Catching Up: Produce

 

For the past three months, although unable to garden, I have been able to go on picking my own produce - which must be among the most satisfying pastimes there is. The mini tomatoes (supposed to be the easiest to grow out of doors) and the big black aubergines did well in pots. I managed to carry on watering them, fed them once a week with my own comfrey feed and when that ran out, a seaweed fertiliser. 

Tomato Lycostandard

I bought the tomatoes as a collection of three grafted plants in 10cm pots from Suttons. These included Lycocherry, Lycoplum and Lycostandard which turned out to be a striped variety a little larger than the others  that I particularly liked. I'm told that grafted plants have resistance to soil based diseases, that  the rootstocks are more vigorous than non-grafted plants and will grow more fruits. Mine certainly did produce lots of healthy tomatoes this year.                                                                         

   

Tomatoes Lycoplum and Lycocherry

                               

The grape vine had plenty of fruit too (I don't  know its name - it was here when I arrived.) The grapes taste good but they are tiny and there's only just room enough in each grape for the pips, not much flesh,  so I leave them on the vine to look interesting or use them as table decoration. 

                                                                  Grapes ripening on the vine

All the cordon apples and pears fruited generously. My Fiesta apple is about eight years old now and produced lots of lovely red apples. Pinova, about five years old, produced a number of large green-turning-to-red apples which were tasty and the cordon Concorde pear, an offpsring  of Conference and very similar - it doesn't go soft too quickly - had nine fruit (I counted). 

Concorde pear

Pinova apple 

I  hobbled up the garden recently after several days of rain and found to my surprise a whole new batch of autumn raspberries ripening. Although the birds liked to nibble them in the summer, they don't seem interested in this late crop so I've had them to myself. 

Autumn raspberries left by the birds

                               

Then, of course, there are the roots and leaves. They just carry on into autumn and winter without  needing any care at all, which is lucky. Kale I have, a bluey green one and a Cavolo Nero. 

Brown radishes in a pot

For roots I have a brown radish which can grow as large as a small turnip although I don't usually wait that long. I eat a few of the leaves as well - they can perk up a green salad. 

Brown radish

There are a few beetroot left and some turnips. The mini veg trug has six lettuces of different varieties that my friend with the allotment gave me. I now cover them with plastic cloches and they provide  enough leaves for a lunchtime salad a day. 

Lettuces in the mini trug

Oh and I also have a perennial cabbage but that's still in a pot and I'll probably plant it in spring when I can mulch it and spread some of that wool slug stuff around it to give it a good start.

Happily, there are things for the birds to glean as well. There are several patches of dead asters and the sparrows have a great time fluttering among the seed heads and pecking at the seeds. There really is a lot to be said for wilding and minimal gardening or whatever you like to call it.