Too blue to be true

The blueberries are looking great in the front garden and these luckily haven't been attacked by the local birdies. The poor fruit bushes in the back garden have been literally stripped bare.

We've been so busy lately. New house, new garden. Lots and lots to do. We have a few things growing and a greenhouse came with our new garden so this year is all new to us. Tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies and peppers coming along nicely.

Update coming soon! I promise.

Goodbye Little Garden!

Well, it's time to say goodbye to the little garden. We've had three very happy years here. Some more fruitful than others. It's time for the little gardeners to scale up and move to some bigger and (hopefully) better. In three weeks we'll be the proud owners of a slightly larger patch than what we have now – a whopping 100ft x 65ft garden! We are very excited :-)

Last weekend we harvested the remainder of our crops. The highlight of which was our parsnips. Look at these beauties! This was the first time we'd grown them and they were a breeze! I think we got about 10 all in all and they were all a really good size. We roasted them up with some of the beets and carrots for a delicious last meal from our patch.

Talking of beetroot – we had a bumper crop this year. I almost don't know what to do with it all! Beetroot chutney – check. Roasted beetroot – check. Pickled beetroot – check. Beetroot soup – check. Not sure what to do with the rest!

We got a huge batch of toms this year too. We went for Gardener's Delight which have well and truly lived up to their name. We have hundreds and hundreds! As we've only got three weeks left here we picked most of them including the green ones.

And of course there's only one thing to do with green tomatoes and that's chutney. I found a great recipe by Nigel Slater.

Green Tomato Chutney

• 900g tomatoes, mixed green and red
• 350g onions
• 90g raisins
• 250g light muscovado sugar
• 1 medium sized, hot red chilli
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
• 300ml white wine vinegar

Halve or quarter the tomatoes – depending on how big they are. Put the green tomaotes in with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil and then simmer for around half an hour. Then add in the red tomatoes and simmer for another half hour. Simples. Pop into sterlised jars and I let it mature for a few weeks at least. If you make it now it'll make great Christmas presents – what more could you want than some home-made chutney to spice up that left over turkey on boxing day.

Jammy-tastic!

I think there is almost nothing better than having a glut of something in your garden and deciding what to do with it. Chutney? Jam? Piccalilli? It's a joy.

At the time I almost have a little twang of guilt – taking all this wonderfully fresh produce and adding the likes of vinegar, sugar and boiling it to within an inch of it's life. But, come December, when the garden is cold, wet (and in the past couple of years covered in snow) there is such joy in opening a little pot of gold that was lovingly put together almost 6 months previous.

So it's the middle of June. And June = strawberries. And strawberries = jam. Now I'll be truthful, we don't actually eat a lot of jam but hey, what the heck, the great thing about preserves is well, as the name suggests they last for ages so we'll have plenty of time to work our way through the yumminess.

So first things first, go pick some strawberries. I started with a kilo and ended up with 2 big and 3 small pots of jam. You'll also need 500g of granulated sugar, 450g of sugar with added pectin. Strawberries are pretty low in pectin and that's the stuff that makes the jam set so you definitely need the added pectin sugar. It's pretty easy to find so shouldn't be too much trouble. Then lastly 150ml of lemon juice which you should be able to get from 3 good sized lemons. Prep your strawberries by washing and hulling them – any big ones halve or quarter.Start by putting 200g of the granulated sugar and 200g of the strawberries into a large pan. Mush up with a potato masher and then heat up the pulp slowly. Simmer very gently for around 5 minutes. Then add in the remainder of the strawberries and sugar. Once all the sugar has dissolved add the lemon juice. Turn the heat up and bring to the boil. You'll need to boil them for around 10 minutes, maybe longer – depending on how thick you want your jam.
This is the stage where you need to test the setting point. The best way I've found to do this is by using a cold tea saucer. Take a little of the jam and place on the saucer – let it cool for a few minutes and then push it with your finger. If the mixture ripples then you're there. If not, boil for a few more minutes and try again. Bear in mind that as your mixture cools down it will become thicker so take this into account.Let the mixture cool and pop into some sterilised jars.
It's as simple as that!

Squirmy Wormies

It's spring time, and for your garden birdies that means one thing – chicks, and lots of them! Your garden birds will be super busy at the moment, and with the wonderful warm spring we've had most will be starting to think about their second brood. In the garden this weekend we've already had Greenfich, Goldfinch and Sparrow fledglings hopping around.

Live food at this time of year is a very welcome addition for those busy parents, Robins, Blackbirds and Sparrows are particularly partial to a mealworm or two. They're high in protein so make a great food source for those growing chicks. We get ours from CJ Wildlife – who not only stock live foods but a large range of seed mixes and nuts.

It can work out pretty expensive so we only really put them out at this time of year to give our feathered friends a helping hand. We'll then revert back to our normal feed which is a combination of kibbled sunflower hearts, peanuts and nyjer seed.

Basil Blunder

We're going for three different types of Basil this year. A Basil Bush, some Mini Basil and then the traditional Sweet Basil we all know and love.

Look at the image on the packaging of the Sweet Basil. I find this a very odd choice! It's a shot of some fully bolting Basil. Why would I want my Basil to bolt?! Packaging is all about luring the customer in - mmmmm look at this wonderful sweet juicy herb. I can't imagine there are many gardeners out there who would want their Basil to bolt - it goes very bitter and peppery at that stage and isn't very nice at all. Oh well - let's hope for once the packaging doesn't hold true!

Repotting tomatoes

We repotted the tomatoes today. They've been quite happy on the windowsill for about six weeks and were starting to outgrow their pots.

Repotting is pretty simple but a good tip for tomatoes is plant them deep so the soil almost comes up to the first set of leaves – it makes for a good sturdy plant as it encourages them to send out lots more roots.

Tumbling Toms have been our pick for two years running, so we thought it's time for a change – this year we're growing two varieties – 'Gardeners Delight' which is a bit of a classic apparently and also 'Sweet and Neat' – a mini yellow variety.

Hopefully they'll give us a good harvest.

Yet ANOTHER pest to worry about...

Check out this fella. I thought he was very attractive at first - metallic, almost jewel like. So I did a little Google and it turns out him and his crew have taken a liking to our Rosemary bush and are working their way through its juicy leaves.

Chrysolina Americana or the Rosemary Beetle is actually from Southern Europe and has been found in the UK since around 1994, mainly in London but slowly spreading. The RHS are monitoring the spread of this pest so if you want to record your sighting submit your record here.

It seems there are no natural predators for this pest so currently the RHS are recommending either hand picking the adults and larvae off or using a suitable insecticide. I think I'll try the hand picking first to see if I can reduce the population enough for the plant to bounce back.

Shroom Ahoy!

We tend to keep the garden a little untidy over the winter. Not because we can't be bothered (although there probably is an element of that!) but for the birdies and insect life. The strawberries still have all their straw so it creates a nice warm place for the insects to bed down over the winter.

Because of this we do get random things crop up every year – weeds mostly. But this year we've had mushrooms! We noticed this one today – quite a good sized one too – there's two more small ones next to it but this is the biggest – about 10cm across in size.

We've had a look in numerous mushroom ID books – the only real mushroom around this time of year is the St.George. It definitely looks like a St.George but it's totally the wrong habitat – they should be in fields. This one is in a tiny non-grassed back garden in London. Could it be a St.George? Who knows.

Snow Joke

Well, what an eventful few days we've had. We missed the first batch of snow down here in the South East but we well and truly got hit last night! I'd been quite disappointed with our measly flakes of snow this week but I couldn't complain this morning - we probably had about 3/4 inches - doesn't sound like much but for London that is pretty good :-)

Of course + snow = - trains! So both the gardeners were at home today. Had a lovely walk in a snow covered Greenwich Park at lunchtime but spent most of the day snug and warm at home.

So whilst you're toasting your toes by the fire give a little thought to the birdies and wildlife out there. They need your help - make sure you top up your feeders and put out fresh water. I've been clearing away the snow in the morning and laying down seed for the ground feeders – blackbirds, robins etc (although the pigeons are having more than their share...)

Peanuts are great and sunflowers seeds too – but if you don't want to shell out left-overs are just as good – high fat is best so cake, biscuits, cheese is a great one - our birds have had Parmesan this week (albeit an out of date one but nevertheless, only the best for the SE10 birds!)

Green Manure

So, it's that time of year – all our veg has pretty much been pulled now - beets, fennel, potatoes, tomatoes and it's all looking rather sparse.

Normally we'd just leave the garden, to overgrow - let it harbour some juicy insects for the birdies over winter. This year though – we'd heard lots of people talk about green manure so we thought we'd check it out.

Green manure is a crop that's grown to benefit the soil. There's lots of different types that can be used to perform several functions. A lot of them have deep penetrative roots that will help break up clay and improve soil structure - great for London gardens. They'll also release nutrients into the soil ready for the next crop and suppress weeds so hopefully that first job of the year will be a little easier!

We've chosen two types, Forgae Rye and Forage Pea. Forage Rye looks a little like wheat – it's very grass like. When it comes to next year, you just loosen the roots and dig it into your soil. Easier said than done I think.... Forage Pea as the name suggests is part of the legume family, again deep roots that break up the soil and good for weed suppression as it has quite a lot of foliage.

We bought our seeds from sow seeds which sounds like a lovely little family run business.

So, it all sounds great. We get to look at something other than bare earth for a few months, bye bye to weeds, hello to lovely nutrients for our veges next year. Everyones a winner? Lets see what we say when we have to dig up the whole garden next year...

Blight Fright!

We thought a week ago that our main crop might have blight. Blight is probably one of the worse diseases you can get and it can wipe out your whole crop. It was the cause of the Irish potato famine and so obviouly we were pretty concerned. I'd seen loads of pictures of the leaves curling at the end and going brown - and this is excatly what we had so hence the worry.

What is blight?
Blight is a fungus – Phytophthora infestans. It's triggered by warm wet conditions and August this year has been great for blight - warm and SO much rain. The first thing are brown patches on the leaves. The tubers can be affected as well and they'll just rot from the skin through the flesh.

What can you do to prevent it?
Well, not much really. It's killed by cold weather so cross your fingers for a few cold days! There are a few chemical treatments Bordeaux mixture which is organically approved but contains copper which probably isn't that good for you... and Diathane 945 which sounds horrid!

The best way to get round is it to choose a variety that is less affected by blight.

Thompsan & Morgan have a good list here.

What can you do to treat it?
Again, not much! If it's just a few leaves that seem to be affected then you can remove those. Whatever you do, don't put them on your compost heap! The spores will love it in there. If possible burn. By pruning this may stop the spores from reaching the tubers (as long as they're well earthed up)

We duly followed instructions and took off any foilage that showed signs of browning. The plants actually look pretty healthy - albeit a little bald now! I'm now not sure that it is actually blight. I've read a few forums and I think we might be lucky...

Watch this space!

Tomato Troubles!

Yes, look at these beauties. Luscious and green and bursting full of summer. Our tomatoes are doing great. Well, SOME of our tomatoes are doing great. It seems we have 3 stages of tomato health in our garden.

The shot above is of the latest plants to be repotted. And because we'd run out of room for hanging baskets we planted them in a potato patio planter. They don't seem to mind, infact I would say they're thriving.

So in order of decline, next on our list is one of the hanging baskets.
Now, they look OK. They definitely don't look healthy. Just OK. This shot is of the hanging basket that's to the right of the shed door. The shot below is the one to the left.
Now, they definitely don't look healthy. I would go so far as to say they don't even look OK. Originally both hanging baskets were looking like the shot above, so we did a little test and fed the one on the right more often than the one on the left. It seems to have worked because the one on the right does look better than the left. But why are they having troubles when the fellas in the patio planter are looking brilliant?

Maybe the depth of the soil?
The plants in the hanging baskets obviously won't have as much room as they would in the patio planter. But we used the baskets last year and had no problems.

Maybe the soil we used?
This year we've only used peat free soil so maybe that's caused a problem. We also lined the baskets with sphagnum moss this year. Again, could that be leeching all the minerals away from the tomatoes?

I checked in the ever helpful Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D G Hessayon and we think it might be magnesium deficiency. You can help this by spraying the plants with epsom salts. This we did last weekend... hard to say whether they look any better. They certainly don't look any worse so I guess we have to be thankful for that.

Oh... and the huge downpours we've been having have caused some of the fruit to split... all in all, not a good year for the tomatoes so far.

Books, lovely books.

Books. We love them. We have far too many and by default not enough space but we'd never be without them. Our dream home would most definitely have a library.

But surprisingly we don't actually have that many gardening books. Any problems we come across we do tend to just Google – there is so much information out there and some great forums where people are just happy to help – Gardeners Corner being a great example.

But there's nothing like sitting down of an evening with a cup of tea (or a glass of wine if you've earnt it!) and pondering over a book. And everyone has a favourite, one they go back to time and time again. And our favourite is The Vegetable & Herb Expert by Dr. D G Hessayon. It truly is a classic and the worlds best-selling book on growing vegetables and herbs.
Inside it's choc-a-bloc full of brilliant photographs and illustrations. It is unbelievable helpful when it comes to diseases and problems.
Each problem is detailed and has full colour illustrations. It's proved so useful and we refer back to it time and time again.
Infact, I was reading it this morning to try and find out what is wrong with our tomatoes – more about that in another post.

So if you're going to buy one book, get this one! And best of all, it's so cheap! Available on Amazon for just £4.00. An absolute bargain.

Pete-ettes

Pete (& Pat) look what they've gone and done. They've bred. They've created another two of the damn things. And oh guess where they were tonight... yup – our garden!

Now our garden is small. It can handle one Wood Pigeon (Pete) quite comfortably. Two Wood Pigeons (Pete & Pat) is a bit of a squeeze, they kinda get in the way - their wings are too big, it's awkward.

Four. No, four is just not going to work. Pete (& Pat) this is not a creche - you've got to sort out nursery, or get your parents to look after them during the day or something. This just isn't right and it's definitely not OK.

A dinner full of roots

Our beetroot is doing us so proud. We're really chuffed with how well they're doing. We planted a lot more than we did last year simply because we enjoyed them so much.

We've only got a tiny little garden and a quarter of the land is taken up with the beauties, and we made sure that this year we staggered our planting - so hopefully we'll have more of a constant supply rather than like last year where we had a massive glut for 2 weeks and then nothing!

Our current favourite way to eat them is roasted with some nice garlic and rosemary oil but this year I'm hoping that we'll have enough to make our own Borscht soup - a real favourite in the little gardeners house.

And if we're going to pull some beets today it only makes sense to pull some carrots too. I mean.. how could you not. I think the baby carrots are one of my top 5 crops from the garden. Infact they're probably a close second to the tomatoes - maybe even joint first.

Flowering at last

My my, it's been a long wait but finally the chillies have begun to flower. I can't believe how long they have taken. We planted them indoors in March so that's over 5 months to get to this stage. I guess our UK climate is not ideal for these fellas.

So a few more weeks and we'll be able to make our own all'Arrabbiata and if timings are good we may even be lucky enough to use some homegrown tomatoes.

Undergound Surprises

There is nothing like the surprise that you get from root vegetables. The delight in pulling up a perfectly round beetroot or a twisted knobbly carrot.

It's because you can't see what's happening. You just have to let nature takes it course and hope that everything is going according to plan. But when things start to grow, you get a tiny little glimpse of what could be, that's when I start to get impatient! I want to pull that beetroot! I want to see how big the carrots are! Just look at that beetroot - tempting us with a little peak!

But this weekend we've had disappointment to deal with. We pulled some of our first earlies and I must admit I was very underwhelmed. We went for the recently launched Accord – partly because they're ideal for containers and we'd decided early on that all our potatoes we would grow this way. They're also high yeilding and disease resistant – particularly against eelworm

We admit that we were pretty late in chitting and planting them but we honestly thought that they'd been in for a while and were ready to harvest. Here are our results from three plants!
Rubbish! 20 potatoes! And some of those so small they don't really count! We were gutted! Luckily we opted to harvest just one pot first just incase something like this happened. So the other container we're going to leave for maybe another month to hopefully increase the yield.

I think we'll try and be a little more patient with the rest of our underground friends.
Although... that baby carrot does look REALLY tempting. I must say - I have never tasted something so delicious and surprising than a home grown baby carrot. They beat the supermarket by just miles and miles.
And this year we've attempted to grow onions from seed. We use a lot of onions so it makes sense for us to grow them but I just don't get these set onions. So you buy a small onion – you put it in the ground and you get a bigger onion. Just doesn't seem worth it to me? So we never really bothered with sets. But, fingers crossed, the seeds seem to be doing OK.

Strawberry Dreams

Nothing beats a homegrown bowl of strawberries with some double cream. Yummy! I think we've probably still got enough left for another bowl each. They sure have done us proud this year – maybe triple the crop we had last year.

Easy Peasy

Oh my - fresh peas from the supermarket taste just great. But fresh peas - picked a few seconds ago from your back garden – well they just taste sublime. Tiny little green spheres bursting with the taste of summer. None have made it to the kitchen yet...

An Asian Invasion?

There is a lot of talk at the moment about the invasion of the Harlequin Asian ladybirds into the UK and how they're edging out our native species. We have a pretty healthy population of ladybirds in the garden so I thought this year I would take a shot of each one I see and compile a list.

It'll be interesting to see how many UK vs Harlequin we have.
The first two are:
This fella is a Harmonia axyridis which is yep, a Harlequin.

and yep, you've guessed it this is Harmonia axyridis conspicua – another variant of the Harlequin.

Not looking good for the UK fellas. So 2-0 to Asia so far.

New entrant as of 24 July 2010.
Harmonia axyridis... Asia 3 UK 0.

The guys over at Harlequin Survey are recording all sightings of Harlequin ladybirds over the UK. So if you do see one it would be great to let them know. They have an online form which is really easy to fill out and you can even upload your pictures and they'll email you to confirm your identification.