The chill sets in

Brrrrrr! It was a bit parky out in the suburban veg plot today. But as the low low temperatures had temporarily made the swamp-like lawn firm enough to walk on, I continued the end of the year garden tidy.

The greenhouse got a good sweep out and I washed the cold frame glass. I need a couple of replacement panes for the cold frame (*adds to hubby's to do list) but as it's only garlic in there, I think they'll be fine with the extra ventilation. The cloves planted out in the raised bed are already peeking their little green shoots above ground.

All this frost should be good for my first sprout harvest. There are some that have developed on the fat stalks but I'm not sure how good they look. Does anyone manage to grow them as they look in the supermarket? Mine are about a third the size and don't look as 'solid'...

But the ever-reliable broad beans are soldiering on. Anyone reading my blog over the past couple of winters will know that I love my broad beans. My harvest this year was a pretty good one and all the beans that aren't eaten fresh are immediately frozen so I have home-grown beans all year round.

The neglected brassicas (see previous post here) have taken to their new homes quickly. I'm putting a positive spin on this and predicting that I may have a much extended harvest season through the springtime as a result. Some call it neglect and forgetfulness, I prefer to term it successional planting out.

And the start of the proper overnight frosts signals that parsnip season is now upon us. After a bit of a struggle to germinate them this year, I did manage to produce a respectable crop that I'm sure will last us through the winter.

Out of sight, out of mind

Oooops! I just found these in a neglected corner of my garden. Brassica plantlets (savoy cabbage, tuscan kale and early sprouting broccoli) that I moved out of the cold frame in early October and subsequently forgot they even existed. Naughty careless suburban veg gardener!

I've found homes for most of them dotted around the raised beds. Hopefully they'll forgive my neglect and still give me something of a harvest come 2013?

Feeling smug

The sunshine this weekend proved something of a boon in the suburban veg plot. I hit the garden with great enthusiasm and a 'to do' list as long as your arm. And by Sunday afternoon, here's where we were:

Clear dead sunburst squash plant from raised bed - tick
Harvest remaining Conference pears that the damn squirrel hasn't got at - tick
Plant up purple pansies in window boxes - tick
Sow broad beans - tick
Plant garlic in beds and in modules - tick
Sow green manures in empty beds - tick (though it may be a bit late for much growth)
Plant out cauliflower and cabbage plantlets - tick
Feed any slugs I find to the chickens - tick
Clear dead sweet peas from raised bed - tick
Take propagules from sempervivum plant - tick
Remove yellowing leaves from sprout plants (and feed to abovementioned chickens) - tick
Harvest last of the toms and remove plants from greenhouse - tick
Harvest almost the last of the chillies - tick
Plant daffodil bulbs in pots - tick

Feeling rather pleased with myself after all that. What did everyone else do in the garden this weekend?

Christmas sprouts

So, my tomato and chilli harvest may have been disappointing this year but I already have high hopes for the winter crop of brussels sprouts.
This is my first attempt at these but I love them sooo much and would be delighted to harvest my own sprouts for Christmas Day. I acquired my seeds from the lovely VP of vegplotting and they were sown in March this year. (If only I'd been so 'on the early sowing ball' with the rest of my winter greens...).

They germinated really quickly and I simply potted the seedlings on a couple of times through spring and summer. They initially stayed in the greenhouse to protect them from the pesky slugs but were moved out in late summer when we did have some hotter days.

I have two plants that survived long enough to be planted into a raised bed and since they went out, they've gone from strength to strength. They stand at almost 3 feet tall and I can see little buds growing in the leaf axils. Sprouts a gogo!

Start of a new term

Sept/Oct means back to school for some of us. And I found a wholly appropriate new notebook for my new horticultural course:

Time for a garden tidy

I'm trying to pretend that autumn isn't happening. In my head I'm sitting at the patio table with a Pimms in hand flicking through the latest Gardeners' World, whereas in reality I'm peering out from the kitchen, watching the chickens shelter from the rain beyond the dogwood bushes whose leaves are slowly turning an autumnal shade of red.

So, in a brief few hours on sunshine yesterday, I started my garden tidy. Well, hubby started it while I sat at the patio table sowing some hardy annual seeds. As you can see, it was warm enough for a refreshing glass of shandy! These seed trays will go into the cold frame over winter and shouldn't need pricking out until early spring.

During a clearing of an untidy border, this little chap put in an appearance. My internet searches have identified him (or her?) as a common frog rather than a toad. But if any herpetologists out there know better, then I'm happy to be corrected.

As part of the tidy-up, I braved the tying-in of this years new tayberry shoots. It put me in mind of wrestling a particularly spiny snake. This lovely plant has grown three impressive new shoots during this year and these will fruit in 2013. I implemented my 'Loch Ness monster' formation again, which looks a little convoluted, but allows me to train 3m shoots onto a 1m length of fence. I also buried the end of the longest shoot to experiment with a bit of 'tip layering'. Hopefully I will have a baby plant to pass on to a deserving garden next year.

When I'm not gardening...

I have a very good reason for my posts to have been a bit...shall we say...thin on the ground this summer. Yes, I was revising for my latest round of RHS exams but I was also involved in the wonderful showcase of sport that hit London - the Olympic and Paralympic Games!

Now, although I was pretty handy with a hockey stick in my uni years, this talent did not stay with me on my journey into adulthood. I have finally come to terms with the fact that I may never compete for Team GB - but I did manage to get into the Olympic stadium. In fact, right onto the 'field of play'. (Disclaimer - no, that wasn't me gate crashing the India team parade...)

Sometime late in 2011, I happened upon a website that called for volunteers to fulfil a role that would, to roll out a much-used cliche, be a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity. And after a couple of attendances at a secret location in East London and a few months of waiting for an email, I was finally rewarded with the news that I'd been offered a role in the Paralympic Opening Ceremony.
The list of rehearsal times was extensive. For a period during July, we were rehearsing 3 times a week for 4 -5 hours at a time. But it was fabulous fun, meeting a wide range of people who had all volunteered their time with enthusiasm. And none of us really knowing what we'd let ourselves in for.
So, after 5 weeks of rehearsals in a film studio in Bow and 2 weeks rehearsing in the world's biggest car park in Dagenham, and the issuing of a plethora of access and accreditation passes, we hit the Olympic stadium for our first on-site rehearsal.

All too soon the night itself arrived. Backstage, in the warren of corridors, areas and rooms beneath the stadium seating, was a buzz of excitement. We were in our 'holding area' for hours, having arrived at the stadium at 3pm for a last minute addition to our choreography. The scheduled time for our part of the performance was 10.30pm, but as the athletes parade overran we were still waiting to go on at 11pm.

A lot of time was spent waiting in the wings, peering out at the show through any available open door or trying to evade security by getting upstairs to the media area where we'd managed to watch most of the dress rehearsal a few days before.

At long last it was time to move. Led to our area we got a glimpse of the vast audience flickering with camera flashes as another cast section headed out into the arena amid cheers and whistles from the rest of us.

And suddenly we were out there ourselves! (and I managed to find myself on a couple of photos on the internet...)

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr

photo from Flickr 

photo from Flickr

 It was an amazing night and I have lots of fantastic memories from it. As well as a black and white costume that I am wondering on what occasion I might wear again...

I'm on the right...