We don’t mind seeing a gloriously frosty vista when we open the curtains of a morning, but we can’t help worrying that this might be a harbinger of a long cold winter ahead …. we’ve already had more frosts than we might have expected this autumn, and forecasters are warning of a repeat of last years bleak winter weather, so it’s time to batten down the hatches.

So cold, so early

Most of our evergreen stock will be moved under cover this week – not because its less than hardy, but if the root balls freeze for any length of time the plants can’t transpire, so they dehydrate, and then die.  This would not be good. The irrigation system will be drained so we don’t suffer too much frozen pipe damage, and we’ll start the horticultural equivalent of doing the hokey-cokey - opening and closing the polytunnels everyday. The plants need protection, but also ventilation, so as soon as the daytime temperature is above zero we open up, and as soon as it starts to approach freezing, we close again, and this shapes the rhythm of our days for the the next several months.

It’s taken rather longer than we expected it might, but the pile of wood can now be revealed in all its transmogrified glory….as a new sales office!

Well, okay, maybe more an alcove than an office, and maybe more a shed with a large hole than either of them, but shelter from the weather for us, customers, and all the sales paraphernalia that seems to accumulate around a till and credit card machine.

Cute, huh ?

With a window!

Pegged mortice and tenon!

on both sides!

The first photo looks as if it’s been photoshopped by David Dickinson, but it hasn’t – all the photos were taken within a few minutes of each other – the only difference is that the sun peeped from behind the clouds for the few fractions of a second during which the first picture was taken!

Barbarea vulgaris variegata

We started growing Barbarea vulgaris ‘variegata’ this year as an ornamental groundcover plant – its attractive variegation and dense low growth make it an interesting and unusual plant for the front of a herbaceous border.   But knowing that its leaves are also edible, we added a few to our potager to see how they’d perform as a salad plant.

And so far, they’ve proved very worthwhile – we’ve had several pickings from the plants for salad leaves, and they’ve added a very striking splash of colour to the plot.   They were looking a bit tired by the autumn, so we cut them hard back, and they’ve now recovered to rosettes like the one in the photo.   We reckon we’ll get another picking or two off them before winter sets in (when we think they’ll retreat underground – some catalogues list them as herbaceous, some as evergreen!).

They are also listed as both perennial and biennial in different seed catalogues, so we’re interested to see what they do next spring – if they prove to be reliably perennial, they’ll be a very easy and worthwhile addition to the veg garden.   And if they prove to be only biennial, they’ll still be worth growing – we’ve been picking leaves since late spring so they have a good long growing season, they have a lovely peppery water cress flavour, and they look nice (in the garden and on a plate!).

Photinia Red Robin

It’s nice to be taken by surprise every now and again isn’t it?

There probably isn’t a garden centre in the country that doesn’t have Photinia ‘Red Robin’ on its sales benches;  there surely can’t be many gardens in the country that don’t have one growing somewhere can there?   It’s the most ubiquitous of shrubs – not just in domestic gardens, but in any number of amenity planting schemes in any number of car parks…

We have a couple in our garden, and most of the year they just get on with filling their space at the back of the borders. But twice a year, when there’s newly emerged red foliage on the plants they stop us in our tracks, and we’re reminded that they’re popular with good reason.

The one in the picture is right outside our front window, and as the sun sinks low on autumn afternoons, the foliage lights up beautifully.

Photinia will grow pretty much anywhere except deep shade, with no special care required. We’d recommend you prune them more than you’ll feel inclined to (”it’s a shame to cut off all that lovely foliage”) because their one fault in our opinion is their tendency to get a bit tall and sparse.  Regular light pruning will keep them compact and bushy.

Blueberry autumn foliage

We thought Blueberry bushes were quite expensive when we first started to stock them – around £11 for a decent sized specimen in a 4lt pot put them a good couple of price points above your average soft fruit bush, and we couldn’t help but worry that their price was being driven more by media superfood hype than genuine value.

How wrong we were!   We always like to trial plants in our garden if we can, and it soon became apparent that these guys were going to pay for themselves very quickly.   Blueberries are extraordinarily expensive in the shops, so you don’t need a huge crop to get a payback, but we found they paid for themselves several times over even in their first year.

The plants get quite large eventually, so we can imagine that in future years we’ll be able to pick enough to get heartily sick of them!

And if sheer weight of crop isn’t enough for you, their final flourish of autumn colour will surely pursuade you that they’re garden worthy. Ours are right outside our (east facing) kitchen window, so in recent days when the autumn sun has been shining low through their foliage, they’ve added a striking ornamemtal feature to our potager.

You need at least a neutral soil for them to crop well (our soil is dead neutral, they’d be happier if it was acid) and two or more bushes will ensure better pollination and a heavier crop than a solitary specimen.  If you’ve only got room for one, the “self-fertile” varieties will yield worthwhile pickings.   And you need to net them when the fruit is ripe or the blackbirds will get them before you do; other than that they’re an easy, productive (and good looking!) crop.

Next year, one plant per variety of pepper will be enough…..(what on earth are we going to do with all these?).

Capsicum 'Hot Cayenne'

Capsicum frutescens

Capsicum 'Mohawk'

Capsicum 'Bell Boy' and 'Romano'

A barrow load of knobbly goodness

We haven’t grown main crop spuds for decades, and hadn’t really planned to this year, but an impulse buy of a bag of seed potatoes in the spring (because the ones we’d last grown were Pink Fir Apple, and we came over all nostalgic) meant that this season we filled half of one of our new veg beds with these rather strange tubers.

And they’ve proved fantastically easy, productive, and very very tasty!

They are very slow – they need a good 20 weeks in the ground – and probably yield badly compared with conventional main crop spuds, but these are most definitely not conventional potatoes!

You can see from the picture that they’re small, and just a bit knobbly. The good news is that you don’t need to peel them, just wash and boil. And the really good news is that they taste wonderful – just like new potatoes, but in October (and November, and December…) So serve hot with butter, or cold, in potato salad…or any other way really.

Unless you’re really keen to grow everything yourself, main crop spuds seem a bit masochistic to us – lots of hard work to produce something that professional growers can do so much more efficiently (you can get huge sacks of spuds in our local farm shops for the price of a bag of seed potatoes). So it has to be something a bit special to get us tilling the soil for spuds – luckily our nostalgia wasn’t mis-placed, and these are going to keep us fed and entertained for months.

Stuffed, souped, stewed....

With a few frosts under our belts already, and the plant’s foliage frazzled, we thought we’d better get the butternut squash into storage before a serious frost did them some damage; and so this season’s haul is now safely gathered in.

This time last year we were bemoaning the dreadful yield we’d got – this year it’s rather better, and more consistent, as you can see. Water, water, water seems to be the key to success!

But worth growing?   Even with this improved yield it still seems an unreasonably space hungry crop – probably 12 square metres of garden (3 plants) to get the 27 squashes in the picture (plus 2 which were sped away to the soup pot before the camera got to them). So fine for the moment, but definitely on the “review” list when space starts to get tight.

The good news is that they store for months, and are absolutely delicious stuffed, and in soups and stews. Proper winter store cupboard veggies!

Looks like a ....

Some of the timber has been sunk into the ground, with concrete collars to hold them firm, and perimeter beams have been cut to size…

The weather this week has been ideal for a bit of al fresco woodwork, so progress has been steady.

It’s exactly the size of a domestic greenhouse (8 feet by 6 feet) but those posts are a bit heavy duty for that – aren’t they?

Good to look at, and to eat

This is only the second year we’ve grown peppers, but we’re starting to think that there’s potential for them to replace some of the ornamental plants that adorn patio pots and planters around the country.

The pepper in the photo is just as attractive as a Geranium isn’t it?   We think it’s rather better looking actually, but we’re not going to push our luck so early in our campaign…

Not all pepper plants look this good it has to be said – normal sweet peppers are probably best left to do their thing in the greenhouse, but these chillis look to us as if they deserve a wider audience.    Even if you don’t want to start a zero food miles chilli powder line, they’re good looking enough just to be grown as ornamental plants aren’t they?

The plant pictured is Capsicum frutescens, grown from seed sown in spring (probably a little later than it ought to have been) and photographed today. We’ll leave it to grow until it looks as if the frosts are going to see it off, then we’ll pick the fruits, dry them, and have our very own home grown chilli powder! And judging by the number of fruits on this plant (we also have 2 others) we’ll be supplying the neighbourhood too.