September 3

A changing harvest

The start of September usually signals a change in harvests for us. The courgettes are slowing down and the sweetcorn is ready.  We picked our first cobs this week and they were very sweet and tender. Now it will be a race between us and the badgers to see who gets the most!

The chillis are now in full swing. I have two types: cayenne (long and pointy) and one from a seed packet called Chilli Shakes. When I looked at the packet more clearly it is yet another mixed packet that I bought and so I don’t know what type this is.  I really MUST stop buying mixed packets!

I am also picking chard regularly now. I add the leaves to almost everything. Tonight it is chilli made with black beans to which I will also add shredded chard leaves.

L to R: Leaf beet, Lucullus and Rainbow chard

It has taken me a very long time to work out what to do with the stems. I read somewhere that we grow chard for the leaves and the french grow it for the stems.  After reading a blog post from the Frugalwoods about their mammoth chard growing and storing days, I too decided to chop the stems very finely and add them to stir fries. It works a treat and now no waste!  I believe the french use the stems in a gratin – I do love a gratin but am not convinced about a chard stem gratin.

The allotment seed catalogue from Kings has arrived and I have already spent a pleasant hour perusing the delights.  The more blogs I read about growing, the wider the range of seed companys I need to use. For instance, I want to grow Aji Limon chillis this year so will have to get them from the South Devon Chilli Farm. I will get the Stupicke tomatoes from Sarah Raven and the Coriander Cruiser from Simply Seeds. (I have just bought the coriander because it is on sale at 29p!) And I haven’t even made a list of all the things I do want to grow yet.

I did something I have never done before. I pulled up some tomato plants that were still productive.  Zlatava was a tomato that I tried for the first time this year and found it to be watery and tasteless and prolific. It didn’t matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of the wateriness so I pulled the plants up. It felt wrong but who wants food that they don’t like to eat?

What are you thinking about growing next year?

My thanks to Dave at Happy Acres for linking us all up with his Harvest Monday posts.

September 2

Seed trial update no. 2

This trial is to try and find out which method of seed sowing is the  quickest and easiest and results in plants that grow quickly once they are moved to the allotment.

I looked at the seedlings in the cells and the transplanted ones and decided they were big enough to go out on the plot.

Cell sown seedlings 31/08/18

This is the part that I find difficult with cell seedlings: getting them out of the cells without destroying the roots.  What I noticed this time around was that the more roots, the easier it was to get the seedling out. The easiest way is to quickly squeeze both sides of the cell and then pull the seedling out. I have tried just pushing from the bottom of each plant but can’t get them out completely.

A root system like the one on the Red Frills mustard below will come out reasonably easily.

The rocket seedlings, however, were still tiny and I could not get them out intact at all. I left the rest in the cells to get bigger and try again later.

What this did mean though is that I didn’t go ahead and plant out the transplanted seedlings. They look the same size as the seedlings that had been sown in the cells but their root systems can’t be as big.

I am going to leave these another week and then plant out. It is probably just as well because I am going to have to clear some ground for these.

Conclusions from today are:

  • seedlings in cells probably need a bit longer than I really want to give them to ensure that they have good root systems that come out of the cells easily
  • transplanted seedlings will definitely take longer to get into the ground – they are still not in yet whilst the seeds sown in soil blocks are in the ground and growing.