"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments"

Janet Kilburn Phillips

Good news for allotmenteers!

Hi Everyone. A gardening friend texted me on the day of the hose pipe ban to let me know that Thames Water had changed the exemptions to allow allotment holders to use hoses. I was so pleased and my back will be very grateful too.

I have to say that I have spent more time in the kitchen this past month than the allotment with so much produce being carried home in my basket. How have you all been doing? What's your biggest success so far this year?

So what have we got in store for you this month?

What to sow and grow in September.

The benefits of keeping it tidy.

Storing your harvests - My new toy.

Did you know?

Free pond plants.

And lastly, Lottie news and members questions.

🥦🍅🥒🌶🍠🌽🍓🫑🫐🍐🥕

What to sow and grow in September.

Although we are technically still in summer, there is definitely a tinge of autumn about the weather. You can feel the season changing with the early morning temperatures.

Like last month you can still sow or plant Spring Cabbage, Kale, Chard and Spinach, but they may need a bit of protection with fleece when there's frosts about later on in the year.

And If you want to get some winter salads started it's best to do it before mid month. Things like Lambs Lettuce, Mizuna, Salad Rocket, Chervil, Coriander, Mustards and Dill as they all prefer the cooler weather.

The benefits of keeping things tidy.

Today I spent half an hour on the Lottie just tidying up. A little bit of weeding, picking up fallen fruit and cutting off dying leaves from my summer squashes. I do this as often as is needed, possibly a couple of times a week. "But you're a tidy person Christine", I hear you say. In actual fact I'm not, you should see my house! What I am though is someone who wants to grow as much healthy fruit and veg as I can in the limited space that I've got with the least effort as possible.

If I told you that keeping your growing space tidy you could reduce pests and diseases, reduce the need for watering and increase your yields would you believe me?

The basis of all this is starting off with a no-dig approach (Newsletter No. 4, November) and making sure that your soil is well mulched with compost and not having bare soil. Also having something growing in your beds for as much of the year as possible is also beneficial for the health of your soil.

I think my gardening guru, Charles Dowding will be able to explain it much better than me.

Storing your harvests...

...So what's my new toy?

I talked last month about Courgette gluts and what you can do when you have a surplus of fruit or veggies. Well I've been exploring ways to effectively store food long term. At the moment I mainly freeze my excess, but that's not always possible for a lot of people unless you have a dedicated freezer like I'm fortunate to have.

I looked into bottling, or canning as Americans call it, but that seemed very involved and needed a lot of spare time, space to work and storage space for all the jars.

In my extensive viewing of gardening videos on YouTube I came across dehydrating as a way to store excess veggies. And as an allotment neighbour of mine had mentioned that he dehydrates lots of things I did a bit of research and to cut a long story short, I bought a dehydrator.

I have to confess that it sat in our spare room for a good six months unopened until the inevitable courgette glut hit. Well, last week it was put into action and I'm very pleased with the results. A kilo and a half of courgettes reduced to half a jar of dried.

There's good points and not so good points. The good points are that once dried most vegetables will last for several years if stored correctly and not loose their nutritional content. A bit of a downside is that the machine sounds like you have the microwave on continuously and the drying time took about 16 hours in the end so not a quick process. Although you can at least go off and do other things while it's drying. It didn't use a lot of electricity which was something I was concerned about so I'm pleased about that. In fact I'm very happy with the results and have plans to do other things very soon. Watch this space.

Did you know?

A snail can travel up to 80 meters in a day. This may not seem like much, but for a creature that only moves at about 1cm per second, it’s actually quite a feat! If we convert 80 meters into inches, that means a snail can travel over 300 feet in just 24 hours. I'm okay with that, just as long as it's not in the direction of my veggies haha! 😬

Free pond plants

Do you have a pond or are you thinking of having a pond? Do you know someone that has a pond and would you like some pond plants? I have quite a few spare as they have self seeded and are growing onto my paths. They are all potted up and ready to go. I don't want to have to put them on the compost. Click HERE to see what ones they are.

Lottie News!

My start to August wasn't the best. The foxes had been at it again and had dug up quite a few of my Onions and made an absolute mess of one of my beds that had lots of seedlings in. This actually spurred me on to test out the theory that foxes don't like the smell of Jeyes Fluid and off I went to town to get some. I put some diluted Jeyes in a glass jar with a spray top and went about spraying all the non growing items on my plot; plastic pots, cut down scaffold boards and house bricks that I use to hold down my netting, things like that. The result...well, the jury is still out, but I do thinks it has deterred them. I'm going to experiment with making the spray a bit more concentrated and see if that stops them rampaging on my plot. I'll keep you updated.

Then of course we had the second heatwave last month and I hope you all found ways to stay cool. I had a few casualties in the greenhouse department in my garden with the temperature getting up to 41C at one point and that was with both windows and the door open. We then of course had the downpour which flooded the road by the gate to the allotments. This meant I had to make my way to the other gate and walk down the other side of the plots. Fortunately the rain got sucked up into the parched soil quite quickly and it was all gone by the following day.

I did however manage to harvest the first lot of the Black Beans and Borlotti Beans and they are now residing in big glass jars ready for some winter casseroles to be made. The Butternut Squashes have tripled in size since last month and the Patti Pans are now taking over the Courgettes for quantity. Sadly I had to pull the summer Leeks early partly because of the foxes and partly because they were developing rust.

As I mentioned earlier I seem to have spent more time in the kitchen than on the Lottie. Peeling and coring both Apples and Pears, making roasted Tomato sauces, Carrot top pesto, roasting Radishes and a massive pot of vegetable soup/casserole thing that everything in it had been home grown. Such a massive sense of achievement.

And last but not least, I harvested some really lovely looking Carrots, something I never thought I'd manage because of past disasters. It just goes to show what a bit of perseverance can do.

Members Questions.

...Why are my tomato skins so tough?

There are three reasons tomatoes get thick skins. Firstly it could be the variety. Roma, plum and crack resistant varieties will naturally have thicker skins.

Then there's under watering. When tomato plants don't get enough water they go into survival mode and produce tomatoes with thicker skins to preserve the water that they do get.

And lastly, too much heat will produce tomatoes with thicker skins as the thicker skin will prevent them getting sunscald. A way to prevent this is to shade your plants in the hottest part of the day.

If you have a food gardening question you'd like to ask just pop me an email and I'll see how I can help. I don't proclaim to be an expert, but I will do my best to answer any of your questions.

In the meantime, if you know of anyone who might like to become a FG4A member do feel free to forward them this email and get them to visit the website and sign up, it's free!

Or you can always catch up with what I've been up to on Facebook or instagram.

Keep safe.

Christine x

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