No dig diary, 3rd November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Such a lovely late summer’s day to be out in the garden in shorts and a t-shirt today. Strange that it’s the third of November ?

Mostly I was weeding the beds, as the mild weather has meant that quite a few have germinated despite the lateness of the year. I also cleared up some of the early fallen leaves (not that there are very many yet) and sycamore keys, but I also took the opportunity to remove yellowing leaves from the brassicas so they’re not encouraging slugs to be snacking overnight. I ended up adding far more stuff to the compost heap than I expected and still have about a bed and a half to go, but the garden is looking quite tidy now. I’m going to have to put some more woodchip down for the paths in places. Where I skimped a bit at the start of the year because I was running short it’s now getting a bit muddy.

Some of my sprouts haven’t taken kindly to the high winds at the tail end of last week and developed quite a lean, so I staked a few of them back upright. I don’t want them collapsing completely and having sprouts on the ground and buried in leaf litter.

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The case of the disappearing potato

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Well, here’s a sorry state of affairs…

This evening I have been ordering seeds etc. for next year. I went to the usual supplier that I use for potatoes and could only find one of the varieties I’d normally plant (and they generally ship before the end of the year, so I’m not exactly ordering way too early). I’ve now managed to find the others I wanted elsewhere, but the selections seem quite restricted compared with previous years and I’m completely unable to find anywhere that has International Kidney for sale. This is one of my wife’s favourites, being the variety sold as Jersey Royal (when they’re grown on Jersey), so being unable to find any is not a good thing 🙁

One site I found is suggesting that their supplier has lost their entire crop due to disease, which makes me wonder if that’s the reason generally, and if perhaps there just aren’t that many suppliers of seed potatoes for domestic sale.

I’ve actually found that the selection of seeds seems more restricted too, with some disappearing from the places I’ve been buying them for years, but I’ve finally managed to get most of what I want other than the soft fruit, which I’ve not yet looked at. I was hoping to find a purple-skinned bell pepper, but they seem to be quite rare now. Perhaps they weren’t very popular. I did find one place selling a packet of mixed colours, but with half a dozen colours or more it’s a bit awkward to grow enough plants to stand a decent chance of getting the colour I want 🙂

I failed fairly miserably to save seed from the things I was planning to save seed from this year. Next year I hope to do better, so I’ve ordered as much as is practical from the Real Seed people. Unfortunately the small size of their operation means they just don’t have everything available each year. In fact when I emailed to enquire about one particular item I was after they said that the person who was producing the seeds for that particular plant has retired and they just don’t have them available any more, which is a bit sad. Had I known it was going to happen I’d have bought some seed last year and made sure I saved some. They do have some weird and wonderful seeds for sale. Even quinoa, which I didn’t even know could be grown in this country. It does sound a bit of a faff to harvest though.

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No dig diary, 2nd November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I did finally manage to get lettuces planted out in the polytunnel today. There are quite a variety, mostly ones that are supposed to handle cold fairly well, but some other varieties too that may or may not be happy. Mixed in with them are some mustards and coriander. The one thing I’m completely missing is dill. I’ve sown plenty of dill over the last couple of months, but in every case it’s just gone crazy and tried to flower. It’s possibly too cold to have another go outdoors now, but I might try another batch indoors.

All of the plants had been grown in module trays in the greenhouse. I was amazed at how many slugs had found their way in and hidden on the underside of the trays, presumably coming out to nosh on the seedlings after dark. Unless they’re coming in as eggs with the compost, which seems unlikely, it can’t be a pleasant climb to get up onto the staging and in amongst the plants, never mind how they get into the greenhouse in the first place.

I still have quite a few plants left over, but I as soon as I can I want to go through the plants I have in trays in the greenhouse to replace the plants damaged/killed by caterpillars (and one set that has just developed a nasty case of whitefly).

What with removing the tomato vines and the runner beans, I’ve put a fair bit in the compost over the last few days. I feel as though we’re doing pretty well on that front. I’m sure it was at least a week or so into November when I turned the compost last year, at which point I must have had two bins that were full and one that must have been empty (to turn the first bin into). Right now we have two full bins and nowhere to turn them because the third bin is getting close to half full already and we’ve not even pressed the apples yet so there’s no spent pomace on the heap, which we had done when I turned the compost last year.

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Swimming, 2nd November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

More technique work today, not forcing the pace and plenty of rest between reps. Turning up the speed for the 25m reps is showing up a few problems, probably because I may not be completely flat in the water and as I rotate that’s creating unwanted sideways forces. I need to try to get rid of that.

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No dig diary, 1st November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I went outdoors this morning after some fairly torrential rain and quite stiff winds that are predicted to get stronger this afternoon to find my runner beans plants at an alarmingly jaunty angle. I therefore temporarily abandoned the plan to plant out my lettuces and set about stripping the bean plants off the supports and harvesting the remaining beans before the whole lot ended up on top of the sprouts. It wasn’t too bad until the rain started again. Fortunately it was just a relatively brief shower so that’s all sorted now other than taking down the supports, which can wait for slightly more pleasant conditions later in the week.

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Swimming, 1st November 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I feel I’ve had a difficult time with swimming during October and haven’t posted about it whilst I’ve been trying to get things sorted. I’ve started taking things apart and come to the conclusion that I need to go back to basics and perhaps correct a few issues with technique. One area where I think I’m probably weak is that I don’t have very much body rotation in my front crawl, so I’m going to try to deal with that.

I’m giving myself plenty of time between reps for the moment to try to avoid swimming whilst fatigued and am really trying to focus hard on every single stroke. I’m still doing a block of 50m reps followed by 25m reps, but I’ve cut back to attempting sixteen of each to fit into the time available.

The rotation feels very unnatural at first and the process is tiring, but there’s only one way forward 🙂

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No dig diary, 30th October 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

A random list of what’s happened this week…

I finished the one remaining path around the veggie plot, using up almost the last of my saved cardboard in the process, as well as quite a bit of the woodchip.

I’ve decided the leeks are ready to go.

And I shelled the first tray full of runner beans that have been drying in the greenhouse for about a month. Now they’re shelled I’ve put them on a tray to dry out a bit more. I’d guess this is about a quarter of the total harvest, with another quarter still in the greenhouse and the rest still on the plants. The intention is to use them as butter beans, though they’re a little smaller.

This morning I picked every single tomato that was worth having from the remaining vines and then removed all the vines from the polytunnel.

I’d allowed the bed the tomatoes were in to dry out a bit to try to get the tomatoes to ripen faster, but now the vines are out I have the leaky hose turned on again to give the beds a good soak before I plant lettuces for the winter. I’m actually a little concerned about the existing polytunnel lettuces. They don’t seem to be doing at all well, despite being apparently healthy plants when they went in. I suspect there may be a problem with (relatively) warm humid days when there’s not so much light. Quite a few have just gone mouldy and died 🙁

And whilst I was doing stuff in the polytunnel I picked all of the sweet peppers, japalenos and cayennes. They’re all still green, but things aren’t going to get any better at this point I don’t think. The jalapenos I shall pickle whilst the cayennes can go into the airing cupboard to dry. The sweet peppers we’ll probably eat some of in salads and the rest we might eat stuffed. I wonder if they’ll freeze ok from cooked if they’re stuffed with rice and other vegetables? Perhaps there’s only one way to find out 🙂

After a few false starts it does finally feel as though autumn is actually happening. Leaves are beginning to fall and at least some trees are starting to turn yellow though the landscape is still mostly green. I would not be at all surprised if we get to December and there are still trees that haven’t shed their leaves. Things really do feel completely topsy-turvy this year. Bearing in mind that November starts on Monday, the chile plants that I picked today are still flowering heavily. The runner bean plants that I still have to harvest the beans from (like those above) are still mostly leafy and green. Yet nothing actually seems to be really growing. I have coriander that germinated weeks ago and has basically stalled at about 30mm tall. It’s as if many plants have entered some sort of state of suspended animation over the last six weeks.

Anyhow, tomorrow I hope to plant out the seedling lettuces and mustards that I have in the greenhouse in place of the polytunnel tomatoes. After that I think it’s all planning for next year. Strange that despite having almost no work for the last eleven months, this last year seems to have flown by.

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Apple and pear slices again

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

When the apples and pears were done in the dehydrator I took a few slices for a test drive. The Ashmead’s Kernel tasted pretty much how you’d expect, I guess. The Bramley was clearly apple, but with an obvious sharpness that wasn’t so strong as to be unpleasant. The pear slices were absolutely lovely and surprisingly sweet. In fact they were so nice that this afternoon I completely refilled the dehydrator with pear slices alone. As I stripped the tree of its remaining fruit this morning (they were starting to drop off anyhow) I might well do a few more batches after that and still have plenty left over. It’s a nice variety of pear called Concorde, which is a cross of Conference and Doyenne du Comice if I recall correctly.

I did discover that pears need to be just a little on the firm side if they’re to go through the peeler. I had a few softer ones today and they were much more awkward to use.

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Apple and pear slices

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I liberated about a dozen of the Ashmead’s Kernel this evening, broke out the peeler/corer/slicer machine and filled five dehydrator trays with apple slices. Then I started looking at the large numbers of pears sitting in the kitchen waiting for something to happen to them. Hmmm… Turns out it works quite well with pears, too 🙂 I did have to slice off the top 15mm of a few of the larger pears to fit them in and it’s perhaps a little wasteful because it takes out more of the pear near the neck than is strictly necessary, but then it’s quite efficient at removing the main part of the core, so quite possibly it all balances out. Ultimately of course, if I dry them then they’ll get eaten whereas if they get too ripe to be usable then they’ll be heading for the compost heap, so wasting a quite small amount to ensure that a far larger amount gets eaten surely has to be a good thing. I filled another five trays with those. There were still two trays left, so out of interest I sliced enough Bramley apples to fill them. As cooking apples they’re obviously a bit too sharp to want to eat raw (perhaps I should try some more cheese?), but if they’re ok once dried then there’ll be a lot more of those going into the dehydrator, too.

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Apples, apples, everywhere

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Today I finally got around to collecting apples for juicing. The apples haven’t been great this year, as I may have already said. We’ve only really had a decent crop on the ones that flowered late, which is mainly cider apples. However, there was a decent harvest of Ashmead’s Kernel (all on the right hand side in the photo) and a sackful of what was still left of all the other eating/juicing apples (quite a mixture — Blenheim Orange, Ellison’s Orange, Tom Putt, Sunset, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Charles Ross, Braeburn and possibly a few others).

I suspect there’s somewhere between 120kg and 150kg in total. If we get fifteen gallons of juice from that lot I’ll be very happy indeed (ten might be nearer the mark), but that will wait until my daughter is around to help.

I also picked crab apples until I got bored 🙂

They’re now in the freezer until we get some time to make crab apple jelly, and anything else I can think of. There are actually loads more crab apples, but harvesting them is so tedious. And they seem to go rotten within about thirty seconds of being removed from the tree (which is why they’re in the freezer now).

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