Kitchen Garden September 2016 preview

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WWW.KITCHENGARDEN.CO.UK | SEPTEMBER 2016

DOWN-TO-EARTH ADVICE FOR GROWING FRUIT & VEG

GLUT BUSTERS

with Big Allotment Challenge winner Rob Smith

Top tips to use all your harvest this autumn SIMPLE SUPERFOOD Your EASIEST blueberries EVER

Plant food magic

Use comfrey to feed your veg

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Attract wildlife with flower power

apples that are crunchy to the core

Delicious seasonal recipes for you to try at home

CONTENTS

EXPERT ADVICE TO HELP YOU GROW GREAT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

WIN

ONE OF 20 PAIRS OF TICKETS TO THE HARROGATE AUTUMN FLOWER SHOW

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✪ ON THE COVER

YOU

@GrowWithKG

YOUR PLOT

6 ON THE VEG PATCH

KitchenGardenUK KitchenGardenMag /kitchengardenmagazine FOR OUR CONTACT DETAILS TURN TO PAGE 15

Harvest sweetcorn, beans and courgettes, plant spring cabbages and strawberries, harvest and store onions, summer prune apples.

10 IN THE GREENHOUSE

Plant onion sets, harvest aubergines, sow pak choi, combat powdery mildew

12 HOT TOPICS

The latest news, comment and advice from the world of kitchen gardening

14 YOUR LETTERS & TIPS

Learn what other KG readers have been up to and pick up some great first-hand advice

18 QUESTION TIME

Bob Flowerdew and Anne Swithinbank answer your fruit and veg growing conundrums

NEVER MISS AN ISSUE...

£20

ON PAGE 22 HAVING TROUBLE FINDING A COPY OF THIS MAGAZINE? Just Ask your local newsagent to reserve you a copy each month

4 | SEPTEMBER 2016

48 ENTER OUR PASSIONATE PLOTTER COMPETITION 2016

Why not enter our best plot and container competition and win some great prizes?

52 YOUR FREE SEEDS

Get the best from your free gifts

97 NEXT MONTH

Some highlights to be found in your October issue plus details of great free gifts

42 106 LAST WORD

Former superintendent of the Royal Parks turned TV gardening celebrity, Jim Buttress, give us his views on veg gardening today

SEPTEMBER 2016

Scan this, and we’ll tell you!

RECIPES This month KG chef Anna Pettigrew cooks up some delicious dishes featuring figs, tomatoes and horseradish

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WHAT TO BUY

GET GROWING 20 ON THE PLOT WITH THE THREE MUDKETEERS

Learn what the KG team have been up to this month and pick up some great top tips

24 SERVING THE COMMUNITY

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54 DISEASES DON’T HAVE TO BE DEADLY

Plant pest and disease expert Pippa Greenwood profiles some important plant diseases and explains how they can be beaten

58 FRUIT AT A GLANCE

84 TRIED AND TESTED

This month the KG team put a range of popular loppers through their paces in time for the pruning season

88 GARDEN STORE

Visit a very special walled garden in Ripon which aims to make life better for the less fortunate in the local area

KG’s Steve Ott reveals some of his favourite apple varieties for your patio and garden

30 BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO CAULIFLOWERS

A KG pocket guide to growing this sometimes unappreciated, yet highly colourful cabbage family member

63 APPLE CIDER VINEGAR – THE NATURAL ALL-ROUNDER

Biodynamic gardener Julie Moore extols the many virtues of apple cider vinegar and offers her recipe for DIY success

Claim your free blackberry ‘Reuben’ plant worth £12.95 plus save on winter lettuce and spring cabbage plants, jostaberries and blueberries

34 MAKE IT! NEW

68 GLUT BUSTERS

Save on a range of great gardening products with our exclusive deals including high-rise planters, Haxnicks gardening products, orders from Pippa Greenwood.com and state-of-the-art food dehydrators

Our new series highlighting cost-saving DIY projects to make your gardening easier

36 GET GOING WITH BLUEBERRIES

Broadcaster and author Anne Swithinbank offers her top tips on growing this delicious soft fruit

40 RADISH ‘CRUNCHY MIX’ ON TEST

Steve Ott reviews a colourful new radish mixture

42 ENJOY THE HARVEST

Gardening expert and author Naomi Slade explains how to pick and care for your ripening tree fruit www.kitchengarden.co.uk

Gardening expert Ben Vanheems offers ways to ensure that you never waste another berry or bean from your hard-earned harvest

74 FLOWERS AMONG THE FENNEL

For deputy editor Emma Rawlings allotment growing doesn’t just mean fruit and veg. Here she looks at some popular flowers to add colour and life to your plot

80 MAKE A COMFREY PRESS

Ever wondered what is the easiest way to make your own rich liquid feed? Joyce Russell shows you how

News of the best new products and services to reach the KG offices this month

90 READER SAVERS

92 KG INSTANT SAVERS

94 GIVEAWAYS WORTH OVER £2348

This month you could win power tools for your autumn clean up, robotic vacuum cleaners, micro-drip irrigation kits and tickets to the London Homebuilding and Renovating Show

102 DIARY DATES

Great things to see and do this month SEPTEMBER 2016 | 5

■ Sow land cress in rows for peppery salad leaves through the winter.

■ Sow spring cabbage and spinach. Plant out July-sown plants.

■ Keep sowing winter lettuce varieties plus rocket, mizuna, corn salad and mustard greens.

■ Still time to sow Florence fennel and kohl rabi if winters aren’t too harsh in your area.

INTHE GREENHOUSE

WITH JOYCE RUSSELL Pictures by Ben Russell

ALL CHANGE September can be a pivotal month.

There’s a slow change taking place ✔ Tomatoes are at their as days noticeably shorten. Many most prolific now. Remove summer plants will keep cropping for lower leaves or any showing more weeks to come, but those that signs of disease. Keep harvesting! started cropping earliest may reach ✔ Close doors and windows the end of their natural cycle. If a if night temperatures drop cucumber plant started bearing fruit ✔ Reduce watering and in May, and has churned out maybe feeding by the end of 30 lovely long green fruits since then, the month well maybe it can be forgiven for lookiing a little tatty at this point. It can be hard d to decide to remove any plant, but when the return is diminished by disease or age then the best solution is to thank it kindly and to pull it out.

Cast an eye over all that’s growing in the greenhouse. If some Autumn planting varieties, such tomatoes are failing through stem rot, or blight, then remove as ‘Radar’ and ‘Senshyu Yellow’, them and leave healthy plants to carry on. It can lift spirits no end are available in September. to remove problems and fill the gaps with new sowings or strong Buy early and choose large young plants. I am a firm believer in interplanting at this time of firm sets that haven’t started year. There’s no overcrowding while new plantings are small and old to sprout. These can go into plants will be removed in a few weeks when the new ones grow tall. outdoor beds of course, but A bit of overlap now means that there’s always something to pick plants always do best with some through autumn and winter months. protection through cold and wet winter months.

ONION SETS

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Put a row or two in the greenhouse if you can spare the room. You will be rewarded with useful bulbs in spring and if you want to pinch a few leaves for early salad then this is also a good use. Plant 10cm (4in) apart in rows 15cm 6in) apart and just cover the tops with soil. Keep growing plants watered and weed-free. www.kitchengarden.co.uk

Illustrations: Let’s Face It

In September remove a few leaves from around the pumpkins and winter squashes so the sun can get to them. This will help to ripen them ready for harvesting next month.

“All for onions and onions for all”

The KG team offer chat, tips and gardening gossip

3 Mudketeers Back in March we thought we’d have a little competition to see who could grow the heaviest yield of potatoes (‘Home Guard’) from pots.

Steve used a standard plastic pot, Tony used an air-pot and Emma went for a polypot. In terms of foliage, Tony’s got off to a flying start, with Steve a close second. For some reason, Emma’s was really slow to get going, though accusations of sabotage were hotly denied. In late June – a little nervously – alll was revealed! Steve’s weighed 2.2kg; Tony’s was 1.8 kg; and

Emma’s was 900g; though to be fair to Emma there looked like there was another month growing left in her pot. So, once again, Mr Ott is King of the Plot!

WATERING? NO WORRIES!

I’m often away from the garden for days at a time so this month I’m trying a watering kit from Greenhouse Sensation out for size. The Click & Drip watering kit comes complete with everything you need to supply water to your plants via a water butt or a mains tap. The former obviously makes it ideal for those growing on allotments without a source of mains water nearby.

The kit, which proved simple to put together, can be further enhanced with a water timer and the company offers one with all the right fittings to make it compatible with the kit, whether using mains or a butt.

The pipe supplied has dripper holes already incorporated and each of those give out 180ml per hour when using the lowpressure supply from a water butt or 1l per hour from the mains.

The kit costs from £25 if you choose the 10m (32ft) hose option without water timer or £56 with the timer and you’ll find other options on the website (www.greenhousesensation.co.uk).

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TOP OF THE POTS

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GET GROWING

KITCHENGARDEN

GROWINGGUIDE

BLUEBERRIES

Packed with goodness and pleasant on the palate, blueberries are surely a must-have soft fruit, easy to grow and maintain, as gardening expert, writer and broadcaster Anne Swithinbank explains

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here is no doubt that blueberries are a number one superfood, packed full of vitamin C and loaded with antioxidants. They are also extremely palatable; their indigo-blue berries are easy to eat raw without wincing and although they don’t have a massively distinctive flavour, they are sweet when ripe, with a little acidity and a satisfying pop as your teeth puncture the skin.

Growing them at home is easy, though their need for acidic soil means most of us have to keep them in containers of ericaceous compost.

Fortunately, they don’t object and a couple of plants will keep you well supplied from July to September. Open ground plants generally reach around 1.8m (6ft) and those in pots 1.2m (4ft).

If a couple of tubs are all the garden you have, blueberries are great all-rounders. Bell-shaped flowers faintly tinged green and pink open in

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spring along with new foliage and gradually set into berries. Plants are self-fertile to an extent but most varieties set better when two different ones are grown together. Most are deciduous and leaves turn bright red in autumn before dropping, revealing the rich wine colour of new stems.

ORIGINS

Botanically, the north American highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) is a relative of the lowbush blueberries that inhabit open ‘barrens’, cranberries, huckleberries and our native bilberry or whortleberry (V.myrtillus).

These all belong to the heath and heather family (Ericaceae) and while our bilberries tend to grow on acidic heaths and moors, the highbush blueberry favours raised hummocks in swampy ground where their roots have access to plenty of moisture. www.kitchengarden.co.uk

GET GROWING

DISEASES

In the constant battle to protect our plants from the ravages of nature, expert gardener Pippa Greenwood offers timely advice on how to deal with a range of diseases that may affect your plants

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adly, summer gives us a good few plant pathogens to cope with – some of which will cause us problems in autumn too. No need to despair, however, as there is plenty you can do now which will reduce the risk of the disease being so damaging again next year. Here are some you might encounter.

RUSTS Bright orange or dark brown pustules or clusters of spores on the lower leaf surfaces suggest a rust fungus. The infection often causes corresponding yellowish discolouration on the upper leaf surface and premature leaf fall.

Common on beans, leeks, garlic, chives, raspberries, plums, pears.

THE CULPRIT?

Various fungi, often with a fairly restricted host range, but producing similar symptoms.

ACTION?

At this stage in the year, defoliation will not cause much distress but collect up infected foliage promptly as this may reduce risk of the problem next year.

Poor air circulation encourages rusts so consider opening out the canopy of tree fruits or bushes. Rust on infected foliage should be killed by composting so compost leaves thoroughly.

BROWN ROT Apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches, damsons, sloes, gages and nectarines may all be attacked.

Symptoms start as a pale brown soft area on the fruit and this soon increases in size and becomes studded with numerous creamy coloured raised pustules, often arranged in

concentric circles. Infected fruits may rot further and fall from the tree or may become dry and wizened and remain on the tree.

THE CULPRIT?

The fungus sclerotinia, which gains entry via damage on the skin of the fruit; for example, that caused by bird pecks, scab, frost, hail, wasps, codling

moth, plum moth. The spores are spread by rain or water splash, wind and by animals such as birds.

ACTION?

Remove infected fruits promptly to reduce risk of disease spread. MummiďŹ ed fruits should be pruned out or knocked off the branches. Only store fruits which appear to be prefect.

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

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AppleCider Vinegar

Apple cider vinegar has been used for hundreds of years as a cure-all, beauty product and for a multitude of jobs around the home. Organic gardener Julie Moore explains how to make your own

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ike apple juice, the best apple cider vinegars (‘ACVs’) are organic, unfiltered and raw. Fortunately, it’s easy and very inexpensive to make and a great way to use up the cores and peel from your apple harvest.

Offering a wealth of health benefits, raw ACV has been the darling of natural remedies for millennia. Ancient civilisations used the vinegar as a preservative and condiment while the ‘Father of Medicine,’ Hippocrates, extolled its medicinal qualities. Christopher Columbus was so enamoured with ACV’s virtues that he took barrel-loads of the vinegar on his voyage to discover America as a preventative measure against scurvy for his crew. Today, ACV is revered as a health tonic with seemingly magical powers and rumoured to have the properties needed to cure everything from soothing sunburn to boosting your immune system to diabetes. ➤

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

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GET GROWING

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comfrey bed is a terrific addition to any garden. This powerhouse plant draws up minerals from deep in the soil; it is easy to grow and comes back year after year. For almost no work, you can grow your own balanced plant food with the perfect mix of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

The leaves can be cut and laid in potato trenches at planting time. Another option is to stuff leaves into a bin and cover them with water.

This is a simple way to make a liquid feed, but it really does make a foul-smelling brew.

You can use chopped comfrey leaves as mulch, or add them to potting compost or to the compost heap, but my favourite method of all is to use a home-made press to extract all the concentrated goodness from this nutrientrich plant.

comfrey press

■ If you are starting a comfrey bed, then look for Russian comfrey (Bocking 14), which will not seed and will stay where you plant it. Wild comfrey will seed prolifically and is invasive so keep this out of your garden.

■ It is best to cut the leaves before plants flower and stems get tough.

You can get up to three cuts per year by doing this. Don’t worry if you miss the perfect point and plants are in full flower: just chop the stems and leaves into small pieces before using.

Warning: Always wear gloves when handling comfrey. Small hairs on the leaves can irritate skin.

Comfrey makes a wonderful natural plant food and is so easy to grow. Joyce Russell explains how to make a simple press to release its nutritious juice

www.kitchengarden.co.uk

WHAT TO BUY | GARDEN STORE

THE BIRDS AND THE BEE Î

This Fun ‘Bumblebee’ Feeder is one way of getting children excited about wildlife. Ideal for use with sunflower hearts, black sunflowers and peanuts rather than smaller seed, this feeder has 900g capacity. It can be hung or its threaded base allows it to be connected to a dining station, also available from the same company. www.lovethegarden.com/chapelwood PRICE: £7.99

GARDEN STORE

OUR ROUNDUP OF THE LATEST PRODUCTS AND SERVICES FOR KITCHEN GARDENERS

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CLASSIC SECATEURS Ó

These Gardena Classic Secateurs have an extranarrow, angled cutting head for precision. The upper blade is nonstick coated while the bottom blade is made of stainless steel, allowing for both power cutting and quick snipping. They are suitable for cutting a maximum branch diameter of 20mm (¾in) and come with a singlehand safety lock.

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GAS ATTACK Ò

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Designed for precision weed-killing, this lightweight GT3000 PZ Garden Torch is equipped with a wide, circularshaped burner for the effective eradication of weeds. It has piezo ignition and adjustable flame features, and comes with Garden Gas CG3500 GA cartridge included.

www.gardena.com/uk PRICE: £11.89

www.campingaz.com/uk/c537-garden-torches.aspx PRICE: £39.99

PLACE AT THE TABLE Ô

These floral design place mats have a cork base (to protect furniture from scratching and staining) and a heatprotective coating. They come in a Jason gift box for ongoing storage and protection. Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.5cm. www.romanathome.com PRICE: £19.95

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GARLIC WONDER Ô

If you’re looking to stimulate growth and create healthy root systems, Garlic Wonder products offer an organic method which also offers resistance to attack from insect pests and fungal diseases. The solution is based on natural garlic extract and can be used on all garden plants, house plants, flowers, shrubs and vegetables without fear of tainting. Available as a 750ml spray or 500ml concentrate. http://shop.solufeed.co.uk PRICE: £8.95 (spray), £10.95 (concentrate)

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