Veg patch update - October

This will be the last one of the season, that's for sure! I took these photos on Sunday when it was already rather soggy, but since then we've had an enormous amount of rain and yesterday morning our seasonal stream had started flowing into our lake and by the evening it was a raging torrent! This morning the lake level had filled to about 4" short of the overflow and very soon we will be hearing the sound of running water again as it flows over and feeds the stream which runs beside my orchard.

An overgrown jungle with plenty of flowers in it!

Possibly the only tidy(ish) area with my PSB and Purple Curly Kale.
The peaches this year were not very good and had a lot of rot, so although
I have picked and eaten some the rest the birds can have, which is why I have left
the non rotten ones in piles for them. They're not interested though!

Gardeners' Delight. These large cherry toms are always so loaded
in very long trusses it is impossible to get through them in a short
season without a greenhouse which would need to be heated both
early on and late in the season - which I don't have
and woudn't do anyway - toms are cheaper to buy than electricity!

My chillies are loaded and I've been picking and drying red Cayennes
for a month now. Not quite sure what is happening with the
Piment d'Espelette as I seem to have all shapes of chillies on those plants.
I feel I was sold a duff packet of seeds, and that cost me over €10
so I'm not entirely pleased. They also need to be red/ripe or they are no use.

Chinese Cabbage.
Full of slug holes but hopefully
the hearted bits when ready will be OK!

I do have other veg such as leeks, which are a bit small and pathetic this year and I hope they will swell up now that the soil is moist. There are still beetroot for harvesting, lots of spring onions, a few radishes and loads of rocket. I even have a few small cucumbers left even though the plants are finished. As for the courgettes, I had the grand total of 9 from 2 plants (should be more like 50!). The last two that were forming I waited about 5 days until they were big enough to pick because I wanted to make a last savoury cake, but when I went to harvest them they had pitted marks of rot all over them. Even waiting 5 days for a courgette to get big enough to pick as a smallish courgette is quite ridiculous.

My Sunflowers are a bit of a mess now but the Calendula is
still looking good and colourful, so long as I keep on deadheading!

By one of my gates. There were actually once some veg here -
now it's just a lovely flowering jungle of Nasturtiums (new ones as
the older ones have gone over) and self seeded Verbena b. and Dill.

There are still a few strawberries to harvest -
when I can be bothered!

Still tons of raspberries

I don't really like these orange ones as they lack flavour;
in fact I wasn't aware that I had transplanted one of these plants to my new raspberry bed.
However raspberries spread like crazy so there is no guarantee that what you dig up
will be the plant you thought it was!

Yesterday in the pouring rain I harvested all the remaining tomatoes; the cherry toms are now spread out on my living room floor and the big tomatoes spread out here in my cellar-come-mud room. This also is the sum total of my pumpkin harvest - 3 potimarrons from 2 plants! I shall be making green tomato chutney with some of the big green toms and the cherries should ripen up slowly indoors.

What's left of the tomatoes

Here's a recipe which I first made about 10 years ago and is incredibly tasty. As we've only really got rocket left as a salad green I remembered this recipe of 'Grilled Spanish onion salad with parmesan and rocket' from Delia Smith, who is a very well known English TV cook and cookery book writer. Ignore the salt, she's always heavy handed with it and there is absolutely no need with parmesan which is quite a salty cheese. I also use a frying pan or griddle rather than the grill in the oven.

Rocket, griddled onions and parmesan - delicious!

The Basque Country

It's pouring with rain as I write this and I've got an apple crumble baking in the oven from the meagre pickings from the orchard. It all seems so autumnal that I fancy a sunny trip down memory lane. This time last year we spent a fabulous 10 days in the Basque country, which straddles the border with France and Spain on the Atlantic coast, all nestled into the lower parts of the Pyrenees mountain range.

I've never really shared these photos apart from a posting here about San Sebastian in Spain as part of a 7 day blog challenge back in March, and one of my French Friday postings about the Villa Arnaga, whose gardens were utterly remarkable. The Basque country is so completely different to where I live in Brittany, with the only similarity being that the native people have their own, totally incomprehensible language! The architecture, the mountainous scenery, the cuisine, are all different, although some of the coastline is as beautiful as Brittany, but in a different kind of way; it's still rocky but there are more cliffs the further one gets into Spain. The climate is wet and mild and all sorts of plants grow outside there which are not remotely hardy up here in the north west of France. All that made me want to move there and I felt quite unsettled when I first came back home, but a quick look at the property prices in that part of France and I soon changed my tune. It's obviously where everyone want to retire to - if you can afford it!

The weather was warm and sunny most of the time we were away, sometimes as warm as 25C, whilst our friends who were housesitting for us suffered cloud and gloom and about 18C - pretty much what today is like, plus rain!

I'm just going to pick out a few random photos and post them here, then give you a link to my Picasa album if you'd like to see any more.

Typical French Basque architecture with Piment d'Espelette decorations.
A chocolate/bonbon shop in St Jean de Luz, France.

Colourful boats in front of Fort Socoa, near St Jean de Luz, France.

A spot where we stopped for a picnic.

The lower foothills of the Pyrenees. Wild horses roam free up on the mountainsides.

More beautiful Basque architecture at La Bastide Clairence, France.

Here we are in Spain, looking at the river which marks the border
between the two countries. The town of Hendaye is on the French side,
and the town of Hondarribia on the Spanish side.

Umm, no thanks!

One of the really wild horses who ambled over to check us out,
on our way inland and uphill to the Foret d'Iraty, France.

This point was about 1,500m high and that was the only ski station that we saw.
Further inland the mountains get much taller.

The higher we went, the more the autumn colours became apparent.
It's so mild, lush and green down near the coast it's like we went from autumn back to summer.

A beautiful house in St Jean Pied de Port, France.

This lane is part of the pilgrim trail to Santiago de Compostela,
or St Jacques de Compostelle as it is known here in France.

Lesaka, up in the mountains and just over the border in Spain,
where the houses had quite an alpine look to them

There are some fabulous forests here!

Espelette, the village where we stayed. The small town is famous for its mild chilli
which is used in place of black pepper as a table condiment, and liberally flavours their cuisine.

The local hotel where we ate a number of times and learned to understand and
pronounce a few Basque words on the menu! 

If you'd really like to see more, I have an album in Picasa all in date order and captioned, which I made for my mum. It's not public but anyone with the link can view it. There are rather a lot of photos in it, although you can view the thumbnails and just pick out a few to look at - if you're bored and it's raining where you are too!

Veg patch update - August

At the moment there's a wonderful lull in between frantic harvest activities. The earlier fruit is over, the broad beans and podding peas have been harvested and cleared out; there remains only the overgrown mess that was the mange tout to get rid of. Oh my god, did they produce! We got sick of them in the end.

The blight that I mentioned in my last veg patch update in July was kept at bay by several sprayings with Bordeaux Mix; however whilst it was easy enough to pick off affected leaves from the tomatoes it was impossible to do the same for the potatoes. I managed to keep the maincrop Desirees going as long as possible until they started to look a mess and then cut back the haulms. Thankfully they had almost finished flowering and after digging up several plants I'm happy to report they had grown to full size. I've left the others in the ground for now.

This photo shows the harvest from nine 'Belle de Fontenay' earlies and three red 'Desiree' maincrops. B de F are not known as heavy yielders but are grown for their flavour, but I find with 25 plants there's more than enough. The Desirees that I dug up had scab but they were at the end of the rows under the overhang of the peach tree thus the soil was bone dry, whereas the B de F's were still nice and moist and had hardly any scab this year. Scab is caused by dryness at the roots (although strangely enough Monty Don was saying the opposite on Gardeners World ???? never heard of that before!!!). Look, I NEVER have wet soil, it's always dry(ish) and I always have scab, even when I use seep hoses to irrigate (which is still never quite enough moisture). The one year when we have enough rain early on that I don't need to irrigate I had no scab on my earlies!

About 10 days ago I harvested my first French beans, first 3 courgettes and first big red tom! Haven't had any more courgettes forming since then and we've had two more tomatoes, but plenty of beans.

My courgette plants are still tiny, but I will be removing the borage shortly to give them a bit more light and room. I'm really happy that certain veg were behind so I haven't been having to cope with gluts of courgettes at the same time as peas and beans. It's actually worked out really well.

Some tomatoes are doing better than others. Since cutting the haulms from the spuds there have been no more signs of blight on the tomatoes. The best tomato for yield and the one that I'm already picking is 'Fournaise'. Every truss is loaded and I wish I had bought more of these plants instead of some of the others. 'St Pierre' is a total waste of space and has about 4 tomatoes forming. 'Rose de Berne' isn't very impressive either.

This is 'Andine Cornue' which is a heritage variety with funny pointy tomatoes; some even look like large chillies. 'Fournaise' is behind it with the ripening fruit.

'Fournaise'. Yes I know I've got to wash off the Bordeaux Mix very carefully as it can't help but get splashed onto the fruit, but what do you think commercial toms have been sprayed with, even organic ones? It's a small price to pay to actually have any tomatoes at all! 

My chillies are finally starting to produce after a really slow start. I even have the first tiny chilli forming on the Basque chilli 'Piment d'Espelette' whose seeds I bought by mail order at vast expense.

Below are good old Cayennes (the larger plants in the foreground above left) which have never yet failed me and are forming tons of chillies already.

Another slow starter were my cucumbers which struggled so much with my potting compost that I complained about in an earlier post called Germination Woes. Look, I have a cucumber forming! Some of the other plants are still only about 3 inches tall though.

My only two self seeded Potimarrons (winter squash/pumpkin) are romping away nicely now and have quite a few fruit forming.

An overview taken early this morning.

A view of what was the bean/pea bed which I haven't finished tidying up yet. Still need to rip out the mange tout and the strawbs on the left hand side are finished as they are three years old and will be composted. So soon I'll have loads more room for planting more veg as there's only French beans in here and one row of younger strawberries.

It's not all rosy in the veg patch. This year I have a new problem. Sparrows. Whole flocks of the damn things that are not only dust bathing in my soil but are eating my lettuce and beetroot greens. I need to fashion some kind of chicken wire covers to keep them off.

In desperation I have covered the munched Little Gem with these cloches. You can see the difference between the one on the left which was left uncovered and the ones on the right which were under the cover and have started to grow back. Trouble is, these cloches aren't big enough for mature lettuce or beets.

Flowers always do well in the veg patch though and I welcome their cheery sight. This is my tallest sunflower, about 3 metres now!

At the barn end of the veg patch the fence is taken over by nasturtiums and there's also self seeded dill, Verbena bonariensis and knapweed, all loved by pollinators.

View from my 'Wildflowers for pollinators' meadow - which has gone rather floppy so is roughly staked up. This has been a huge success and I will be doing the same next year. I will be writing up a blog posting purely about this experiment shortly.

And yet more sunflowers around the edges of the tomato plot. Did you know they were edible? The flower heads I mean. That's another thing I have yet to try as apparently they taste not unlike artichoke hearts and you prepare them in a similar fashion. 

Finally, now it's August, I can start to sow my brassicas such as radishes and rocket. I can't any earlier as they just get decimated by flea beetle. I have sown my winter brassicas (purple curly kale and PSB) which are in the cold frame and need pricking out and growing on a bit more before planting out in the veg patch. I've also got Chinese leaves/cabbage in the cold frame which will be ready for planting out soon. The outer leaves get munched by the Cabbage White caterpillars but I strip them off for the chickens and we eat the hearted bit. It works out well for everyone!

Indoor gardening

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever get my maincrop spuds in which are getting a bit overchitted but it's just not worth even trying at the moment. We've had some really good rain the last 3 days, about 35mm which is brilliant for keeping the stream running and doing my garden a world of good, but it's too wet to try doing anything involving soil outside. 

We managed to get a new tap and all the paraphenalia needed for our out of use IBC (the taps don't last very long - about 5 years before they start cracking/leaking which is a nuisance) and although the tap and postage from the UK cost about half what the 2nd hand IBC cost in the first place it's still cheaper than buying a new one. It's now full!

So indoor gardening is probably the best thing I can do right now. I've even sown some mustard and cress out of desperation to see something grow!

I always grow and keep basil indoors all year round - Thai basil because I love the flavour and it doesn't seem to like getting wet outdoors, and regular basil because although it grows very big in the veg patch it gets quite woody and the leaves become tough, and they are not nice to eat like that.

Thai basil sown in March; I'm already pinching it out.

Tomatoes on the other hand are difficult to raise inside as they grow very leggy. I have to start them, chillies and basil in a heated propagator but the basil and chillies don't seem to suffer from the legginess anywhere near as badly.

Tomatoes, chillies and 10 year old Lemon Grass seed - I think one has germinated!

Yesterday I brought my potting thingy into the cellar-cum-mud-room as I didn't want to take my little seedlings outside in the cold to the potting shed and got on with the pricking out.

 
I've just raised two kinds of cherry tomato from seed - Gardeners' Delight and Apero, from saved seed from a self seeded plant from last year. It came originally from a F1 plant but I couldn't see any difference at all, even though F1 plants are not supposed to come true from seed. Apero is one of those oval shaped cherry toms and is prolific and tasty. I've pricked out 10 of each and hope to give some to my neighbour as I certainly don't need that many!

Once I start getting them out in the cold frames next month to harden off they will start to thicken up and in a month or two you'd never know they started off so thin and leggy. What I also do is every time I pot them on I bury the leggy stems; it doesn't seem to do them any harm whatsoever and that way they don't get too tall.

I've also pricked out my precious and exceedingly expensive Gorria chillies - these are the variety of only slightly hot chilli which are better known as the famous Piment d'Espelette. 

Piment d'Espelette

I also have Jalapenos which are not hot despite what it says on the packet, but I'm happy with that as they are short thick skinned chillies brilliant for stuffing and quite delicious. I sowed Cayenne too but only 4 have germinated but that's fine as I have tons of dried ones from last year which will probably last me a couple of years. They make quite good decorations strung up with cotton and are still adorning door handles around the place....

Dried Cayenne Peppers

My windowsills are getting full and I do have to keep turning the trays around several times a day as the plants grow towards the light.

This isn't even all my seedlings! Need some plant swaps!!

As well as indoor gardening I guess this is cooking weather. I was amazed to collect this monster duck egg a few mornings ago. It weighed in at 155g - normal duck eggs are large but weigh on average 90-95g......

Ow!!!!!

It was a lovely double yolker, so that plus another two duck eggs made up the 5 eggs needed for a quiche recipe, so with the grotty weather I had plenty of spare time to make shortcrust pastry, all by hand (even blind baking and all that malarky!) to make a quiche out of it.

OK, so I won't win any contests for the prettiest looking quiche.....

Left over pastry is brilliant for using up my jam and jelly by making jam tarts! The very last of the bits of pastry gets put out for the wild birds who love it, so there is no waste at all. That quiche was supposed to feed 4 according to the recipe but boy did we struggle eating a quarter each over two nights! Consequently the jam tarts are now in the freezer as that would have been overkill.  :-)