My pungent aroma

It always seems right to make jam and chutney on a Sunday. And in autumn too. They just seem to go together.

I spent a very happy morning yesterday using up the last of my store of green tomatoes during a session in the kitchen. Mind you, there were complaints about the strong smell of vinegar. I don’t mind it. In fact, I find it rather pleasant, preferring to use the word aroma rather than  smell. Do other people think the same?

There was only a jar and a half of chutney, but it was good to make use of the green tomatoes before they went off. The green tomato jam was a bit of an experiment in my state-of-the-art bread maker. But hey, why not try the jam setting if you’ve got it? No-one quite believes me that you can have such a flavour of jam and indeed it’s something I’ve never had before. Time will tell if it’s OK.

And so ends this year’s crop of tomatoes. Not a very successful growing season. Let’s hope it goes better next year.

I've bin thinking

Munching on a banana this lunchtime, the thought occurred to me: Can I compost the skins?

I've been slowly getting to grips with the idea of composting after my friend Kate gave me the bin which now nestles at the bottom of the garden. But it seems a subject fraught with difficulties, different ideas and plain bonkers obsession.

I don't want to carry it to extremes, I just want to know what's safe to chuck in the bin. My wife Susan can usually answer most of my questions, but composting is a blank in her knowledge. Can I compost egg shells? Dunno. Can I compost lemons? Dunno. What about egg boxes? Ditto.

Luckily, I have now found the wonderful Compost This website run by Louisa Parry and John Leach. The beauty of it is that they keep it simple and concise. Browse each of the categories and it gives you a plain yes, no or maybe, leaving it up to you to click and find out why.

It's a bonus that these two active recyclers, reusers and composters live together in Leeds, a city where I spent 17 very happy years after moving north from Kent when I went to university.

Banana skins? Yes. Egg shells? Yes. Lemons? Maybe. Thank goodness for help like this.

And, with Christmas coming, it seems opportune to say that all I need now is a kitchen caddy (hint, hint).

And these I forgot

I realised that I left out a few things in my posting Taking Stock. I forgot about the lettuce and salad leaves.

Well, the salad leaves did OK. Both seeds in pots and straight in the ground outside worked well. The La Rossa lettuce didn't go too well. All right in the beginning, but soon seemed to taste bitter.

Ah well. Try again.

Taking stock

At my suggestion, I snipped off some mint to add to our home-cooked meal tonight. Susan quietly threw it away, telling me later she didn't think it was mint and it just didn't seem right. Obviously past its best and a reminder that the season has grown to a conclusion.

Time to take stock and examine the failures and successes of this year and what I can learn from them.

1. Potatoes - absolutely brilliant. But I need to plant more than one variety.
2. Courgettes - three plants in pots produced about half a courgette between them, but the one planted outside in the soil has been wonderful. It's producing even now.
3. Raspberries - about five grew, a welcome gift for the birds. Bushes dug up after two seasons of failure with them.
4. Rhubarb - continues to baffle me. We've had about one pudding this year from the two crowns in the garden. Susan says it's because I don't feed them.
5. Spinach beet - has done OK.
6. Tomatoes - a major disappointment after being such a winner last year. The outdoor plants caught blight early on and had to go. The plants in the conservatory were hardly big producers. The lesson I have learned is to use growbags rather than pots and to stay away from heritage seeds. They're heritage for a reason, I feel. Mainstream toms for me next summer.
7. Broccoli - doing all right, although it was my friend Kate who started them off before giving them to me as a present.
8. Pak choi - a waste of time. Has failed to grow.
9. Mizuna - also not very successful. Failed to grow outdoors, the indoor pot produced just a few leaves and then stubbornly refused to grow more.
10. Squash - nothing doing from the single plant in the conservatory.
11. Herbs (that's thyme, oregano & basil) - fairly successful, although I don't think we've utilised them to their full extent in our cooking.
12. Broad beans - blighted.
13. Cherokee Trail of Tears beans - about two handfuls produced, a bitter disappointment. 

More failures than successes, but I'm not crying. I'll be trying even harder next year.

Lessons? More effort needed, composting needed, I should learn to propogate more plants in the conservatory rather than planting seed directly in the ground and I must ditch the back plot where I put the broad beans and the Cherokee Trail of Tears this year. The sun just doesn't shine there and also it is very stony, this being the land where they did a lot of quarrying in the past. I plan on digging out a further patch elsewhere in the garden.

Massacre of the innocents

You bring them up, feed them, nurture them, love them - then they let you down.

My tomatoes have been a bit of a disaster after the runaway success of last year. The outdoor ones were ditched a little while ago after being blighted, while the indoor ones have produced very little red fruit. It's been a poor season.

One lesson learned is not to put them in pots again. Growbags did very well last year and they are what I will have next year.

The nine potted plants in the conservatory were finally ditched today, having gradually wilted and yellowed over the last week. There was, though, a bit of a haul of green tomatoes from them and I have saved them to make chutney.

But that job will have to wait until next weekend as we are going on holiday. Hay-on-Wye, seeing as you ask.

Yes, I know it's about time

I've got a compost bin!

My good friend Kate gave it to me last weekend, she having got a splendid new wooden structure for her compost.

To be honest, it's just dumped in the corner at the moment as I have spent hardly any time in the garden this week. It's going to remain where I have put it, at the side of the shed in the corner where the sun don't shine, and I've just got the small job of making sure it's level before I pile the stuff in.

I've written before about how my soil really needs improving, so I'm hoping this will be just the thing. I must say I don't know much about the art of composting and so will have to read up about it.

I'm off now to mull over the debate about whether you should or should not compost teabags.

Oh dear, I hope I don't become obsessed.