SWEET CORN

SWEET CORN

August is a great month for healthy eating as the garden and allotment are at the peak of the harvesting season with a huge variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. Sweet corn tends to ripen all at the same time so harvesting the cobs is a once over task. However, to know when best to cut the corn, sampling is done every few days to test the softness and sweetness. Sample when some of the cobs tassels have turned a dark brown colour. Push your

Sampling some sweet corn

fingernail into the corn and if it is watery it is not ready, as it should be milky when tested, but if it is left too long it will go pasty. I tend to pick a few cobs to sample for the table about two weeks before final harvest. The corn has a high sugar content at this stage, but the sugar is slowly converted to starch if harvesting is delayed. However for folk watching the calories, one cob has less sugar than an apple and only half as much as a banana. Some newer varieties have a higher sugar content known as super

Anna pots up sweet corn seedlings

sweet and are delicious to eat fresh straight off the plant. The sweetness in the corn is created by a recessive gene so keep the sweet corn block well away from other sweet corn plants otherwise cross pollination may cause loss of sweetness and make the cobs chewy.

Sweet corn has amazing health benefits both as a freshly eaten cob straight from the plant and also when cooked as many of the benefits are enhanced. They are rich in phytochemicals that promote healthy vision, rich in vitamins B and C, plus the minerals iron, magnesium and potassium. They are also rich in fibre which feeds the good bacteria in your gut, and aid digestion.

Culture

Sweet corn is still seen as a novel crop in Scotland though it has been grown here by amateurs and

Sweet corn and pumpkin

farmers for many years. Our soils and climate (most years) are perfect for its growth and cropping, and this year my plants (variety Incredible) are huge with some showing a third cob on very vigorous plants. To get a strong and vigorous plantation grow on well manured and fertile soil. As planting is most often done in June, there is plenty of time to dig over the plot in winter adding plenty of compost and leaving the surface rough for winter weathering. In early spring break down the soil, rake level adding some fertiliser then sow down a fast growing green manure crop. This will add humus and assist drainage. Trample this down before it flowers probably in early to mid May then dig in the green manure. This will give it time to begin to rot down before planting then it will release its nutrients while the sweet corn grows. Sow seed indoors individually in cellular seed trays in mid March, then pot up into bigger pots when the plants are about six inches tall. Harden off in May then plant out in early June, but all depending on prevailing weather. Plant about two feet apart in square blocks to assist wind pollination. Give them

Sweet corn Incredible

wider spacing if you grow then together with pumpkins in the same block. Keep weeded and water in dry weather.
Varieties
Incredible sugar enhanced variety, very reliable. Grows quite tall.
Lark F1 tendersweet variety
Sundance F1, Early
Swift’ F1 Extra tender sweet. Plants have two to three cobs
‘Golden Giant’ AGM Supersweet, Large, good quality cobs.
‘Earlibird AGM Supersweet early variety with vigorous plants with good sized, uniform cobs.
‘Lark’ AGM Extra tender sweet. High yielding top quality cobs.

Wee jobs to do this week

Rhubarb crumble and jam

Rhubarb is growing very strongly now that the rain has returned and the plants have had really warm weather, so keep pulling off good stems for immediate use or if the crop is heavy it can go into the freezer for future use. Give the plants a feed to boost more growth as there is still time to pull more stems off before the plant slows down in autumn. Brilliant for crumbles, stewed rhubarb and added to saskatoons for a fantastic jam.

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SUMMER HARVEST CONTINUES

SUMMER HARVEST CONTINUES

Crop harvesting has started early this year, brought on by the fantastic hot dry summer. Provided plants got irrigated growth was excellent and many crops are now well ahead and ready for picking. It was the salads, lettuce and spring onion that were first to crop in early May, quickly followed by the strawberries. However both had a short season

Bringing in the gooseberries

and I was out of strawberries in mid July, though hoping my autumn cropping Flamenco, (young runners planted last autumn,) will continue with a few berries into autumn once it has established

Cauliflower Clapton

some growth. Salads needed several sowings a few months apart to give a succession, and now I am sowing those hardy varieties to last into winter.

First early potato Casablanca was ready for lifting in late May and now I have lifted second early Charlotte as all the foliage had withered, even although I had tried to keep them irrigated. No sign of any damage by slugs or blight which can be a real problem in a rainy season, but not this year. Both early varieties are salad potatoes so no huge spuds, but the crop was clean with good sizes and an excellent weight per shaw. Maincrop potato Setanta is still in foliage, but beginning to go over.

Onions ripened very early in July and needed lifting and laid out in the sun to ripen off. They do not like being irrigated as this can bring on white rot, but with the dry weather irrigation was necessary.

Successional sowings about six weeks apart, kept us supplied with Golden Ball turnips and beetroot,

Huge fresh produce from garden in August

though good growth let us have plenty baby beet as we thinned out the plants to four inches apart. The later beetroot sowing will keep us supplied into winter. I usually leave these outdoors, but will lift them for storage indoors if cold weather threatens.

Courgettes required continuous watering but with the heat they have been bountiful. Anna got a fantastic recipe for courgette soup, to use up the excess crop.

Cauliflower, cabbage and calabrese have all given great crops of huge vegetables, and unfortunately all the cauliflower ripen at the same time so it has been necessary to plant up several smaller rows a couple of months apart.

Peas were sown in two rows with Kelvedon Wonder and Onward cropped a few weeks apart so harvesting, shelling and preparing for the freezer were tasks well spread out. My granddaughter Sophie arrived for a few days on her school holidays just in time to help out. She just loved it!!!

The broad bean harvest however is a huge work load. Beans were picked in between rain showers, but then the old plants have to be dug out and chopped up for the compost heap. Once back home the sun came out so we could shell them outdoors

Workforce relaxes between harvesting

 

on the patio with help from Sophie. Later that evening we gathered round the table to remove the beans from their skins before weighing and bagging up for the freezer.

Then just before Sophie got too relaxed she needed to help out to pick the gooseberries, bring them home and top and tail about thirty pounds of fruit. However that was not the end as she helped me to crush ten pounds of fruit with a potato masher for wine brewing in buckets. The white gooseberry Invicta makes a brilliant wine but I give it three years to mature in demijohns before bottling. Surplus gooseberries were again mashed by Sophie to extract the juice for some gooseberry and mint jelly, then Anna and Sophie cooked up a jelly pan of tablet in time for the allotment open day.

Saskatoons ripened on schedule at the end of July with picking over two weeks so most of the crop has been frozen or brewed for wine. The final picking was done just as Sophie’s Dundee holidays came to an end and she could get back to a normal life with friends.

Siegerrebe grapes pruned and ready to pick

Raspberry Glen Fyne and Glen Dee both gave great crops and autumn fruiting Polka and Autumn Bliss have also both started to crop from early August.

Wee jobs to do this week

Remove all sideshoots on grape vines both in greenhouses and outdoors. Also remove some leaves to let the sun shine on the swelling bunches to help ripen them up. This year of the big heatwave should ensure a bumper year for outdoor grapes in Scotland, provided autumn is warm, dry and sunny. Fingers crossed!!!

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SUMMER FLOWERS

SUMMER FLOWERS

Sophie with clove scented pinks

Dahlia Otto's Thrill

We have had a fantastic spell of summer weather, followed by the rain, and the garden flowers have put on a brilliant display, apart from those that suffered in the drought, got their leaves scorched by too hot sunshine and those that got blown over by the gales. This year will be remembered as a very hot year, and it remains to be seen whether the next hot year is coming soon. My memory of hot summers goes far back to 1976 and 1959, the year I started work as an apprentice gardener in early July based in the Howff Cemetery. There was no rain for three months, and then the heavens opened up in a deluge. It was also a fantastic year for flowers at their best around McManus Gallery, Sea Braes, the City Churches and Baxter Park and many other Parks Department parks and open spaces.

Oriental lilies

This year my garden has been a mass of flowers from early spring. The mid summer thunderstorms were a bit much for some plants, so they had a wee rest before resuming flowering as normality returned. It is hard to pick out the winners as so many plants put out masses of flowers. My red geraniums have been the show stealers both at home in beds, tubs and hanging baskets, but you needed to remove spent flowers to give room for the next blossom. Roses were also having a great time, and again they kept flowering provided the spent flowers were removed before they went to seed. French marigolds and petunias both loved the summer heatwave, but there was a battle with slugs as the ground needed constant watering which suited the slugs.

Red geranium

Tuberous begonias, now well over twenty years old were a bit slow to flower but once they began they were a mass display with great impact. My secret is to split the corms in spring by chopping through them with a trowel once I can see where the new shoots are. It may be a bit of rough treatment, but they never complain.

Sweet peas quickly put on a great show, but keeping them from running to seed was a constant problem. Garden pinks were in their element as they just love hot dry conditions as long as they get some watering now and then. The scent was wonderful, and just as they were going over the strongly perfumed oriental lilies took centre stage. A few years ago I purchased a few, and then the next year a

Anemone Honorine Jobert

few more and now I devote a lot of garden space to them. They are great companion plants for planting amongst spring flowering bulb drifts, coloured stemmed cornus and willow which get chopped back to stools in early April, as well as amongst low growing spring flowering azaleas. They add colour to many areas which otherwise would be green, but dull.

Hanging baskets with spring flowering pansies were replaced with geraniums, petunias, lobelia and impatiens, but the pansies will continue to flower for many months, so plants were carefully

Poppies and geraniums

removed and planted in a border that had room to spare.

Chrysanthemums, dahlias and gladioli grown for cut flower started to open up at the beginning of August. They enjoyed the hot spell in June and July and put on

Shasta daisies and delphiniums

strong growth so now flowering can begin and continue till late autumn.

Annual poppies, candytuft, cornflower, Livingston daisies and godetia were sown on bare areas where spring bulb foliage has been removed and grow quickly to flower from August onwards.

The herbaceous border is now showing the summer flowers of shasta daisies, day lilies, oriental lilies, Japanese anemonies and delphiniums. The show continues as plants and gardeners reaped the benefits of this long hot summer.

Winter salads

Wee jobs to do this week

Now is a good time to look ahead to the late autumn and early winter to make sure there are some salads available as there are some varieties that are fairly hardy but still tender on the plate. Sow lettuce Hilde or Winter Density and spring onions on land cleared of a previous crop. The ground will already be in good heart so no need for compost or manure. Just firm the soil, rake level and take out drills about a foot apart. Germination is quick at this time of year so some thinning may be necessary, or use the thinnings for another row.

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SUMMER FRUITS

SUMMER FRUITS

This year will go down as one of the hottest in memory, and it has been brilliant for most fruit crops. They got off to a poor start after a miserable winter with the “Beast from the East” and a non existent spring lacking sunshine, but fruit tree pollination was excellent on trees covered in masses of flowers. The potential was strong for a good fruit harvest, though it would be about three to four weeks late due to rotten climate at the beginning of the year.

Anna picks Big Ben blackcurrants

However, along came the heat wave lasting a couple of months and crops made up for lost time, though some ripened fast and cropped heavily, but over a shorter period. Although the long hot sunny days were a tonic it came with very dry weather so constant watering was necessary to keep plants alive.

Strawberries were first off the block. Fruits were large and sweet with early, midseason and autumn fruiting varieties all fruiting together. Unfortunately that this gave us a glut, then from mid July onwards there was none left. I hope my autumn perpetual variety Flamenco picks up again as we go through summer. At City Road Allotments everyone was getting great crops, so although I never

Saskatoons in fruit

netted all my strawberry rows, I only noticed two berries which the local blackbirds had eaten. They could have been spoiled for choice.

Blackcurrants got picked in early July with massive crops and huge berries. Big Ben was smaller than expected but very sweet, whereas Ben Conan was not so sweet but fruit size was huge. Crops gave us plenty to eat fresh, some for compote, some for jam, some in the freezer for future use and enough for my three demijohns of wine.

Redcurrants were very sweet but did not crop as heavily as last year, so no redcurrant wine brewing in 2018. They also suffered a bad attack of leaf blister aphids.

Gooseberries gave a massive crop which weighed many branches down to the ground and sawfly maggots swarmed out when I took my eye off the ball for a couple of days. I just managed to tackle them with a quick spray before they did too much damage. Huge crops will give plenty for the kitchen and I will get my three demijohns of vintage gooseberry wine. Some berries were lost due to hot sunshine blistering the fruit making it unusable.

Raspberry Glen Dee

Raspberries were doing just fine putting on a lot of growth in the sunny weather coupled with my constant watering, then along came the early summer gales and two rows got flattened. Strong tall cane growth with full foliage cover got hit so hard that the supporting posts broke off at ground level and flattened a couple of rows. Once the gale died down Glen Dee got its posts replaced, but a lot of canes of autumn fruiting Polka snapped off at ground level. Picking continues however on Glen Dee and Glen Fyne, and the remnants of Polka are also producing a crop of massive berries.

Apple The Oslin

Saskatoons are having a fantastic year with heavy crops of large sweet black fruiting bunches easy to pick. Nets were put in place in mid July, but this year there is no sign of our marauding blackbird. Plenty fruits to eat, freeze and brew, as this makes another fantastic wine after its three years maturing in demijohns.

Bramble Helen was always reliable to give the first fruits in August, but this year the first fruits were ready in mid July, and sweeter than ever.

Apple Oslin, the Arbroath Pippin is usually my first apple of the season. It is quite delicious, but can suffer a lot of brown rot in a bad year, but not this year without any rain. First fruits were picked at the end of July, with more to follow and Discovery ripening fast so not far behind.

Wee jobs to do this week

Pea crops in succession

Many crops such as salads, onions, turnips, beetroot, peas and early potatoes are ripening ahead of normal due to the hot summer and some three years old strawberry beds which have finished cropping are getting grubbed out. All of these areas can be used for another quick maturing crop of lettuce, spring onions, rocket, radish and early peas. Give them a light fork over, firm down, raking level and adding some fertiliser before sowing. Watering will be essential if the ground is dry.

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