No dig diary, October 20th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I wasn’t expecting much of today as rain was forecast for the entire day, but other than a few showers and a thunderstorm that woke me up at about half past five this morning it has not materialised. Possibly the sky has just run out of rain for the time being, having bucketed down most of yesterday evening into the early hours. Instead it’s been quite sunny, if a bit breezy, but still comfortable to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt. I’ve therefore taken the opportunity to get more compost and woodchip down on the new bed and in fact have managed to finish it all.

The area of woodchip at this end is quite large because it means there are no awkward corners to mow into around the end of the raspberry canes (which are out of shot to the left), but I didn’t want to extend the bed any further because it would either make a narrow point in the path or I’d have to taper the end of the bed. I could still do the latter if I end up putting some fruit bushes in; it’s hardly a huge amount of work to do.

It’s possible that I’ll add a little more compost early next year, but we’ll see how it goes with what’s already there first. Otherwise there should be no more work required until I start planting some time towards the end of March, I guess.

I do have some clover to clear up at this end of the path on the left. If I can’t dig that out I’ll probably mulch over the top with more cardboard and woodchip. And speaking of cardboard, I reckon I probably have about enough left to finish the path I still need on the other side of the plot, so it looks to have worked out quite nicely.

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No dig diary, October 18th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Today started with a fine drizzle. Nothing major, so I pulled out some more cardboard and laid it on the grass and collected together my tools at which point it started to rain properly 😀

I had to stick at it until I’d got enough compost down to keep the cardboard in place, by which time I was more than a touch damp. At least I’ve got about two thirds of the bed done now, although it could happily have a couple more barrow loads of compost on top so it’s as thick as the part I did yesterday.

The forecast suggests that most of the day tomorrow will be dry, so I’ll try to get more done if it turns out to be correct. It may well be the most significant change I make in the veggie plot this winter, so it would be nice to get it sorted. Otherwise it looks as though I shall be stuck with indoor jobs. Not that I’m short of those…

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No dig diary, October 17th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

After mowing the apiary and doing a bit of watering in the greenhouse this morning I found a larger pot to transplant the pineapple into. The roots weren’t actually as large as I was expecting given that it was bowing the sides out in the 3″ plastic pot it was in. Hopefully it will be happy in this one for the winter, in the kitchen window.

The dull green leaves are the original plant, with the three brighter coloured new ones growing around it.

I ran out of time to harvest apples, but as I really need a lot of my saved cardboard shifting (it’s in the log store blocking access to the logs which we’ll quite possibly be wanting to get at in the next few weeks), I did start work on the asparagus bed, which is going to go right here:

It’s going to be another 1.2m wide bed about 15.5m long. I marked out the bed and path and then mowed the grass as short as the mower would allow. I went to fetch a shovel and fork from the “two-holer” (our veggie plot toolshed genuinely is a disused outside toilet) and found that some squatters have moved in.

The air was full of them, too. They kept landing on me and getting caught in my hair or falling inside the collar of my shirt, which isn’t very pleasant when their reaction to stress is to release a foul-smelling liquid 🙁

Anyhow, I loaded up the trailer with some of the larger pieces of cardboard and covered about half the area of the new bed.

Then opened up compost heap #2 which had developed an interesting case of mushrooms

The compost was still slightly warm so clearly it hasn’t finished breaking down yet, but I needed to spread it on the cardboard to keep it in place and I shan’t be planting anything there for at least four months and perhaps nearer five, so I’m sure it won’t do any harm. I’ve spread it quite thickly for this bed (the suggestion seems to be to use about 4″ on a new bed, but I’ve probably got at least 6″), and tried to even out a bit of a slope in the ground.

Hopefully I can get the rest of the bed finished tomorrow. Then I’ll put at least one more layer of cardboard down on the bare section to the right (which is going to be the path around the outside) to try to stop the grass and weeds getting through too quickly and cover it with a decent layer of woodchip. I still have another path to make on the other side of the plot too, so perhaps I can get that done at the same time.

Some of the seed companies sell ten each of early, mid and late varieties of asparagus crowns which seems like it might be a good way to start. I might be able to squeeze three plants across the bed depending on the spacing requirements, but even if I just go for two rows I’ll probably only need half the length of the bed. I can’t decide at the moment whether I’ll grow some more plants from seed (because it’s a lot cheaper), or maybe use the rest of the bed for something different — possibly some currant bushes and blueberries/gooseberries or something like that.

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No dig diary, 16th October 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Somehow I suddenly seem to have loads to do this weekend. I’m not entirely sure how that happened 🙂

This morning I harvested all the ripe tomatoes from the polytunnel. I was expecting them all to be turned into pizza or pasta sauce, but my wife says she’d like to dry some so we’ll have to see what’s left.

That done, I removed all of the plants that had no more fruit on. I was astonished to find how far the roots can spread when they’re not artificially confined by growbags, pots or raised beds. One plant had roots that were more than four feet long when I’d pulled it out, and even then the ends were snapped off!

I doubt that the remaining fruit will ripen much more, but we’ve got enough on at the moment without thinking about making stuff with the green tomatoes, so they can stay where they are for the time being.

I also removed my last courgette plant, but not before harvesting the last of this year’s crop — these four finger-sized fruit.

Any other time I possibly wouldn’t have bothered, but as the crop has been so poor this year I felt I couldn’t let them go to waste.

The rest of the day was spent mowing the orchard for the last time. Hopefully tomorrow I can harvest some apples, and indeed crab apples which, like the sloes, seem to have done very well this year but are quite small. I’d also quite like to get started on the new asparagus bed as I’m running out of cardboard storage space 🙂

And I must try to remember to pot on my pineapple plant and move it indoors for the winter.

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Aubergine curry?

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

We had aubergine and chickpea curry for dinner this evening made with some of my final harvest of aubergines from the polytunnel. Very enjoyable it was, too. We’ve not actually eaten meat since Sunday (though we did have prawns on Wednesday) and I can’t say that I’ve actually missed it. In fact it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that I’ve barely even noticed. I’m quite pleasantly surprised. It may of course be more of a struggle when we’re a few weeks in, but we’re not exactly evangelical about it so it wouldn’t be a problem if we ate meat on a planned vegetarian day once in a while.

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It’s sloe gin time again

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Well, not specifically gin for me actually.

It feels very early to be doing so but even so the trees actually look like it’s time, so this afternoon I have been picking sloes. Some trees were already completely bare of fruit whilst on others the sloes were looking quite wrinkled, so I thought it best to take a harvest now rather than delay and end up missing them altogether. The crop was large which I put down to the blackthorn flowering during one of the warm periods we had in Spring, when there were plenty of insects flying about to pollinate the flowers, but the individual fruits were quite small, probably because we’ve not actually had very much rain over the last few months despite quite overcast skies much of the time.

A quick check on the kitchen scales suggests I managed to pick somewhere near 3.4kg, which are now in the freezer. I shall be making sloe vodka with some, but I also want to try sloe cordial. Depending on what’s left or if I manage to get another harvest I’ll look for other interesting ways to use them.

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No dig diary, October 11th 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

I managed to plant garlic from the four bulbs I saved from this year’s harvest. I’ve done two bulbs in the main plot and two in the polytunnel again, but this time in the polytunnel I’ve done them as a single row behind all the lettuces which should mean that they won’t be in the way when I come to remove the lettuces and plant out the next crops in the spring.

The tomato plants seem to be dropping fruit quite regularly now and the blight is spreading, the latter probably as a result of the weather being quite warm during the day despite getting down to below 3.5°C last night, so I’m contemplating harvesting all the ripe fruit this weekend to make sure we don’t lose it. What we don’t keep for salads can be roasted and made into pasta or pizza sauce.

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No dig diary, 10th October 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

It’s been a bit of a disjointed weekend for me. I had plans to do loads of stuff, but ended up spending a fair bit of it being “washing machine repair man” so there are plenty of things on my list that remain undone 🙁

I have at least emptied compost bin #1. All the cleared parts of the outdoor veggie beds have compost spread over them and I have a bit of a pile where the sweetcorn and squashes were that will be spread over the ground where the runner beans are currently growing.

I harvested the very last melon from the greenhouse.

The aubergine plants were starting to look a bit sorry for themselves and it seemed sensible to take what I could before pulling them up. I guess these are probably heading towards the freezer as roasted vegetables for later use.

The remaining cucurbits in the polytunnel were also going downhill surprisingly fast having looked fine a week ago, so I decided to harvest the butternut squashes and cucumbers, the remains of the plants being the first back into the compost bin I’d just emptied. After a poor harvest of small squashes from the outdoor butternut squashes, I was pleased to get sixteen more from the polytunnel, almost all of a decent size. This is the entire harvest for this year.

After clearing the space in the polytunnel and doing a bit of prep work on the beds (and in fact in the greenhouse too), I planted out lettuces that have been growing in module trays in the greenhouse for the last few weeks.

In the top right corner, still dangling from the parent plant, is one of my loofah gourds. Like most of the cucurbits they’ve been quite disappointing this year — I’ve only got four decent fruit from six plants. On the ground below it is a big pile of overripe cucumbers, which actually have done really well this year. They’re too far gone to be worth eating, but if I slice them in half lengthwise the chickens go absolutely bananas for them, so they won’t go to waste.

Finally, just before dinner I took a stroll around the hedgerows and picked another batch of brambles. They’re looking very nice, but I think they might be the last ones for this year. Then again, I said that a while ago about the raspberries and I still got a few more of them this weekend as well.

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No dig diary, 8th October 2021

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Compost bin #3 is now fit to burst and my father-in-law hasn’t even finished the mowing! This afternoon therefore I opened up bin #1 and started spreading the compost onto the clear areas of the plot, which actually isn’t really a huge amount right now — perhaps enough to add up to two of the seven beds. Amazingly given that no material has been added to that bin since May, it was still warm. Not hot, but obviously above ambient temperature. Not all the material is broken down quite as well as I’d like, but it’s not too bad and as there’s not an awful lot that I’ll be planting out for the next five to six months it can just sit on the beds and finish off. Possibly if I’d turned it the result would have been better because the contents would have been mixed up again, but I have nowhere to turn it into 🙂

I still have the area where I was growing carrots to cover, but then I’ll have to have a think about what I do with the rest to allow us to start filling the bin again. Perhaps it might be time to start making the asparagus bed. That would have the additional benefit of getting rid of a lot of the cardboard I’ve been stashing away specifically to provide the mulch for the new bed.

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Slug alert!

Posted on November 11, 2021 by james

Look at this one I just found! Creeping down inside one of my savoy cabbages and laying a load of eggs 🙁

It may now have set a new altitude record for gastropods 😀 I’ve done my best to clear out all the eggs, too.

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