Veg patch update - August

A few bugs at the end of this post but it's mainly about the veggies for a change!

Blight came about 3 weeks ago despite having sprayed with Bordeaux Mix as a preventive measure. I removed most of the leaves from the tomatoes and we sprayed again, but it was too late to stop the spread on the potatoes so the haulms had to be removed. I haven't dug up my maincrop Desirees yet so don't know what size they will be, as some were still flowering when the blight hit. However removing most of the tomato leaves has meant they started ripening much quicker (maybe I should do that more often!) so I've been having an amazing harvest from them and have only lost one plant so far, which got blight in the stem. The downside to B. Mix of course is that the fruit gets splashed whilst spraying, so we have to wash them very carefully which is time consuming. But without the Mix it wouldn't be worth my while growing tomatoes at all. Cross fingers they will last a bit longer!

After the blight but just before the rains came.

Far more welcome was rain. Real, substantial, proper, pouring rain. The garden had been so dry and I'd been watering and hosing most of the time since early June. There was so much rain over three days that the stream even started flowing again which filled up the lake by about one and half feet. Hopefully now it won't get too low before the autumn rains come and fill it up completely.

The seasonal stream which fills the lake.

Nothing is stopping the courgettes (does it ever?!) or the cucumbers which are going great guns. I'm growing a variety of cucumber called 'Burpless' which I bought in England. Unfortunately these are long cucumbers so that means each one is twice the size of the ones I usually grow..... and I've got three plants! Next year only two..... and one of the two courgette plants decided to split and grow in two directions so I'm getting the equivalent of having three plants - way too much! Both my fridges and both upright and chest freezers are now full to the brim with produce including the vats of courgette, basil and parmesan soup which I make and there's no room for more - so it's compost time for the excess courgettes from now on. The hens get half a cucumber a day but turn up their noses at courgettes!

I have my first aubergine fruit in more than 10 years - although to be fair this is only the second time I've tried growing them here. The first time I had zero fruit! However since cutting the potato haulms down I keep finding Colorado Beetles on them which have to be killed, so I keep a couple of bashing stones nearby - instant death although I don't like doing it!

I'm harvesting this much every 2-3 days, bar the aubergines.
The green toms are from a plant that had blight in the stem, so it had
to be removed. These are ripening indoors now.

Nasturtiums are taking over and these around the compost bins are the ones that were being eaten by the Ornate Shield Bugs, which seem to have disappeared now, so the plants look bigger and healthier and at last have flowers. I haven't been able to close the gate to the veg patch for ages, but as that doesn't stop the cats getting in there's little point bothering.

Nasturtiums, and on the right a Physalis which is now a bit swamped by them, as well
as Dill growing through this jungle, but Physalis is a bit of a thug itself so it's doing fine!

Can you see what's wrong with this picture? :-)
One potimarron stem had to be rescued from the field next door and
laid down on the bit of grass between my fence and the electric fencing.

I cleared the patch where the leeks were to be transplanted which had had a lot of weeds and self seeded Phacelia growing there.... then the rains came and I should have known this would happen!

Phacelia seedlings galore!

A few views of the veg patch - cucumber frame on the left.

Even my spring onions get rust, and all the lettuce bolted at once.
But it looks pretty (ish) and the hens love to eat it.

In the foreground on the left is a Thai Aubergine called 'Kermit'. :-) I have had one whole fruit
from it. On the right are.... well if you don't know you are very lucky!!!

I love having the space to have tons of annual flowers in here too.
No colour schemes - here anything goes and the brighter the better!

Left and bottom right are from my Pollinator Meadow year 3. I have Mirabilis jalapa (top left)
and a different kind of Knapweed (bottom right) which need to be saved and transplanted
elsewhere for next year. Middle and top right is Orange Cosmos (and a Jersey Tiger Moth).

Funny shaped Sunflowers which I grew from seed!

Here's another one early one morning with a
Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria) on it.
There are loads of Jersey Tigers this summer.

A Woolly Bear on the perimeter fence! This is the caterpillar of the
Garden Tiger Moth (Arctia caja). This was back in July and I saw it the
next day in the weeds I was clearing for the leek patch. They run really fast!

Now what was I saying about not seeing any of 'my' Swallowtails coming back to visit? Obviously some have, as I suddenly noticed there were a number of caterpillars on my Dill in the veg patch, of varying instars. This one though I found on the Bronze Fennel out the front of the house, which has no foliage left and the flowers are going over, hence the reason why it was looking so yellow. As it had nothing left to eat I transferred it to some Dill in the veg patch and it ought to green up in colour due to a change in diet. I am NOT bringing any of these cats indoors though! I've done my bit, now they fend for themselves which is as it should be. But I have my caterpillars to talk to again which makes me happy. :-)

Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) caterpillar.
The top photo is its rear end with the unhappy face.

And then there's the fruit, oh boy is there fruit, but that will have to be another post!

Veg patch update - June

Just a quick note to say that if you are a subscriber by email, you will not see the videos embedded in the blog posts, not even a still to let you know that there is one there. I noticed the same thing on Feedly, although if you press the Preview button on Feedly you can then view the videos. So email subscribers you'll have to come direct to the blog to see my videos of the Swallowtail butterfly eclosing!

This is a pure gardening post; I also have tons of interesting bugs found recently in the veg patch, but I'll post that separately, otherwise this post would be way too long! But before you skip this if you are a bug rather than gardening lover, I want to let you know that the Swallowtail who fell out of its cradle whilst pupating, eclosed yesterday with no problems whatsoever and is now outside doing what Swallowtails do. Phew! 

Earlier in June when the grass was nice and green -
but since then I have nice new gravel spread on the drive!

The rest of the photos are taken in the last week of June. I was plagued by problems earlier in the year. First the various different lettuce that I sowed in March under cover nearly all failed to germinate. Annoyingly, French seed packets seem to think that lettuce seed is good for about 6 years, whilst British seed packets seem to give you about 1-2 years before their 'best before date'. I think it is actually somewhere in between.

The next two sowings after buying more seed I lost about 80% to slugs; this includes spinach which I was growing for the first time. Those that survived then got munched by sparrows so I had to cover every plant with a cloche! I was reduced to sowing seeds in pots in the cold frame which have now been planted out. Of course by the time these plants got near to maturity (and I'm still waiting on cos and batavia which need 2-3 months to heart up) the weather turned really hot and dry. I have spent so many hours watering I get so fed up by it all. I would buy lettuce but sadly in France there is very little choice and all the lettuce sold here is very floppy and I only like hearted crunchy lettuce, so I have no choice but to grow my own. 

Strawbs, lettuce, the cucumber frame, spinach already bolting and a strip of flowers near the
fence. I have taken out the borage now and planted annuals which are attractive to pollinators.
Oh, and those are mulot traps, a burrowing mouse which is a complete and utter pest
which tunnels under all my strawberries.

This is the weird disease which is affecting my dill plants.
I don't sow dill, it self seeds everywhere but as it's an important
food source for Swallowtail caterpillars I'm a bit concerned.

I'm getting more and more into having flowers in the veg patch and some I plant, and some
appear all of their own accord. In the background where you see the yellow flowers,
that is my Pollinator Meadow Year 3 and still doing its job of looking great
and attracting tons of bees, hoverflies and butterflies.

My early potatoes (Belle de Fontenay) have taken longer to mature this year and I had to set up seep hoses along the ridges of the potatoes because it's impossible to water them when they are earthed up.

Potato flowers are attractive too!

Behind the spuds I planted sunflowers which I grew from seed,
but in the middle there's one that self seeded from last year
(they were whoppers) and the opium poppies are self seeded.
There are also two potimarrons (a French pumpkin) in this area.

Opium poppies again. These are the ones that produce the seeds
that you buy for culinary purposes so I'll be collecting seed
from them later on. Never done it before but
I'm 99% sure I've got the right variety!

Harry and some tomatoes.

Annoyingly this year I could not buy a barquette of six of my favourite tomato variety and buying individually was too expensive, so I only have three plants, although I've propagated three more from side shoots. This variety (Fournaise) is really early to form fruit as you can see here. Even my cherry toms have only a few toms actually forming yet and the six Premio variety which I did buy in a barquette are very slow to form fruit.

Fournaise, my favourite, best producing tomato.

Looking from the lettuce/spinach bed towards the pea and bean bed with another strip of flowers for pollinators on the right by the perimeter fence. The empty gaps on the left foreground are spring onions which have been sown, these are taking forever to germinate and I am getting maybe one for every 20 seed sown even with brand new seed. I have found over the years that some years they just will not germinate, and other times they germinate no problem at all. And it's got nothing to do with the weather. A mystery.

Lettuce and spinach bed looking towards peas and beans
with my large Greengage tree in the background.

Another disappointment this year were the sugar snap peas which I had to buy in England as they don't exist in France. Big mistake. Not only were there ordinary peas which had got into the packet too but apart from the first few pickings, they are really stringy and tough even when I pick them young before they swell up (which they do really quickly) so they are all being composted now. What a waste. I'll stick to French mange tout in future which are miles better. Of course it may have been because the weather turned hot and sunny and I just couldn't water enough, but a veg like that has no place in my dry garden.

Sugar Snaps.

Rust is very prevalent here and my garlic always has rust (leeks always have it too to a lesser degree, and sometimes spring onions, and one year even the plums succumbed to it!), but this year it was even worse and the heads have not swelled up as much as normal; having said that I never get through all the garlic that I grow so not a probem. And they still store fine.

Rusty garlic lifted.

The Pollintor Meadow Year 3.
The Phacelia in the foreground I allowed to grow because it is short lived;
my leeks will be transplanted into this area later.
And in the distance many more self seeded flowers growing around the peas!

An older photo when the sugar snaps were still tender, with spinach and a courgette.
The courgettes are doing really well!

Another disappoinment are my aubergines. I've only tried once before here in Brittany, growing them in pots and I had not a single fruit. This year they are in the ground and the leaves just yellowed and they refused to grow at all. I have given them a supplementary feed specific to this kind of veg so will wait and see if anything happens. I'm annoyed because one neighbour nearby grew them really successfully last year! I used to grow them easy peasy when I lived the other side of France too. 

And now fruit - soft fruit is always good and reliable here but the fruit on the trees not so. But things are looking good - we have the most amazing crop of cherries which have not split nor have they been munched by birds! Also the three plum trees which are near the veg patch are absolutely loaded with fruit. One tree has more fruit in three foot of branch than it's ever produced in the previous nine years! However..... I won't know until they are ripe if they are any good as brown rot attacks them four out of five years and it gets them just before they are ready to pick.

But raspberries, strawberries, black and red currants are doing well and I can hardly keep up with the harvesting!

Cherries, greengage top right and unknown dessert plum bottom left.

Preserving frenzy and veg patch update

In between swanning about playing with butterflies, I've been spending time in the kitchen dealing with monstrous amounts of fruit and veg. No really, actually this year everything has been pretty well under control; I have managed to keep up with nearly all the veggies, and the fruit that can be frozen for later use has been bunged into my freezers until I had the time to do something with it all.

Raspberry jam. It was supposed to be seedless and I spent ages pushing
all the pulp through my mouli thing to get rid of the seeds!
Never mind, it's an acceptable level of pippiness.

The orchard is brimming with fruit and nuts. It's mostly an autumn type of orchard with pears, apples and walnuts planted, as well as wild hazels and elderberries. My two newish plum trees are about as rubbish as the other ones in the main garden though, but I've found over the years that plums and peaches are dodgy fruit to grow and succumb to disease very easily; that's if they ever get pollinated and produce any fruit in the first place. Apples and soft fruit are much easier! This year is probably the best ever for pears though (also a bit hit and miss) so we've been making the most of it!

Three different kinds of pears ripening at different times, thankfully.
On the left are Conference and the other two are unknowns.

Just to give you an idea of what I've been harvesting on a regular basis as far as veggies and soft fruit go..... this photo was taken at the end of August but the French beans have only recently finished, there's little left in the way of lettuce and the cucumbers are history now, but only yesterday I picked a load more strawberries and tomatoes, the courgettes are still producing and there's tons more beetroot. And we are so sick of raspberries because we've been eating them non-stop since mid June!

Note the two greengages!

Elderberries, different apples and Pear Clafouti,
which is one of my favourite desserts.

The next two photos (this is all rather random and in no particular order, date, fruit or anything else-wise) show me having a blitz on every courgette clogging up the fridge by making two savoury courgette cakes (recipe here from last year), a vat of courgette, basil and parmesan soup, with blackberries dripping through muslin in the background to make bramble jelly. 

The pic below that is yet more courgettes in a sort-of-ratatouille using the tomato sauce which I've already bottled, cooking down loads of frozen tomatoes to make said tomato sauce (method here from ages ago) and a spicy mixed fruit chutney which I usually add damsons to but this year just used tomatoes and apples. The recipe for the chutney is here but this time I used 2kg of tomatoes instead of 1.5kg damsons and 500g tomatoes - it's fairly easy and safe to adapt different kinds of fresh or dried fruits in a chutney recipe, so long as you keep to the same quantities.

I will get through these courgettes if it kills me!

Ditto the tomatoes!!

I have to mention something regarding the photo below of beetroot and apple relish from a recipe never tried before and elderberry syrup. I spent hours picking the elderberries off the stalks and my hands turned black. I duly made the syrup, the recipe for which I'd got from the great Greenside Up blog (later to find I already had that cookery book here!). So, bottled up the relish and left the syrup to cool because I was going to freeze it, then went off to do other things. 

A little while later a very sheepish husband came to find me and said "oops". He'd only gone and thought my syrup was the beetroot boiling water and tipped it all down the sink! And if that wasn't funny enough, I had to remind him that actually, I had boiled the beetroot the day before, and he had already washed up that pan! I guess I should just be grateful that I have a hubby who clears up my mess and regularly washes up my preserving pans..... but oh, I've just remembered, there was also the time he chucked my Tom Yum Goong (Thai hot and sour prawn soup) down the sink because it looked like 'dirty dish water' in the pan.... hmmmm. :-)

Beetroot Relish and Elderberry Syrup.

Back in the veggie patch for a few more pics. There's still plenty to eat and loads of colour from my various strips of flowers for pollinators or butterflies. I'll do a report on my Pollinator Meadow Year 2 at some point, because it's been a huge success both visually and for the bugs.

Various veggies with various flowers in the background.

I found a third, much larger Swallowtail caterpillar which I put on the same plant as the other two. Since then the smallest has disappeared and the middle sized one is the same size as the big one now, and they have chomped through most of a plant and I've moved them to another one. They have a tendency to just sit on a stem which they've eaten all the leaves off. Maybe I should leave them to it but I like to mollycoddle my 'babies'!

Swallowtail caterpillar, tomatoes, a strawberry and a late squash which I don't know if
it'll have time to ripen (I've already picked the two that had turned orange).

Physalis, a fruit I have never grown before. The jury is out really as I've
only eaten a few and I'm not sure this is something I would regularly grow.

I've decided to take out the peach tree that grows in the veg patch. I've kept that one because peaches need so much water that it has to be irrigated with a seep hose, and whilst it's got a bit too big despite pruning, it does provide some much needed shade for lettuce in summer. But two years in a row and no fruit at all due to brown rot setting in (which affects our plums some years too), and all the fruit has scab anyway. I already buy peaches and nectarines all through the summer season and if mine were good, they'd all come at once in a big glut at the end of September and I can't freeze them, and they are no good for bottling due to the scab. And the biggest problem with brown rot is that you don't know you've got it until the fruit is almost ripe.... so you can spend all summer nurturing and watering your fruit, and then the whole crop is lost, just like that. It's just not worth it.

Brown Rot or Monilinia on a peach. Not pretty.
The black freckles are scab.

Not my hairy arm.
This tatty old Peacock really did just land on my OH's arm
whilst we were standing in the veg patch!

You may have to look hard, but you never know
who is sheltering under your cherry tomatoes!

"Holy Cow Bertie, what on earth is THAT?!"

We had a good amount of rain yesterday and the weather forecast shows mostly sunny and still very mild for the next week, and my tomatoes continue to ripen. If only autumn was always like this!

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!