Wow! It's October. What happened to September?

Nothing really. Most of my crops were ready at the end of August. All I had to do in September was dig up the potatoes, sow a few turnips and clear out the tomato and pepper remains from the greenhouse. This month I sowed more lettuce and carrots in the greenhouse and potted up some leaf beet for the winter. On the allotment I have leeks and cabbage ready to pick.

Cleaning Up

Well it's cold, wet and windy. What a change from the last few months, the greenhouse without heat is struggling to get to 70F. It looks as though I may have to get the vitopod out of the shed soon.

I have picked the last of my sweet peppers and Cayenne pepper this week and cleared out the last of the tomatoes from the greenhouse, only the Demon Red (picture below) remain, still to ripen. I'm looking forward to drying them as they have a lot of heat to add to dishes.

Demon Red Chilli

The Vitopod (they must owe me royalties) ensured that my crops peaked early, it's unusual to have your greenhouse cleared by mid-August.

I'm still eating my new potatoes and toying with the idea of planting a few of them in a planter in the greenhouse for a Christmas crop.

Now that the greenhouse is more or less cleared I shall be washing it down this week with a mild disinfectant and taking the opportunity to rearrange my automatic watering system. It wasn't that effective this year, the tomatoes regularly flooded so I need to put more control valves in.

I have purchased some new greenhouse staging and a new heater, as my old one packed up, the staging arrived today but I'm still waiting for the heater. My intention is to use the heater to keep the greenhouse frost free or keep it at 45F, haven't decided yet. The vitopod will be kept at 60F to keep my geraniums and fuschias happy.

I have also bought some spring bulbs to plant up in bowls and pots on the new staging which I hope to get done next week.

I also made a couple of scoops from used milk containers just to pass the time.

Scoop

Scented Geraniums

Plum Chutney

Today I picked the meagre crop of plums on the tree in my garden and decided to make a chutney rather than a jam. I used a basic chutney recipe and added a couple of teaspoons of Cayenne pepper flakes to give a little bite. Plum makes an excellent chutney.

Recipe for Spicey Plum Chutney

Ingredients
500g plums
1 medium onion (optional), chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
100ml white wine vinegar
100g sugar
2 tsp flaked chilli

Method

Stone the plums and chop. Add the chopped onion. Add the vinegar and sugar. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the chilli and stir occasionally, until softened and slightly thickened.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 150°C /gas 1-2. Place a clean medium-sized jam jar in the oven to warm. When the plum chutney is ready, spoon it into the warm jar. Seal with a lid and leave to cool completely.

Recipe for Chilli Sauce

15/20 medium size tomatoes
1 medium onion (optional)
1 or 2 garlic cloves
100g chilli peppers
600mls white vinegar
150g white sugar
1 tsp salt

Chop everything and boil for one hour. Allow to cool then blend and strain through a sieve. Boil for another hour or so until you have the desired consistency.

If you intend to keep for some time bottle the sauce into sterilised jars (heated in oven for 15 mins at 150 degrees).

Harvesting Time

On Saturday we harvested our Hercules onions on the allotment. These are much bigger and rounder than the Sturon we planted last year and we have decided to plant Hercules again next year.

The plums are ready to pick. Although the leaves on the tree don't look much healthier it's given me a reasonable crop for its first year.

My greenhouse tomatoes have almost reached the end of their life having climbed to the apex of the greenhouse and are now looking decidedly worse for wear. The last batch I picked were used to make several jars of Chilli sauce, with the Cayenne peppers which are also almost finished. The remainder of the peppers I shall dry and flake. The sweet peppers have now turned red and I shall be picking those over the next week.

I am still continuing to crop lettuce and spring onions and this week sowed some Leaf Beet to overwinter in the greenhouse.

Propagating Leeks from Bulbils

This year we are trying our hand at propagating leeks from bulbils or pips. Each flower head from last years leeks has produced dozens of little leeklets which can be carefully removed in the autumn and potted up to overwinter under heat. I have heard that it is quite tricky to get good results, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

These flower heads are from last years King Richard. This year we are growing Musselburgh leeks that were sown in March in pots and only recently transplanted in the allotment. They are still a little spindly but I hope they will catch up. Almost everything we have done this year has been later than it should be. There is a reason for this which will be explained in a future blog.

Here you can see the spindly leeks waiting for Vicky to weed them and bordered by a few stray rows of parsnip and swede.

The Fox

Tonights dinner.

This time last year I would have said everything on this plate had come from my garden. I can't say this now because I had to buy the eggs. Everything else I grew.

I had to buy the eggs because last summer a fox ripped the throat from every one of my chickens. He burrowed under their run, tore out their throats and made off, leaving me to clear up the carnage.

The fox does this simply because he can. He has no natural predator and can do whatever he likes. And he likes to kill, just for the hell of it.

My brave little cat does his best. I often wake up to the noise of the fight in the catflap, come downstairs and find my cat proudly licking his wounds. Bowed but unbeaten.

Sandal wearing townies should know that a fox will happily tear the throat from any creature that is small, warm, defenceless, and smells of food.

Does that description sound familiar?

It should.

And I hope you're worried enough to do something about it.

Early Potatoes

This year I decided to change from Rocket which I have grown for the past two years and try Pentland Javelin and I have just cleared the last of the five potato planters I have kept on the patio since I brought them out of the greenhouse in May.

I am pleased with the results which are probably more due to the weather than anything I have done, although I did feed them with potato fertiliser which I have never done before. The potatoes are bigger and taste delicious boiled in fresh mint and drenched in butter.

Update : In the last potato planter there was 3.25lb of potatoes from 4 Pentland Javelin tubers.

Gardeners Delight - The Tomato

This year I am growing 3 varieties of tomatoes, Gardeners Delight (cherry), Roma (plum) and Tomatillo (miniature), that's apart from a few unknown varieties growing around my compost bin. I decided to try growing in Grow Pots this year to avoid the perennial problem of blossom end rot, which is difficult to avoid when growing directly in grow bags.

I have been harvesting them for a couple of weeks now and made some tomato sauce for the freezer. As I harvest the plum tomatoes I put them straight into the freezer until I have a large enough batch to cook down into sauce, plum tomatoes are better for cooking as they have less water in them. The cherries and tomatillos go straight onto my plate (if they get as far as the kitchen).

Peppers

This is the current state of play with my peppers which I sowed under heat in February along with my tomatoes. I have already harvested a crop of Cayenne peppers and have them drying on top of the boiler. When completely dry they will go into my blender to be flaked, a useful addition to my curries (I like them hot).

I also have a few pots of Demon Red which are smaller than Cayenne and much hotter but I had a succession of poor germination with these and this consequently proved quite expensive. As Demon Reds are F1 you get a packet of 6 seeds for £5. It took 3 packets before any germinated ! I think they were just duff seeds (B&Q), so by the time they got going we were well into March/April. They are flowering now so I should get a good crop and I can prolong the growing season by a few more weeks by popping them into the Vitopod when it gets chilly (pun).

The sweet peppers are just beginning to redden so I look forward to harvesting those soon.

A Sorry Looking Victoria

I'm a little worried about my Victoria plum at the moment. As you can see the leaves are browning and curling.

I bought the plum 2 years ago as a feathered maiden and this is the first year it has flowered and fruited. It is in an 18 inch pot, in a mix of topsoil and John Innes No.3 and really needs to move up a size, which I shall do this Autumn, but I don't believe that is the problem. Keeping fruit trees in pots is a precarious business. Constant attention needs to be paid to watering and feeding and I think this is either a vitamin/nutrient deficiency or possibly wind blast.

Anyway, I have given it a feed of Tomorite and will mix some chicken pellets into the soil in the hope that it will recover and not drop the fruit.

Scented Geraniums

I took delivery of 12 scented Geranium cuttings yesterday and potted them up in the greenhouse. Most had rooted but one in particular (front right) looked a bit dodgy rootwise but I'm hoping for the best. Among the various scents are rose, lemon, cinnamon, lime and orange. I shall mist them daily until the roots have established and hopefully they will provide some nice aromas in the greenhouse throughout the winter.