So, to recap, in the Spring we got two raised beds and filled them with topsoil from Norfolk. In one I sowed spring onions, carrots and leeks. The spring onions were smothered by the carrots but, after the carrot harvest, we seem to still have about 10 leeks. Hurrah!
Being short on space, we also squeezed in a butternut squash plant into the corner of that raised bed. 'Apparently, your butternut squash needed to go in in March,' said Jules the other day having somewhat belatedly read up on it on the web. Me (snappily): 'Yeah, well you didn't buy them until May...'
In the other bed we had a big patch of salad leaves, some broccoli and two courgette plants. The salad leaves were a runaway success - we didn't buy salad leaves at all this summer. The broccolis did produce some very small calabrese broccoli and we did eat one or two of them before they flowered but they weren't great. Maybe we overcooked them.
The courgette plants grew amazingly and had small yellow courgettes. Only two made it to harvest without being eaten by slugs. I put one of them in a vege chilli and it wrecked the chilli - Jules sat there picking pieces of small, hard courgette out of his teeth, which was a bit dispiriting. The other, about the size of a small carrot, we put in the vege crisper in the fridge where it got squashed up against the side and hidden under some apples and then half of it went mouldy and I couldn't be bothered saving the other half - so who knows if yellow courgettes are better than green ones or not? I suspect not - and not worth the bother. Plain green zucchini for us next year.
The apples were moderately successful - apart from the James Grieve which lost all its shiny red apples in about June and was left with maybe one on the tree. More Bramleys than Windsors this year but that is probably because we had the trees pruned in January and the guy said they were well overdue so the pruning was quite drastic.
Some of Jules's 12 sweetcorn that I put in in May survived to adulthood although most were destroyed by slugs and snails. We got one cob and when we opened it up it only had about 12 kernels of corn, so we didn't bother to cook it. Yet again, maybe May was too late.
The tuscan kale (cavolo nero): every leaf eaten by slugs.
Rhubarb: ditto, plant destroyed.
Sunflowers: ditto
Cucumbers: ditto
Garlic: got some bulbs but they were about the size of one normal clove of garlic.
Hydrangea: (bought in desperation when I was trying to think of a shrub the slugs wouldn't like) barely hanging on to life. May see out the winter if the slugs die down before it does.
Nasturtiums: thriving, smothering the struggling hydrangea.
Tomatoes: pretty good - definitely several large punnets of cherry tomatoes.
The compost however is brilliant - about 50 worms to every spadeful. So the bed where the salad leaves and broccoli were has been dug over and I planted mustard seed as a green manure, so we'll see how that goes next year.
The plan from here:
Crocuses in the lawn for February and the new baby.
Pots on the patio: tulips and irises (but will the squirrels eat them, like some got eaten last year?
More daffodils in around the beds at the edges of the lawn (some still left from last year.)
The roses were a success - especially the Ruby Wedding - which we have a cutting of on our kitchen windowsill. The two small pink patio roses were quite prolific too.
Some successes, some failures. Next year we'll have one bed just for butternut squashes. Someone on the web says you can get 32 from one plant - but we're just aiming for 10 squashes overall. We know our limitations...
4 comments:
At least you tried. I think you need some slug pellets. I suppose that you don't use them because Sofia may take a likig to them... but there must be a way to protect her from them or vice versa.
Spring veges just going in now here. Autumn sown broadbeans in full flower so probably will have some for Xmas. Last year's gone-to-seed lettuces have left a wonderful legacy of new seasons plants coming up in the paths and everywhere else buyt in the garden. Already making salads with the cos.
My gardening book says: 'Only the most irresponsible of gardeners would use slug pellets.' So we have slug traps that you fill with beer and in fairness if we had bought them beer every week the slugs would all be dead, because on the rare occasion that Jules would agree to buy them a Stella or something else cheap, we caught about 25 per trap each night. But of course he just wouldn't part with his Leffe Blonde...and couldn't be seen buying wifebeater!
You could go out slug hunting after dark. It does require a hunt every night but I find it quite interesting and successful.
Also, I blogged about recycling plastic bottles to use as plant protectors until the seedlings are big enough to cope on their own.
No pellets in our garden and the beer traps just get rained out at this time of year... or I'm just not quick enough to salvage beer for beer traps...
Perhaps we are looking at this the wrong way... If the French can make a virtue out of eating snails - then perhaps slugs soused in beer could be an excellent source of protein AND carbohydrate. They must be fat healthy slugs given the delicious vegetables you've been feeding them :)
Although it does seem to be a waste of good beer... would cheap french wine do the trick?
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