SUMMER HAS ARRIVED

SUMMER HAS ARRIVED

It has been a weird year for gardening weather. Summer came at Easter and stayed for a whole week, but then the jet stream looped down to the south pulling in cold wet winds from the north which lasted up till early September. Then the summer came back to Scotland mid month, but only for a couple of days around Tayside as clouds spoiled the fun. However it was dry so we took every chance to crack on with the harvesting and weeding. Hand weeding and hoeing were fine between crops and paths got a spray of glyphosate which should work just fine as it really needs a couple of dry days to work. Rain too soon after spraying will wash the weedkiller off the leaves. This herbicide is inactivated on contact with the soil, but is readily absorbed by healthy foliage.

Summer flowers

Summer poppies

The recent warm dry weather has brought out the summer flowers in a late but terrific blaze of colour. Chrysanthemums, gladioli, poppies, roses, sweet peas and African marigolds have added colour to my allotment and at home the dahlias, fuchsias, lilies, tuberous begonias and geraniums have never been better. Drifts of lavender have been a mass of purple for weeks. However it has not been a good year for petunias and impatiens (bizzie lizzies) most of which have just about died out.

Summer and autumn vegetables

Harvesting is in full swing with sweet corn, cauliflowers, cabbage, onions, beetroot, turnip, peas, and French beans all heading for the kitchen table and the freezer. Sweet corn is not as plentiful as last year with smaller cobs, some with poor fertilisation and only one cob per plant this year.

Onions are a different story as my one packet of Hytech seed has given me a massive crop of huge onions now drying off just fine in the sun, getting ready to be roped up for storing. After lifting the onions I spread some compost on the bare soil, forked it in, then after firming and raking it level, it got sown down with a clover green manure. I will dig this in during winter.

Cutting a cauliflower

Tomatoes are another crop that seems to be liking this rotten summer. The crop is massive with plants fruiting on the eighth truss. A lot of the surplus crop is getting frozen and will be used for soup and pasta sauce. Fresh tomatoes not picked till fully ripe are perfect in salads and soups.

Autumn fruit crops

Anna picking the chokeberries

The cool damp summer did no harm to the autumn raspberries, brambles, blueberries and aronias, but a wee bit more sun would have made them all a wee bit sweeter. I have been trying out two new varieties of autumn raspberry to compare them with my standard Autumn Bliss. Polka definitely has very large sweet berries, bigger than Autumn Bliss, though the latter has been exceptionally big this year. Autumn Treasure also said to be very large has still to fruit so nothing to compare at this stage. Aronia Viking was picked mid September from young bushes but as this is the first crop my three pounds will be kept for compote and jam. I should get a far bigger crop next year when hopefully I will have some spare for a couple of demijohns of a healthy dark red wine high in antioxidants.

Perpetual strawberry Flamenco continues to produce lovely large red berries but lack of sun creates a harder berry lacking juice and sweetness.

Early apple Oslin has now all been picked and bright red Discovery has now taken over.

Grapes growing outside on south facing walls and fences just love this weather and growth is hard to keep under control, but young bunches really need warmer weather to swell and ripen up. Two varieties, Siegerrebe and Rondo have already produced the first bunches and an older vine of Phoenix (three years old) has about twenty large bunches showing great promise if that sun would make an appearance for a week or longer. Who knows, we could get lucky !!!

Wee jobs to do this week

Autumn salad crops of lettuce, rocket, mustard, radish and mizuna will need thinning out if germination has been good. The recent mild spell combined with moist soil has been perfect for germination. I thin out radish to about an inch apart and the others to two inches, and then they will get thinned out further as you use young leaves for tender salads.

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LATE SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

LATE SUMMER IN THE GARDEN

For those of us still waiting for summer to arrive, we may be in for a wee disappointment as time is not on our side. The patio tables did not get used a great deal, but the garden plants varied tremendously. Plants preferring a cooler wet atmosphere such as fuchsias have never been better. Anna bought a new juicer machine to help use foliage of numerous vegetables such as beetroot that normally get discarded, and as an experiment I harvested a lot of fuchsia fruits from Mrs Popple to make a refreshing drink with a difference. Leafy vegetables had a great season, though slugs were a real nuisance. We needed some parsnips so I lifted three very luxuriant specimens. Roots were nearly two feet long, but they still have time to thicken up so could be another great crop.

My new raspberry Polka is living up to the description as being a lot bigger than Autumn Bliss, with plenty still to come. However some sun and warmth would help to make them sweeter.

However those plants that need a good sunny autumn such as my figs and grapes are still living in hope. I have had over a dozen large ripe figs, but there is still plenty to come. I got some nice grapes from the early varieties of Siegerrebe and Rondo, but my Black Hamburg in the greenhouse is very slow to ripen up.

Tomatoes just seem to like this weather as the crop is huge, so soups, salads, pasta sauce and pizza toppings are plentiful and surplus tomatoes are being frozen for future use.

Late summer is a good time to start tidying up herbaceous plants that have finished flowering, dead heading roses and lilies, pruning some shrubs, blackcurrants, gooseberries, summer raspberries and if you can get a couple of dry days do a bit of hoeing to kill weeds. Weed control has been very difficult this year up north as hoeing has been ineffective without the sun to shrivel up the weeds and the constant rain just washes off any glyphosate herbicide before it has time to be absorbed by the leaves. It has been a year for hand weeding and putting the weeds on the compost heap.

Shrub propagation

Late summer is a good time to propagate many shrubs by taking semi ripe shoot cuttings. Rosemary, Lavander, Cistus, Fuchsias, Forsythia, Ceanothus, Philadelphus and many others respond to this method. Take cutting about four to six inches long, cutting under a leaf joint with a very sharp knife and removing all the lower leaves. Dip them in hormone rooting powder, but shake off any loose dust and dibble them around the side of a pot in compost with added grit or sand to increase drainage. Place them in a warm but shaded spot in a cold frame or unheated greenhouse.

Keep them moist but not wet and they should root in a couple of months.

Apple, pear and plum harvesting

Start picking the first of the early apples. My first is always the Oslin (Arbroath Pippin) followed by Discovery. The crop this year is very heavy, but now Anna has a new juicer toy we are able to use all the Oslins. This very old variety of apple has a fantastic flavour, but suffers from brown rot very

easily, especially in this wet year. It is also a poor keeper so it has to be used within a week or so after picking. Pears are looking good but the crop is not heavy and we still await some sunshine to ripen up the fruit. I have no plums this year as I lost my old tree to silver leaf disease and my new replacement plum Victoria is just a baby trying to put on some growth. Maybe next year I will get a few plums.

Wee jobs to do this week

Most onions have now finished growing and once the tops have fallen over they can be lifted and put somewhere in the sun to dry off before storing in a dry frost free airy shed. They can be roped or cleaned up and stored in onion sacks.

Turn over compost heap to mix older compost with new material to help rotting down as the heap will soon be needed for the winter digging.

Do the final thinning of Swedes to about nine inches apart giving them room to grow before the end of the season.

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LATE SUMMER CROPS AND WINTER SALADS

LATE SUMMER CROPS AND WINTER SALADS

Late summer is that in between time when harvesting most of this years crops is in full swing, but we find there is still some growing time left to get a fast maturing crop sown for use in late autumn and into winter. The early peas and broad beans are the first to get harvested and old plants pulled out and composted. Both of these plants have nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots so leave behind feeding for the next crop as they rot down. I just clear the site, level it, and rake a deep tilth ready for some seed sowing. Early potatoes and onions are also often lifted off the ground at the end of August allowing more land for a late crop. Sweet corn would also be harvested mid to late August, but I find them quite slow this year running about three weeks late.

The weather plays a big role in the success of late sowings and this year it has been quite wet as well as cool, so pick your moments carefully and don’t do soil works if the surface is wet.

Lettuce salad leaves, mizuna, land cress, rocket, mustard and radish are all quick to mature so an early September sowing can be quite successful. This should give a wide variety of salad leaves and roots to pick from autumn to winter.

Spring onion and winter lettuce are also added to this group, but I find they are best sown in cellular seed trays in good compost in my cold greenhouse. This gives them a great start for planting out in early September.

I sow my outdoor seed a wee bit thicker than normal, just in case the weather is not in our favour, but also as some seed supplier’s germination may be a wee bit questionable. I hear too many tales of germination disasters and I know it is not always down to poor gardening skills. If germination is brilliant the seedlings can always be thinned out and the thinnings used for additional plants or given to a friend.

As more land is cleared from lifting potatoes, turnips, summer salads, beetroot, carrots, summer cabbage and cauliflower in early September there is still time to continue sowing. It may be too late for autumn salads, but not too late to catch a green manure crop of clover, tares or mustard (as long as there is no clubroot problem). Plants chosen for green manures have deep and heavy root systems that break up the soil, and many have nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots so adding to the nutrient value of the soil. A green cover over winter also prevents loss of nutrients in the soil from winter rains and melting snow. Winter digging is also less damaging on the soil if it has a green cover over it. However try to complete all digging in of green manures a couple of months ahead of the next crop to be sown or planted, and always before they try to set seed.

Late summer fruits
Autumn raspberries, brambles, figs and perpetual strawberries continue to crop and are at there best after a few days of sunny weather. Autumn raspberries have really enjoyed this cooler wetter year and berry size has never been bigger. However figs are a different story. I had a potential one hundred plus wee figs on one tree. Figs need a long warm climate and this is not their best summer. The foliage was so late to grow that it could not support a heavy crop as it is the leaves that create the food supply to help the fruit to grow. There was just not enough leaves early on so the plant did a June drop in August by shrivelling up a few figs. I am still getting a great crop of really large figs with the first ones ripe in mid August, but I may not reach my potential of one hundred.

There’s always next year.

Wee jobs to do this week

Any potato varieties affected by blight should be lifted after clearing off all the foliage and dumping it. Choose a dry sunny day for lifting and leave the potatoes in the sun for a couple of hours to dry off so they can be stored in a cool dark place. They should last into next spring, but keep checking them for any sign of rotting.

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