In My Garden - Dirk and Pauline April 2020

In My Garden - Dirk and Pauline

Autumn has arrived in Howden, and it is transition time. Come for a walk in our garden and see what is afoot this month.



The Golden Delicious apples are starting to ripen, and soon we will be very busy making apple stew, as well as drying them behind our wood heater, storing them and eating a fair few too.



The very last of our Tigerella tomatoes, in the warmest spot in the garden, are hanging in there. There are still some ripening every few days. Our main tomato bed has long been emptied and it has now become our brassica bed with Romanesco and normal broccoli, purple cauliflower, and red as well as chinese cabbage.










It must be time to thin that bed of carrots. Again. We never seem to be able to get a neat row of carrot seed to germinate, but we have had great success with thickly sowing a square, and covering it with a hessian bag until it germinates. It does take plenty of patience though, to thin it again and again.

Our corn did not do as well this year, but it looks like we might still get some ears in the next few weeks.

This used to be our bed of curcumbits and beans. The Tromboncino zucchini have gone but we are still harvesting the purple climbing beans. The rest of the bed has now been made ready for onions and leek. The leek is already in and starting to take off.

There are still a few brave strawberries ripening. Soon, these plants will be chopped back entirely, and mulched, ready for next season. For now though, we are enjoying them still.

Our newest project involved a fungus growing workshop in early March. We got some fungus inoculated dowels as well as 'seed-grain', and we have made a small garden bed especially for the Wine Caps en some logs with Shiitake dowels. Here's hoping some of them will give us a feed of mushrooms in a year's time.

Our Oca is growing well underneath our red currants, looks like it will be a while yet before they are ready to be dug up.

The lettuce bed has come up really well. We are enjoying picking the young leaves for salads.

Our 3 year-old Medlar is producing nicely. This weekend we will harvest them and put them away for a few weeks to let them blet (go 'rotten'). Last year, we made Medlar fruit mince,which was very nice in the mince pies for Christmas. This year we might try to make a Medlar sherry or desert wine we have read about. 

The past few years we have had trouble getting snow peas to germinate from seed and survive the snail attack, so this year we opted for snow pea seedlings. So far, they look happy enough.

For those of you who were here in December 2019 when we had a Garden Visit at our place, the Skirrit - a medieval vegetable from before they had carrots - has now died down and is ready for harvesting. Due to the dry conditions this year the roots are not as plump and plentiful as they should be, but we will still enjoy them in a stirfry. The plant goes back in the soil and will continue to grow. 

 And on that cheerful note: keep gardening everyone! 

We'll meet again some sunny day, in a Tassie garden.

Dirk and Pauline