As soon as the first leaves fall from the local horse chestnut trees in September I find myself reflecting on the garden’s success and failures.
At this point I have picked proud quantities of yellow beans, while at the same time shaken my head in disappointment at the solitary pumpkin that is unlikely to be large enough to hold a light at Halloween, let alone make soup for six.
Recipes
Fighting against the grain
All summer long I have been surrounding the stems of tender vegetables with spent coffee grounds to halt the snails that hide in the box hedging around the beds. The system has worked well and I heartily recommend that tea drinkers form a good relationship with their local coffee house for a supply of used grounds. (Dry them out on a flat tray before use to avoid mould.) A shallow collar of coffee around each plant, about 2cm (0.75in) out from the stem, seems to work better than the light scattering I had hoped to get away with. My climbing beans (this year ‘Merveille de Venise’, an early French cultivar with flat, sulphur-yellow pods, and dark purple ‘A Cosse Violette’), dark sweet peas and two cultivars of squash have benefited most from this method. It is a pity I didn’t know about this last year when I could have saved more of my young ‘Rouge Vif d’Etamps’ pumpkins and ‘Yellow Bird’ patty pans from slug damage.
The small size of this city garden limits the number of vegetables I can grow. Many of them are sown too close together, but this sometimes works in their favour. I find a bed crowded to the gills with Joseph’s coat chard, ‘Grando Violetto’ broad beans, globe artichokes and dinner-plate dahlias (‘Hamari Gold’ and wine-coloured ‘Jocondo’) is less attractive to a fox cub looking for a place to snooze than a bed with bare ground between the rows. Wicker cloches, the open weave of which allows the entry of rain and sunshine, have been effective in keeping the cabbage ‘Cavolo Nero’ and young potatoes from being crushed. They have proved to be money well spent and I shall use them again next year.
What is particularly interesting to me has been the chance to compare, over the last year or two, the difference between the tomatoes grown in pots in the lightly shaded basement patio with those that have received the full force of the sun, wind and rain in the main garden. For the last two years I have grown prolific ‘Sungold’, ‘Tangelo’ and softer orange ‘Auriga’; tartly delicious ‘Gardener’s Delight’; and larger ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’ and ‘Marmande’. ‘Marmande’, extraordinarily, seems to benefit from the lashing wind and scorching sunshine it has been receiving. Gnarled and full of character they will take anything you seem to throw at them, including the usual modicum of benign neglect. ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’ has also flourished in deep pots of organic compost, but fared well in the main beds, too.
In terms of flavour I like to think that the tomatoes that had the toughest time seemed to win over those that led a more cosseted life. They were smaller and less suitable for the local show bench, but made up for it in flavour, which I found slightly more intense than those that had been sheltered, watered and fed more regularly. This year the plants have done well, despite developing twisty stems due to my tardiness with the sticks and string. In early July they were showing a generous quantity of small fruits, and were already more prolific than last year.
Fruits of labour
Severe rain at blossom time dampened my hopes of a good fruit harvest. No sooner were the buds open than the heavens opened too, with not a bee in sight. Last year I must have picked 200 mirabelle plums from a six-year-old tree. This year I will be lucky to find enough to make a single fruit tart. It is the same story with the espaliered ‘Doyenné du Comice’ pears. This may be because of a low yield on the neighbouring pollinator, a delightfully loose-structured ‘Winter Nelis’, the drooping boughs of which are holding barely a handful of fruit.
There are no raspberries this year, as I pulled out the remaining ‘Autumn Bliss’ to make more room for vegetables. For five years or more these plants had fruited prolifically, but last year was their final moment of glory before their bed was commandeered for potatoes. Unlike almost everything else in the garden, they had done well in the damp conditions and fruited well. I made a splendid fool with them too, crushing the fruit with a fork and stirring it into lightly whipped cream.
I often pick blackcurrants well into late August and even early September. ‘Ben Connan’ is a reliable fruiter and stands better than the red or white selections. The birds rarely attack the blackcurrants (they are too busy picking holes in my infant cabbages) though they can strip a bough of redcurrants in a day. I find the fruit lasts better on the stem than in the fridge, so I leave them be. I cannot imagine ever having a garden without a blackcurrant bush, if only for the scent of its wood at pruning time, a deep source of nostalgia for me. Early pocket money was earned in Worcestershire’s currant fields.
Along with damsons, blackcurrants make a rich sauce for pouring over thick yoghurt or for an intensely flavoured crumble – an irresistible late-summer pudding.
Despite the poor show with tree fruit this season, the medlar and grapes have more than made up for it. My ‘Nottingham’ medlar has proved a perfect tree for a small garden and can provide enough of its curiously shaped fruit for a jar of glowing amber-red jelly. The blossom, which has previously been snow white, was a deep rose-pink this year – a phenomenon that was both as puzzling as it was pleasing.
The ‘Fragola’ grapevines planted outside my back door five years ago are now climbing the walls of the house. They were shy to fruit, but last year received a severe pruning and are now laden with 60 or more small bunches. I hope that some autumn sunshine may allow these extraordinary-flavoured grapes to ripen. Poised between a strawberry and a grape, they have particularly juicy flesh and tough but quite edible purple skins. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the vine that spends its day behind the constantly open glass door, therefore receiving more heat, seems to be doing marginally better than the other.
I have had the best year of all with salad potatoes. ‘Salad Blue’ was a winning choice: blue potatoes are amusing and intriguing in a salad, but I took particular delight in their violet-blue flowers. The floury texture of ‘Golden Wonder’ is far from suitable as a salad potato, yet has much to offer when picked small and steamed. I have high hopes for the ‘Arran Victory’ and ‘Kestrel’.
But I must end with a note that the most prolific of all the fruit and vegetables in my garden was a single tomato plant that lay forgotten by the compost bags. Still trapped in its ridiculously small starter pot, its stem as crooked as a country lane, it was found smothered with more young fruit than all the others put together. No matter how we may not care to admit it, sometimes our beloved plants simply look after themselves.