Green Row Notes

Putting the beds to sleep for winter

The last courgettes are in and the beans have finally given up. This week the empty beds got a thick layer of half-finished compost and a blanket of chopped leaves. No digging: the worms will do the work over winter, and in spring the soil should be crumbly enough to sow straight into.

Garlic goes in next weekend. I am saving the biggest cloves from this year's harvest and planting them 15 cm apart, pointy end up, about two knuckles deep.

Tomato blight, round three

A wet August again. Brown patches on the lower leaves of the outdoor tomatoes appeared overnight. Removed every affected leaf, stopped watering from above and picked all fruit that had any colour to ripen indoors on a windowsill. The greenhouse plants are fine, which settles the argument about building a second greenhouse.

Compost that actually heats up

For years my heap just sat there. The fix was boring: roughly equal volumes of green (grass clippings, kitchen scraps) and brown (cardboard, straw, dry leaves), a heap at least a metre across, and turning it every two weeks. The middle now reaches 55 °C and a batch is ready in about three months.

Slugs versus lettuce

Beer traps catch plenty, but the real difference came from watering in the morning instead of the evening, so the surface is dry by nightfall. Seedlings now go out a little bigger, after two weeks of hardening off.