The garden - 2024 August

In a nutshell

• We’re eating our own garden produce every day and it is delicious

• The number one ongoing challenge is poor soil quality

• Mulching and no-dig are the solution for poor soil quality

This is the first of what I envisage will be a monthly update on our vegetable garden which we started three years ago. These articles will always be short and pithy because I’m not trying to understand and communicate off-the-beaten-track subject matter.

Non-harvest Activities undertaken

Four main activities:

• Weeding and composting

  • Ongoing but have slowed down because we’ve kept up with them since the start of the growing season

  • Turned and watered compost

• Mulching - spread composted kitchen/garden material on unused section of the garden

  • Creates space for a new compost pile

  • Allows mulch to “weather” down into the underlying soil

  • Exposes opportunistic seeds to be weeded out before next growing season

  • Watering – Outside garden required for new seedlings and greenhouse needs constantly

• No-dig harvesting – we avoid pulling up the roots of plants that are fully harvested. Instead, we cut the stem at the soil surface and leave the roots in the ground to provide food for fungi

Harvest

Garden

• Beans

• Carrots

• Garlic

• Herbs

  • Cilantro

  • Dill

  • Fennel

  • Mint

  • Parsley

  • Sage

  • Tarragon

• Kale

• Lettuce

• Plums – not many

• Radish

• Snap peas

• Summer squash – two types

• Turnip

Greenhouse

• Basil

• Cucumber – green

• Cucumber – lemon

• Tomatoes

Ongoing Challenges and Signs of Progress

Ongoing Challenges

By far our biggest challenge with the new garden is soil quality. Most of what we’re now growing vegetables in was previously covered in paving, fabric intended to prevent growth, or moss-infested grass. To say the soil microbiome is probably in poor health is a gross under-statement.

Soil in the greenhouse was previously under grass. It won’t have had the benefit of a diverse crop cover, may even have been sprayed to get rid of moss and encourage a mono-crop cover, and hasn’t been mulched much by us yet.

Here’s what we have in the greenhouse this month:

• Poor sweet pepper development and fruit deterioration on the plant

• Good tomato crop but not great

In the garden we have two plum trees that suffer badly from brown rot fungal infection and don’t bear much edible fruit.

The bare root fig tree planted last year has come back reasonably well but has not fruited.

We have some shading from an old Rowan tree that sadly is damaged from years of holding up an old children’s treehouse.

Signs of Progress

Firstly, the produce we’re harvesting ourselves is hands-down tastier than anything we can buy.

We’re seeing some signs of progress in the garden which has benefitted from extensive early mulching:

• Summer squash fruited well from the start of the season whereas last year the early blossoms didn’t fruit

• Yellow summer squash fruiting this year whereas last year they did not

• Transplanted apple tree with poor roots is bearing large apples

• All herbs are growing vigorously where a deep seaweed mulch was applied

• Succession crops of beans, turnips and radishes are doing well from seeds

Lessons Learned

There are a few:

• Harvesting young summer squash, cucumbers, turnips, and radishes is the way to go for full flavor

• The herbs benefitted from a thick mulch of subtidal seaweed with some mushroom soil. Seaweed comes at no cost other than my time and energy so there’ll be much more spread everywhere this year

• Tomatoes grown outside won’t ripen in time in Scotland

• Soil quality remains key. We’ll be mulching and cover-cropping for a while

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