The Last Month: more rain
September Garden Report
At the beginning of the month sunrise was at 6.26 am and sundown at 19.37 pm. At the end of the month the day was 12.38 hours long. Goodbye long days. It keeps raining with some sunny days, but with continuous clouds. Average temperatures varied between 12C in the mornings and 20C or less in the afternoons. Only last few days are beautiful. Normally Septembers used to be more beautiful and much warmer than this year.
As I have had an operation on my left eye I can’t work in the garden at all. Now snails and all kind of insects are having a festival.
Anyway I still have enough season vegetables: different sorts of chicory (radicchios) and kales, a lot of endive, leeks, celery, carrots, parsley, red cabbage, beans, broccoli and now I am waiting for new pumpkins and sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare). For the winter I will store cabbage, beans, pumpkins, carrots, celery, potatoes and kohlrabi. Radicchio, kale, spinach, lamb’s lettuce, winter lettuce, parsley, sweet fennel and leek will stay in the beds. Fortunately the apple tree has produced a lot of tasteful apples, but all of them are worm eaten. I have enough for two months. All together I am more satisfied with the harvest this year than last year, when in the summer we didn’t have any rain at all. Now I don’t know if I need an irrigation system or not.
Till now I haven’t said anything about compost. I have three places for it: one small one near the entrance of the house for the winter, another one closer to the vegetable garden and one among bushes for grass and foliage from the decorative garden. On the compost I put only healthy remains from my garden produce and food waste. In autumn and spring I mix them together. Then I use it as mulch or I put it on the beds as manure.
When I look at my plans written in November, 2013 I see, I was:
– wrong: I have bought chemical substance against snails and another small plastic greenhouse (propagation bed),
– right: I do all the work myself,
– right: I collect my own seeds and exchange them and plants with friends,
– my vegetables aren’t cheaper than vegetables bought in a super-market, but they are cheaper than from organic suppliers.
My favourite dish: porridge of buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) with mushrooms (or with leek). Porcini mushrooms (Betulus edulis) are the best. We need also thyme, marjoram, onion, garlic, parsley and (sweet) cream. We cook together porridge of buckwheat with a pod of garlic and marjoram. Separately we blanch mushrooms with finely cut onion, adding thyme and diced garlic. When both are cooked, we mix all together with cream (as much as you want), salt and pepper. We wait for a while. At the end before serving we sprinkle with parsley. Normally this dish we eat with lettuce.
shinobu wrote on Sep 30:
Milena! I hope you are recovering quickly so that you can get back to the garden -- you can't have the snails keep partying on!