.

Took one of the buckets of carrots out of the carrot cage to put in the garage so that it wouldn't freeze. While doing so I dislodged 3 green caterpillars (probably some sort of moth) and found 4 slugs, so I decided it was best to remove the net and let the birds eat the wildlife. This was easier said than done as I had clipped the net to the back of the frame and the pots of carrots and brokali were in the way, but I managed it in the end.

The peas and turnips that I sowed at the weekend have germinated, and since the grow light garden downstairs was full of lettuces I needed to rearrange it. The peas and some of the lettuces have gone upstairs to the 2nd grow light garden, and there is now space downstairs for the brassicas (its cooler down here which will be better for them).

[Penellype]

This weekend - a little chilly but very pleasant in the sun.

At my friend's:
Cut down the last tomato which had succumbed to the frost. The pepper plants look a little worse for wear but are still green so I have left them where they are.
Tidied up a lot of bits of string and various pots in the greenhouse.
Emptied some of the buckets of potato compost onto the bare areas in the veg garden.
Took the nets off the swedes (growing well in their bucket) and the calabrese/carrots/parsnips. The parsnips have swamped everything in here - it was not a good move to put them in a small raised bed with other things!
My friend has rescued some free range chickens which had come to the end of their egg producing time and she has them in a run next to the veg garden. Fed them all the grass from the parsnip bed and all the slugs and snails I could find.
Plenty of weeding.
Harvested the last of the tomatoes, a few small sprigs of calabrese and a beetroot.

At home:
Put back the compost bin now the builders have finished and half filled it with compost that has grown potatoes or tomatoes this year. This will be used for any pots that are not growing potatoes or tomatoes, especially carrots, for which it will need sieving.
Cleaned up the bits of mortar, moss and general muck that the builders had dislodged from the garage roof. (They did clear up, but some of it had got behind pots and into the fruit cage, so it needed a proper clean).
Cut down the perennials under the wiegela as the fence needs painting and I don't know when the man is coming back.
Also cut down some of the fuchsia berry plants as they have been damaged by the frost. I won't be growing any more of those so there was no point in trying to take cuttings or protect the plants.
Removed the chrysanthemums from the troughs near the front fence as they have finished, and replaced them with the hellebores.
Checked the peas, which are looking very very sad. I think these have had it even though there are pods (which have gone limp and spotty) and flowers still out. I probably sowed them a fortnight too late.
The sprouting seeds I ordered earlier in the week arrived so I started off some more alfalfa.
Harvested carrots, a small sprig of calabrese, loads of lettuce leaves and a few corn salad, mizuna, namenia and chinese celery leaves.

[Penellype]

Rather a frustrating week where the weather and work conspired to mean that gardening wasn't easy most days. Apart from finishing cutting down the dead fuchsia berry plants and moving all the pots away from the fence so that the man could paint it, I didn't get much done.

I thought today's lunchtime salad was worthy of a photo.



Lettuce Warpath (a mini iceberg type) from the grow light garden, corn salad, baby spinach, mibuna, chinese celery leaf and pea shoots from the garden (the pea shoots came from the still living bits of the frosted Terrain peas) and Sungold tomatoes picked green and ripened indoors. Add cold poached salmon, mayonnaise and home made bread - yum

[Penellype]

More weather issues this weekend due to the rain which did its best to wash the paint off the fence as soon as it had been finished, and returned last night to thoroughly wet everything again. We are suppose to be in the part of the country that the weather men keep describing as "dry".

At my friend's
Took the plastic cover off the potato plant in the greenhouse as it looks as if its going mouldy.
Put down some weed suppressant on one of the paths in the vegetable garden, the aim being to suppress the moss that grows like a carpet.
Pulled out the couch grass from the remains of the hotbed.
Fed the grass and some rotting tomatoes to the chickens.
Harvested a red pepper from the greenhouse (plants not looking happy) and some windfall apples.

At home:
Tied the clematis back onto the archway (I had removed it for painting). It is trying to flower!
Trimmed the dead leaves off the wild strawberries
Sorted out the hotbin which had got rather compacted in the middle. This involved taking about 1/3 of the stuff out of the top, digging a couple of trugs full out of the bottom for storage in the garage (will be used for potatoes) and making sure that the bit in between fell down to the bottom before putting the top layers back in. I now have some space to put more rubbish in.
Decided to harvest a couple of parsnips as a change from carrots. These were an experiment as I have not grown parsnips in a 30 litre bucket before. In March I planted 15 seeds in the bucket, 10 of which grew. I was expecting them to be about the same size as my carrots (an inch or so wide at the top and about 5 inches long). The first one was about this size, the 2nd one was much bigger - nearly 3 inches across and about 8 inches long. It was quite hard to get it out of the bucket as they were fairly closely packed together. I know this is small as parsnips go, but I was more than happy with it.
Also this week, harvested salads as in the previous post, lots of carrots and the last of the fennel fronds.

[Jungle Jane]

Sounds great that's a good size veg out of a container

[Penellype]

Not a great deal of opportunity for gardening this week, partly due to persistent and sometimes quite heavy rain. When I did get outside it was very hard to do much at all - the ferns and perennials I want to cut back are soaking wet, the lawn is saturated and when I pulled a few weeds out of the drive there was water under the top layer of gravel. This is supposed to be the dry part - next week it is actually forecast to start raining!

I did manage to cut back some of the big fern, which I may well decide to dig out if the ground dries up enough to attempt that. It has some grass entangled in the roots, and while I have managed to keep it in check a bit by pulling what I can out during the winter, the fern is now so big that it is impossible to get at it once it starts growing. There was a decomposed rat underneath the fern, which was an unpleasant surprise.

Harvested plenty of lettuce, mizuna, namenia, mibuna, corn salad, alfalfa sprouts, carrots and 4 little calabrese spears - this was my veg for yesterday's tea:



I'm impressed with the calabrese (Sakura), which I thought was not frost hardy, but it has kept growing slowly and there are several more smaller sprigs which should keep me going until the brokali starts producing. There are signs of a central head forming on all 3 brokali plants now.

Sowed choy sum and radish for microgreens and some more lettuces.

This is the time of year when I start counting down the days - less than a week to go now. No, I haven't got the date of Christmas wrong. The crucial time is 10:44am on Wednesday 21st December. That is the winter solstice, and at that time the sun is at its lowest in the sky. After that we get more daylight every day, not less as we are getting now. I can't wait!

Read about the winter solstice here: Winter solstice 2016: Everything you need to know about the shortest day of the year

[Penellype]

Not a bad weekend for gardening weather wise.

At my friend's
Took the seedlings I'd sown for the greenhouse (turnips, pak choi, kohl rabi and chinese cabbage) as they now have 2 true leaves and I didn't want them getting too "soft".
Decided to make a hotbed in the greenhouse using one of the gro-beds surrounded by bubble wrap. The idea was to use this to create heat for the seedlings, then plant the tomatoes in it later. Having emptied one of the gro-beds ready for this, I remembered that when it really rains the greenhouse gets about an inch of water in it. Decided this was not such a brilliant idea after all!
Removed a cabbage that was rotting for some reason.
Did some weeding and cut down some perennial daisies to get better access to one of the raised beds.
Harvested a red pepper from the greenhouse - the plants are looking very floppy but still have some green peppers on them.

At home
Finished cutting down the big fern and shredded all the foliage ready for the hotbin
Removed dead leaves from some of the brassicas
Tried to tidy some stuff up in the garage and washed a few plant pots, a job I have very little enthusiasm for.
Moved the microgreens to the grow light garden as they had germinated
Harvested carrots, lettuce, pea shoots, corn salad, chinese celery and mibuna, and a couple of late Shirley tomatoes from the windowsill. I'm still eating (and freezing) tomatoes which were picked green and ripened indoors, mainly Roma, but also Sungold, Ferline, Mountain Magic, Shirley and Balconi red and yellow. I suspect these will be finished shortly after Christmas.

The hellebores are now flowering and brightening up the new fence so I took a photo while it was sunny:



The fence doesn't look as dark in reality as it does in the photo.

[Penellype]

Very poor week for gardening with not a lot of time and unhelpful weather.

At my friend's
Wiped the algae off some of the greenhouse glass to let in more light.
Harvested the remaining peppers (still green) from the greenhouse as the plants have clearly died. Cut the plants down.
Noticed that the seedlings that I took there last week appear to be still growing, but are not ready to plant up yet.
Walked round and inspected everything in the veg plot and decided there was not a great deal that needed urgent attention, so left it for this week.

At home.
Washed a few more plant pots and put a few more things away in the garage.
Cut down the late peas as they are clearly not going to produce anything else that is edible.
Removed a few dead leaves from the strawberries and brassicas.
Put some fenugreek seeds to sprout in a jar.
Harvested carrots, a parsnip, mibuna, corn salad, baby spinach, baby pak choi, lettuce, a pepper from the windowsill and some radish microgreens.
Used quite a few sheets of 2nd side paper planning the details of next year's veg and noting down ideas for consideration. The paper will eventually be shredded for the hotbin, as will most of the ideas (probably).

A very merry Christmas to everyone.

[Penellype]

A lot of cold, damp and foggy weather this week, not at all pleasant for gardening. Today was better and I spent an hour digging out the big fern, as with the current forecast I'm not sure there will be another opportunity for a while. This was harder than I expected because the roots of the old dead Acer tree were in amongst the roots of the fern and I had to cut through several of them with the spade. A good way to work off some of the Christmas dinner I suppose! Took the roots to the tip as we don't have a green bin collection until April and they are not suitable for the hotbin.

Moved the bucket of spinach to near the hotbin and covered it with a cloche in the hope of encouraging it to grow and keep the worst of the frost off. There are some baby leaves but I won't be able to pick anything if they are frozen.

Sowed some mustard and cress for microgreens.

Harvested carrots, leeks, a few calabrese shoots, a parsnip (see below), corn salad, lettuce, baby spinach, chinese celery, radish microgreens, a small yellow pepper from the windowsill and some of the fenugreek sprouts. Not sure I am particularly keen on these to be honest.

Well pleased with the parsnip which was 2 inches across at the top and a good 8 inches long (the straight part):

[Penellype]

So another year is over and this is the last entry in the 2016 diary.

This weekend at my friend's:
Planted the brassica seedlings into the self watering planter in the greenhouse yesterday (by this morning they were already being eaten/dug up, I suspect by a rat).
Pulled some of the moss out from between the glazing on the greenhouse.
Cleaned up some of the dead leaves off the broccoli and calabrese.
Harvested a parsnip, a kohlrabi that had emerged from underneath the parsnip foliage and the entire crop of carrots (6, mostly small) that I foolishly planted behind the parsnips.

At home:
Filled in the hole left by the fern and replaced a paving stone that I unearthed while digging the fern out.
Pulled out some of the bedding plants which had died.
Tidied up and swept the path.
Discovered I had lost my favourite wooden handled peeling knife, which by a process of elimination could only have got put into the hotbin with the veg peelings. Ferreted about in the hotbin and managed to find it, hopefully undamaged.
Sowed some mixed salad leaves and Winter Gem lettuce.
Harvested carrots, lettuce, corn salad, mibuna, pea shoots and radish microgreens.

Happy New Year everyone.