It's now late November and in the frost free cocoon of the polytunnel there is still life, and more importantly food for us to eat. If I needed to I could go out and pick at any time the makings of a good vegetable soup, without depleting any of the plants of too many of their leaves.
To walk you through the plants available to us at the moment.
In the central bed there are :
Radish Lettuce Spring Onions Borage A single Spinach plant Fennel Carrots A single Cabbage plant A pot of potatoes that are refusing to grow. .
On the right hand side are :
Curly Kale Spinach Radish Leeks Celery
On the bench are some overwintering herbs in the big green tray, and an unheated propagator of seedlings that I was experimenting with ... and yes, they all came up, so more tiny Spinach, Radish, Mixed Leaves and Lettuce. And also my very sad Lemon plant. I think I may bring it in the house to live with the Chilli plant for the Winter and see if there is anything I can do to bring it back to life.
Funnily enough I've always been unlucky with citrus plants even when we lived down south and it was much milder. I think a bit of research is called for instead of my usual instinctive gardening ... we're obviously not on the same wavelength me and citrus!!
On the left hand side are :
Beetroot Cabbage Kohlrabi Chilli Pepper Lettuce Carrots Potatoes that are refusing to grow. Mixed Salad Leaves
and right at the far end my Sweet Potato plant which I should be able to finally pull out of it's pot next week. I was told to wait until the leaves went yellow and seemed to be dying off before risking tipping them out of the pot.
In the terracotta coloured plastic pot are yet more potatoes refusing to show themselves. 'Grow your own delicious New Potatoes, in pots in time for Christmas Day' said their packet .... nope it's not worked. So I'll just save a few of our own outside grown and stored big spuds to eat with our Christmas dinner and try again next year with a different variety. The plant at the back behind the sweet potato is a self seeded Nasturtium. I left it there to see if can over-winter in the tunnel, but I suspect it might get too cold for it. In the meantime I can pick one or two of it's peppery leaves whenever we are having a salad.
In the foreground of the left hand side photo are the two pots of Oca given to me by Dawn of 'Doing it for Ourselves in Wales', and she posts about harvesting some of hers HERE, The pots were only in the tunnel briefly to avoid a really heavy downpour while I was over there, they were already saturated and I though a couple of hours grace from the deluge might be appreciated. They are back outside now awaiting a good frost ... we were promised one last week and almost got it ... but not quite. How ironic that in South Wales, where you would expect it to be a tad warmer, Dawn has had a good frost and here on our North Wales hillside we haven't. Hopefully we'll get to taste them soon.
So that's this month's round up of Polytunnel Progress.
I'm pleasantly surprised that in this year of experimentation there is still so much life and potential food in there, it bodes well for next year.
Sue xx
