Late Summer Harvest

LATE SUMMER HARVEST     

September must be a very healthy month. Fresh vegetables and fruit are at their peak. There is such a huge range available that you should be able to reach your five a day needs by lunch time and a few extras at teatime as the bonus.

If you managed to catch the sun when it appeared briefly last month you might just have a wee tan, and the garden is providing some gentle exercise, removing the last of the weeds, a bit of pruning and the harvest tasks.

As the harvest is gathered there will be plenty of waste for the compost heap. However any diseased leaves (blackspot, rust, mildew), or roots (clubroot) should not be composted, though I still use mine. I grow my sweet peas along a fence in the same place every year and build up the fertility with compost as they are gross feeders. They also appreciate a deep fertile soil that is well drained, so in late autumn I open up a deep trench, put all my diseased plant material in it and turn it over. Sweet peas are in a different group from roses and brassicas so will not be affected by these problems, but remember the disease spores can travel down a slope in the winter rains so consider where you site your sweet peas.

Onions grow best in very fertile well drained soil and need plenty of 

sunshine to grow and ripen, so this should not be a good year for them as there has been a distinct lack of sun and an awful lot more rain than we need. Yet my onions have never been better. I put this success down to good soil and the right choice of variety. One £2 packet of seed of onion Hytech gave me a crop of 150 large round onions that are reputed to store well. They are now lifted and will be dried out in the sun. When the foliage has gone brown I will rope them for easy storing hanging up in the garage.

Sweet corn is another crop that needs warmth. Normally I would get about seventy cobs from sixty plants grown from one packet of seed. I got the excellent plants, but just as soon as they got growing the gales came. They have never really recovered. Growth is reasonable but the plants are totally disorientated. Only a few male flowers appeared at the same time as the female silky tassels grew from the top of the cobs. Other male flowers appeared two weeks later by which time the female tassels had withered, so pollination was very patchy and I will only get about a dozen decent cobs. There will be nothing for the freezer.

Beetroot germinated and grew very quickly. Thinnings were removed as young baby beet, but those remaining have not grown into the normal larger sized beet. It seems this will be the year for baby beet. Last year I left my main crops of large beetroot in the ground where the early snowfall provided a cold blanket which protected them from hard frosts. They kept perfectly till the end of February.

Beetroot is a very healthy vegetable which we use a lot of to make soup and eat fresh in salads after boiling and dressing in a sauce made from soya sauce, balsamic vinegar, honey and seasoning.

Beans have had a mixed year. Broad beans were good, but I chose a dwarf variety, The Sutton which did not crop very heavily. However I have sown another late batch, now in flower so I hope to get two crops this year. It makes a heavenly soup. French and runner beans have been slow to grow and cropping has been light. There has not been the usual heavy crops for the freezer.

Courgettes and pumpkins both suffered from the gales but are now growing strongly. They have lost too much time and with a poor summer the harvest will not need a wheelbarrow to cart them off the allotment. My winter soups will be well rationed, but they both brilliant.

However many other allotment holders who had kept their plants protected under glass till after the gales have had fantastic crops. Next year I will not be so early to get them planted.

Swiss chard has again grown very well this year and the variety Bright Lights has a wide range of attractive colours with red, yellow pink, white as well as green stems. This leafy vegetable is very high in vitamins and minerals, dietary fibre and proteins. It is used in stir fries, salads when very young and soups.

Healthy fruit has been in abundance this year, with most now either consumed fresh or in the freezer. Autumn Bliss raspberry is very late and I am still waiting for my first serious picking.

My new perpetual strawberry, Malling Opal has been a huge disappointment. A row of ten plants only produced one runner. The fruit is hard, ripens unevenly, has no great flavour, and it is not a heavy cropper. It is supposed to crop till the end of October, but unless we get a late summer the fruit is hardly worth picking. This variety was bred in Kent so maybe it is just not suitable for Scottish conditions.

Blueberries lost a lot of foliage in the gales so the fruit is smaller than normal, but the crop is still quite heavy. These berries are similar to my saskatoons but it is a real advantage having them in fruit when the Saskatoon picking has finished.

The chokeberries, Aronia melanocarpa Viking is now in full cropping. Some will be used for jam, some for compote and summer puddings and a batch for making a strong red dessert wine. Hopefully this will be at its best in three years, but I will need to sample some round about Christmas just to make sure it is maturing ok. The fruit is a bit astringent so is not normally eaten fresh, but can be juiced or processed into many products. The very dark fruits are quite high in vitamin C and it has one of the highest levels recorded of the antioxidant anthocyanin.

Hopefully my wine will be a true health giving tonic.

Rhubarb may have got hammered by the gales as the large leaves were a sitting target, so there was no early crops, but they soon recovered and have been growing very strongly. We are now taking off our final picking for the freezer, so the plants can build up a healthy crown to see them over winter. As well as rhubarb crumble and pie it makes a lovely jam if mixed with dried figs.

Winter crops will provide the fresh vegetables right through the winter so will not need to be stored or frozen. Leeks, swedes, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and Brussels sprouts are all putting on good growth, though some have been attacked by caterpillars, pigeons, rootfly maggots and clubroot. You do not get your green healthy winter vegetables easy.

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Back to the Land

 BACK TO THE LAND   

Allotment life was supposed to be about living the dream. A place for quiet recreation, fresh air, sunshine, an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables, then after a wee bit of horticultural exercise and graft, we relax on the patio by our sheds enjoying the scent from the flower border while we have a wee refreshment.

There has not been a lot of leisure time on the land this year. The season has not been in our favour, at least not in the north east of Scotland. The summer did try to appear on more than a couple of occasions, but was rapidly followed by cool and wet conditions.

Those plants of a more tender nature, beans, courgettes, pumpkins, sweet corn and Cape gooseberries have not had a chance.

However, our native weeds have not been deterred and hoeing just seemed to transplant them rather than eradicate them. Still, we plod on as there is always a job to do and hope that sometime soon the sun will return and plant growth will be back to normal. 

Vegetables

Onions are looking really strong this year. The ground had a lot of compost dug in and had been green manured with an early mustard crop. The onions were sown at home on a windowsill in cellular trays then hardened off in my cold greenhouse. The plants germinated in groups of one to four plants per cell, then each cell clump was planted out six to nine inches apart. This close spacing has not held back the onion size. The wet season has caused a few plants to suffer white rot, but these diseased plants were removed as soon as they appeared.

Beetroot, lettuce, radish and spring onions have all grown well and continue to crop with repeated sowings.

Sweet corn is very poor with only half the plants putting up a flowering spike.

Pumpkins and courgettes have been in a state of shock for weeks, though the French beans have now decided to grow.

Cabbage, cauliflower, sprouts and kale have been very mixed. I lost most of the first two through some very serious clubroot fungus, but the others seem to resist it and are putting on excellent growth. Turnips and Swedes are also growing very well in the wet season.

Broad beans have now been harvested, but I am trying another sowing to see if I can catch a late crop. I am also cutting the old plants down to a few inches of ground level to see if they will regrow and give me another crop. Sometimes you get lucky.

Fruit

Red currants are now in the demijohn, and black currants in the freezer. Some will be for jam, some for compote and some for wine. The bushes can now be pruned. Red currants get side shoots shortened by a third to encourage spurs on the main shoots and blackcurrants get one third to a quarter of older fruited wood removed. You can usually find a strong one year old shoot that you leave as it will produce the best fruit next year.

Bramble Helen is now in full cropping as is the gooseberries and saskatoons. They are all bearing heavy crops and do not seem to be affected by this years weather. It is the beginning of the Saskatoon pie season, though there is plenty for eating fresh off the bush, jam, compote and wine.

Flowers

This is a time for planning ahead for the next spring flowering display. Wallflower seedlings are now ready for transplanting into rows a foot apart so they can grow on and make a bigger plant for flower beds in October. They get dibbled in at four inch spacings. If you want really good plants you have to grow your own from seed as garden centres will only supply smaller plants in boxes.

However pansies, polyanthus, primroses, myosotis, daisies and Iceland poppies can either be home grown or bought from local garden centres as the plants are usually smaller and easily produced.

Pests, diseases and weed control

The weather affects these just as much as us. Caterpillars have had a great time and greenflies and blackflies had a slow start but are now at epidemic levels. You can only go so far with picking these off. However there are still some chemicals available that will do the job without harming the environment.

Mildew is now a big problem as the chemicals available to the amateur gardener are very weak and continual wet weather means the sprays get washed off before they get a chance to work.

Weed control is at the same stage. Glyphosate is available, quite environmentally friendly and an excellent herbicide, but needs at least two to three days of dry weather to work effectively.

The formulation available to the amateur gardener is about a quarter of the strength of the commercial product used by farmers, growers and local authorities.

Allotment Open Day

The City Road Allotments are having an open day to let the public see our plots.

Refreshments are available and there will be many plants for sale, fresh vegetables, home baking, jams and tablet. Open on Sunday 7^th August 2011 from 10. 30am to 2.30pm

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A Fresh Start

  NEW PLANS FOR 2011

 The beginning of January is the perfect time to look back over the previous year and analyze your gardening activities so that you can learn from your failures, build on your successes and plan new ventures. This applies to both my gardening activities as well as my painting projects.

Of course we are always at the mercy of our unpredictable weather and climate change brought on by global warming seems to be giving us a more extreme climate. New weather records get broken at a more frequent rate, whether it is the warmest summer, coldest day, the highest rainfall, or the heaviest snowfall.

Keeping in touch with weather forecasts is more important than ever before so we can plan seed sowing, planting, weed control and soil cultivations at the best times. It is even more important to make sure any spraying for pest, disease or weed control is done when a few days dry weather is forecast. There is nothing more infuriating than to have completed crop spraying then see it all washed off a few hours later. Last year was a very difficult year for spraying as the rain was never very far away.

The garden and allotment have never been subject to routine. There are so many new and improved plants to try, and ones that were previous favourites have gone out of favour if they have not been able to cope with a wetter climate. However I may be making a wrong assumption. Just because we have had four wet years and two severe winters in a row does not mean you can expect this to be a pattern. Prior to this we have had years of mild winters with hardly any snow, 2006 was a heatwave and my memory from childhood records seeing the first winter snows every year in November

However, it is great fun to experiment, so although I have tried many grape varieties outdoors in Dundee and discarded most of them, I will still continue with other varieties. Our climate may well get warmer and drier again and maybe I just have to find the right variety for Scottish conditions.

Paintings

With winter starting at the end of November, gardening has been put on hold till the snow melts and pruning and digging can continue. However the winter landscapes have been brilliant for painting ideas, so I have been going through the phase of planning art projects for the year ahead. The recession has had a big impact on art sales in the middle price bracket, but less so for smaller paintings. There is also a trend towards simpler images on unframed large stretched box canvases. So projects are being planned for a series of watercolour winter landscapes with minimalistic images, and some contemporary figure studies on large box canvases.

Now that could keep me occupied till next autumn unless of course we get a great summer and I will find it hard to choose between the spade, the hoe, the trowel or the paintbrush.

Flowers

The wet years have really sorted out the roses. Climber Golden Showers was always very reliable as was shrub rose L D Braithwaite, a gorgeous deep red, but they just could not withstand attacks of blackspot disease. Spraying with Dithane was not effective with the continual rain. They and many others have been dug out. The climber has been replaced with shrub rose Graham Thomas which is much stronger and will be trained as a climber.

I have a lot of very steep banks around the house where access to cultivate is a problem, despite a fair bit of terracing so these will be planted with drift of Fuchsia Mrs. Popple, Shasta daisies and some flag iris. This permanent planting will help to stabilize the bank.

Some of the bank was bedded out with spray chrysanthemums last year. I am hoping that these will survive the winter outdoors and grow again this year as a drift, of close planted stems that will not need any attention. Time will tell.

Vegetable Crops

Most vegetables cropped very well last year resulting in gluts of the usual courgettes, cabbages, lettuce, beans and sweet corn.

This year I must grow a wider range of crops and less of each as I am only feeding two people.

Although last year was a bit too wet for onions, I grew a Sweet Spanish Yellow variety from seed.

It was late, but produced an excellent crop that stores very well. I still have plenty firm onions left. I will grow that one again this year but must sow it a bit earlier.

Another success to be repeated this year was a super sweet type of sweet corn, and Swiss Chard Bright Lights has been very prolific, so I do not need so much, especially as we use a lot of Kale leaves in stir fries, and that is just as healthy.

With brassicas both cabbage Golden Acre for summer and Traviata, a savoy for winter will be grown again as well as Brussels Sprouts Wellington.

In the greenhouse it is hard to get a better tomato than Alicante for a large fruit full of flavor and my favourite cherry type is Sweet Million though the seed is expensive and not supplied in large quantities. Do not sneeze when sowing that one.

Fruit Crops

I grow just about every fruit available for eating fresh in season, in jams, compotes all year round, puddings, scones, pies, crumbles, smoothies and juices. It is very important to make sure selected varieties are the best for our local climate and soil. I have not always got it right, so there are many changes to be made this year.

I have several apple trees that provide eating apples from August till mid winter from those in store.

However,  I have too much Arbroath Pippin, (the Oslin) which is very early but does not keep so some branches will be changed to new varieties by grafting this spring.

Pears have the same problem as I have a large Comice tree that gets wiped out by scab in any wet year. Grafting will also be done to replace some of it. I will retain some Comice just in case we go back to warm dry summers again, as there is nothing to beat Comice in a good year.

Raspberry Glen Ample suffered a terminal root rot disease slowly killing the row over several years. The symptoms indicate it could be phytophthora. This fungus disease is spread in soil water so could be a problem if drainage is poor, or during prolonged periods of wet weather. I suspect the disease came in on infected new raspberry canes. There are several strains of phytophthora, some being quite specific to one plant host whereas others can attack a wider range of plants. I must have the latter as I also lost a white currant, and a gooseberry and some blaeberries also got infected. These were growing beside the raspberries, but lower down the slope. Different strains of this disease causes potato blight, sudden oak death and many other plant diseases.

I have replaced the raspberries with a new variety called Cascade Delight bred at Washington University and selected for tolerance to root rot. Hopefully the new canes planted last year will give me some crop this year. I will be sorry to lose my Glen Ample as it is an excellent variety.

I will also replace the white currant but will choose a different location.

I planted a new perpetual strawberry, Malling Opal last year, but it did not make a lot of growth so I will need to assess its performance this summer. It was replacing another perpetual, Flamenco which stopped producing runners, then died out. Perpetuals help to extend the strawberry season into the autumn without any protection.

Last year I tried another superfood fruit called the Chokeberry. Botanically, it is known as Aronia melanocarpa and the popular variety in Viking. The fruit can be a wee bit astringent if eaten fresh. Even the birds leave it alone till the end of summer, but it makes a terrific jam, compote, a deep red wine, and a very healthy smoothie. The berries are almost black and very high in vitamin C and antioxidants. The Aronia has one of the highest levels of anthocyanins of all known plants. The health benefits of aronias are being studied by food scientists. I have a batch of these sown in a tray and hope to have some plants by summer.

I now await delivery of a new cherry tree on the very dwarfing Gisela 5 rootstock, as well as a new grape vine called Solaris which I will try outdoors on a south facing fence, and hopefully I will see some white seedless grapes from a new vine, Perlette planted last year in the greenhouse.

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Winds of Change

IMPACT ON GARDENS FROM GLOBAL WARMING

Childhood memories of sunny summers getting burnt on Broughty Ferry beach followed by hard winters when we could ice skate on the roads, (very few cars around) and have plenty of snow for sledging, snowmen and igloos, all belong to my generation. I was not able to offer my young family the same fun as they grew up with a lot less snow visible and although the summers seemed fine there was a lot more wet days if your holiday was at home.

However there was always the extreme conditions of a very cold winter, six foot snow drifts, local floods you will not forget, and every ten to fifteen years a very hot summer.

My gardening career started during the 1959 summer heatwave as an apprentice gardener in Dundee Parks Dept. working in the Howff cemetery. A glorious three months ended when the rains came in September and flooded the Howff and many other places.

Gardening activities force you to work with the weather so you become aware of weather patterns and how they change over your lifetime.

Date Palm

I was working in Darlington Parks Dept during the 1976 heatwave. Our main bedding displays relied on geraniums and petunias which could not have been better. We won the Regional Britain in Bloom Award. However the heatwave had other effects, especially on the greenfly pests. Farmers in east Anglia were applying high levels of nitrogen fertiliser to increase grain yields. This also gave a lot more leaf content which combined with the hot summer caused breeding greenfly to reach plague proportions. Once they had devastated East Anglia they took to the air to find new pastures. A drift extended from Kent to Newcastle and scientists estimated the weight to be in excess of 200,000 tons of greenfly.

That summer I was on Scarborough beach when the sky darkened from the sea and expecting a thunderstorm got quite a shock when the plague of greenfly arrived.

Hitchcock could not have done it better!! The sea and sand turned green and everyone ran for cover. The following year there was a mini plague of ladybirds which had been feasting on the greenfly.

Gardens, farm crops and the outdoor natural landscape will all be affected as global warming changes our climate. Future generations will need to adapt to climate change as this generation embraces the changes, assesses the impact and takes steps to alleviate the problems.

Changing weather patterns

The UK has always had a different local climate for different areas, being affected by proximity to the sea, and the gulf stream, hills and mountains, built up urban areas, winds and geography. The south is generally warmer than the north, the west wetter than the east, but extreme weather conditions can affect any area with tornadoes in the Midlands, hurricanes in the south and flooding just about anywhere. Counting 2010 we have had four very wet years following the record breaking heatwave of 2006. June was truly flaming, but then the rains came in July and hopefully when you read this it will have stopped. However the south of the country has been basking in a glorious heatwave with gardens desperate for water. My garden hose has not been used for four years.

Mild winters have seen the snowdrops flower a month earlier than normal followed by other spring bulbs all early. Grass cutting always started first week in April, but now it is more likely to be mid March and the season finishes, not when the grass stops growing but when it is too wet to put the mower over the ground.

The Good

Fig Brown Turkey

Gardeners love to try out new plants and now with a warmer climate the time is right to experiment with those exotics we admire from holidays abroad.

There is a whole range of palm trees worthy of planting from the cabbage palm, Cordyline australis to the date palm, Phoenix canariensis and those colourful Bougainvillea's might one day become common in UK.

It may be normal to grow our tomatoes outdoors rather than under glass and sweet corn could become a major crop.

Already I am having success with peaches and figs and some types of outdoor grape vines and as warming continues it is quite possible that Scotland could have numerous vineyards especially as it may become too hot for their success in France.

Pete Gottgens is prepared to be a leader in this field by establishing a vineyard on the banks of Loch Tay with his experience of growing grapes in South Africa. He hopes for success by choosing an early variety, Solaris suited for a northern location. We may no longer have very cold winters, (last winter being an extreme one off), and our summers may be getting warmer, but that is tempered with the prospect of a wetter summer and less sunshine hours. Scotland's first vineyard will be a barometer for the future. Gardeners will be encouraged to experiment with a range of grape varieties grown in more favourable locations with less incidence of rainfall and more sunshine hours.

In time, cherries, nectarines, apricots, citrus fruits and dare I say bananas and olives could well be grown on our Carse of Gowrie.

The woodland landscape could see more sweet chestnuts, walnuts, and eucalyptus.

The Bad

A climate that progressively gets warmer will affect many of our trees e.g. beech does not like dry soils. Herbaceous borders, rhododendrons, azaleas and lawns require moist soils so could suffer from too dry conditions. Soft fruit including raspberries, strawberries and blueberries would struggle, but saskatoons can tolerate drier conditions.

Many fruit plants require a period of winter chill to set fruit buds without which the following years crop is greatly reduced, e.g. blackcurrants.

Sweet Corn

It was always good gardening practice on allotments to complete winter digging before Christmas leaving the surface rough to allow frosts to break down the soil surface, but with mild and wet winters good digging opportunities are few and far between. In spring a poor soil surface restricts the germination of seeds.

Plum trees flower so early that there is often not enough insects around to pollinate the flowers thus reducing the crop. I do not mind hand pollinating my smaller peach tree every day with a fine sable brush in March, but the plum is twenty feet tall. Forget it !!

The Ugly

The changing climate not only affects plants, but also animals, insects and diseases.

Mild wet winters and wetter summers up north give rise to the spread of damping off, blight, root rots, scab and mildew. Potato blight can be problematic so make sure the variety has some tolerance or resistance to it. Similarly roses are suffering badly from black spot, rust and mildew so only grow those varieties strong enough to withstand an attack.

However the root rot, phytophthora has many types that affect many different plants and could become a major problem in gardens as well as raspberry fields.

Two generations from now could see a massive change in the horticultural and agricultural landscape.

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