Kitchen Garden November 2020 Preview

WWW.KITCHENGARDEN.CO.UK | NOVEMBER 2020

THE UK'S BEST-SELLING GROWING YOUR OWN MAGAZINE

PURPLE PASSION Top advice for tasty cloves

A TASTE OF PARADISE

LIFT THE GLOOM WITH GROW LIGHTS

Meet a reader r whose plot is a haven of peace and calm

THE BEST EATING APPLES REVEALED  COMPOST MADE EASY DELICIOUS RECIPES

No. 278

November 2020

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With autumn in full swing you may be forgiven for thinking that there is not much to do other than to harvest the remnants of your summer crops and start on the hardy veg that has been slowly growing since spring.

However, as our jobs pages show this month, there is still plenty to do to keep those harvests coming and lots to think about if 2021 is going to be a bumper year on the plot.

Turn to page 56 to find out what no-dig gardener Stephanie Hafferty is sowing and growing on her plot this month, while on page 36 KG regular Rob Smith offers his advice on growing pungent garlic – what are the best varieties and the techniques needed to grow, harvest and store your best-ever cloves.

Deputy editor Emma Rawlings and gardening writer Ben Vanheems reveal simple ways to extend the season so that you can quickly grow your own delicious and nutritious crops throughout the year with no more space than a windowsill or table top. Turn to pages 41 and 44 to find out more.

Emma moves outdoors to bring you her definitive guide to making great compost, starting on page 60, while I look at how to store the harvests you’ve already grown this season to ensure you get the most from them through the long winter months.

We all dream of being more self sufficient and Julie Moore has some ideas to help us all do just that by working with nature to get the best from our plots, and if you are looking to boost your fruit garden this winter you won’t want to miss our four-page feature from fruit expert David Patch as he reveals his favourite eating apples and top tips on how to grow them.

Steve Ott, editor

Turn to pages 36-37 to discover why Rob Smith is just wild about garlic www.youtube.com/kitchengardenmagazine

Contact me at: sott@mortons.co.uk | 01507 529396 Find us at www.kitchengarden.co.uk Contact subscriptions: 01507 529529

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EXPERT ADVICE TO HELP YOU GROW GREAT FRUIT AND VEGETABLES

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YOUR PLOT

6 ON THE VEG PATCH

KG regular Joyce Russell is sowing early broad beans, feeding spring cabbage and harvesting parsnips

10 IN THE GREENHOUSE

Join greenhouse gardener Martin Fish as he harvests the last of the tomatoes and dwarf beans and pulls out spent crops

12 WHAT’S NEW?

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

14 YOUR LETTERS AND TIPS

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

NEVER MISS AN ISSUE...

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

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18 CONNECT WITH YOUR KG SUBSCRIBERS’ CLUB

This month KG subscribers can make savings on a range of great products plus win handy ratchet loppers from Darlac worth £20!

20 QUESTION TIME

Our top experts help solve your gardening problems. This month they tackle winter moth on fruit trees, onion white rot and curly tomato leaves

102 NEXT MONTH

Some of the highlights to be found in your December issue plus news of more great free gifts

106 LAST WORD

KG reader Bill Masser has some great ideas to help simplify crop rotation www.youtube.com/kitchengardenmagazine

NOVEMBER 2020

Scan this, and we’ll tell you!

36 More delicious recipes for your home-grown harvests from Anna Cairns Pettigrew ✪

Pg 98

76 GET GROWING 16 ON THE PLOT WITH THE THREE MUDKETEERS

66 50 A SLICE OF PARADISE! ✪

Meet YouTuber Emma Bailey, whose plot for her is a haven of peace, calm and restoration

56 WINTER IS ON ITS WAY

The KG team have tackled tomato gluts and been bewildered by butterflies, harvested sweetcorn and tried out fruit harvesting nets

No-dig gardener Stephanie Hafferty highlights the tasks she’ll be doing on the plot this month

24 STRETCHING THE SEASON ✪

60 COMPOST MAKING MADE EASY ✪

KG editor Steve Ott looks at the options for storing harvests through the winter months

30 THE ROAD TO SELFSUFFICIENCY

Organic gardener Julie Moore explains how working with nature can improve our crops and help the planet

35 GROWING ONLINE

A roundup of the best from the gardening websites, blogs and vlogs

36 JUST WILD ABOUT GARLIC ✪

Gardening expert Rob Smith loves garlic. He offers you his advice for cracking cloves

41 MINI VEG WITH BIG BENEFITS ✪

Grow super salads all year round with advice from KG’s Emma Rawlings

44 SHINE THE LIGHT ✪

Gardening writer Ben Vanheems explains how to use modern technology to extend your growing season www.youtube.com/kitchengardenmagazine

Creating good compost is an art, a science and it can be an obsession. KG deputy editor Emma Rawlings looks at the basics

66 GARDENING THERAPY PAST AND PRESENT

Well-being expert Annabelle Padwick gives us a potted history of gardening to help the mind

73 HERBS TO YOUR DOOR

Discover how a fascination for growing herbs soon developed into a fully fledged business for KG reader Andrew Perry

76 SPROUTS YOU’LL LIKE! ✪

A KG growing guide to sprouting broccoli

80 WANT TO BE OUR PLOTTER OF THE MONTH? ✪

Send us pictures of your plot and you could win prizes worth £444!

83 EASY EATERS ✪

Fruit expert David Patch reveals his favourite eating apples and how to grow them

WHAT TO BUY 88 PRODUCT REVIEW – LEAF COLLECTING

KG’s Tony Flanagan looks at a range of leaf collecting equipment

92 GREAT READER OFFERS SAVE £34! ✪

Claim 10 free* Strawberry 'Sweetheart' Plants, plus other great money-savers in time for planting now. Worth £14.95 (*just pay p&p)

94 GREAT GIVEAWAYS WORTH OVER £579 ✪

Our prizes in this issue include luxury gift hampers from the RSPB and deluxe dog beds from Scruffs

96 GARDEN STORE PLUS SUBSCRIBER SAVERS ✪

A chance for KG subscribers to save pounds on big-name products!

103 GIVEAWAYS ENTRY FORM www.kitchengarden.co.uk | 5

GET GROWING

TASKS FOR YOUR VEGETABLE PATCH IN NOVEMBER BY JOYCE RUSSELL

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Pictures: Ben Russell

R BE G I FO

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GREAT

USE LAST LEAVES

Leaves fall over a number of weeks and this usually comes to an end in November. Add a thin layer of autumn leaves to the compost heap. This helps to balance out the layers of nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps and grass clippings.

VENTILATE CLOCHES AND FRAMES

These structures help to protect plants against cold, wet weather, but impermeable covers can lead to hot and humid contents. Be prepared to open cloches and frames to allow good ventilation on sunny November days and remember to close them up again.

CHECK STRING

Twine made from natural materials will rot over time.

Check all places where you have used it to tie up tall plants and replace, or add in more, as needed. It’s better to add in an extra tie or two than to wait until string breaks and plants fall to the ground.

PROTECT YOUNG ONION SHOOTS

Slugs don’t usually bother onions very much but they can eat young shoots as they emerge.

Use organic approved pellets to protect autumn-planted sets until the shoots are a few inches tall. Note: garlic shoots are usually left untouched.

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JOBS FOR THE MONTH XXX

STEP BY STEP: GROW EARLY BROAD BEANS

STEP 1: You can sow seed of winter hardy varieties directly in a trench in the ground, but germination can be poor in cold November soil. Start seeds off in individual 8cm (3in) pots filled with good potting compost. Sow a few more than you think you will need in case some fail.

STEP 2: Keep the pots in a cool place, like a porch, well-lit shed or cold frame. First leaves should appear between 14 and 21 days.

Keep plants watered and check that roots don’t emerge at the base of the pot. They are ready to plant out when around 10cm (4in) tall.

STEP 3: Plant out in a double row over a trench filled with compost. Plants go 20cm (8in) apart. Cover the row with a cloche and be prepared to add another layer of material if temperatures drop below zero. Plants grow slowly through the winter – remove the cloche when they touch the top.

SOW NOW

FEED SPRING CABBAGE Spring cabbage plants are very hardy.

They stand through most winters and go on to produce plenty of green leaves in March and April. You may have to discard some of the tough outer leaves, but the central leaves should be tender and sweet. Plants may only have gone into the ground in the last few weeks so the main aim now is to get them moving – they need to be sturdy enough to survive whatever winter brings.

If plants are small and slow growing, then use a nitrogen-rich liquid feed to give them a push. Repeat this in January and you should get plenty of tasty leaves when spring comes around.

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HARVEST PARSNIPS

Broad beans, hardy peas, some salad leaves, including mizuna and mustard greens, if you live in milder areas and can provide some covering.

These roots get sweeter the more plants are exposed to frosts. Having said that, texture suffers if roots freeze and they can be eaten by slugs and rodents if left in the ground too long. You can just dig roots as needed and cover the rest of the row with some straw, or layers of cardboard – this small bit of extra insulation can prevent roots from freezing solid.

It is probably safest to lift the crop now and put roots to store between layers of sand in a cool, dry shed. Use them before they sprout new green leaves in the spring – roots can turn woody and tough at this stage.

Garlic if soil isn’t too wet.

Winter lettuce and salad leaves in sheltered raised beds or containers, fruit trees and bushes.

PLANT NOW

HARVEST

Autumn raspberries, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, salad leaves, spinach, Swiss chard, turnips, swede, cauliflower, cabbage, kale.

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GET GROWING

WINTER LETTUCE

■ PROTECT WINTER ROSEMARY Rosemary bushes can be killed in a cold winter.

Wrap large outdoor bushes in fleece for some extra protection and bring a pot of this herb indoors so you can use as needed.

■ PRUNE SOFT FRUIT BUSHES Try to get all fruit bushes pruned by the end of the month. The exception to this is autumn fruiting raspberries which may still bear fruit – these can be cut back in January.

■ PREPARE FOR STORMS Make sure everything is fastened down. Cut off loose branches that might break and smash into garden plants. Check locks and windows on sheds and other structures.

■ KEEP PATHS CLEAR Dashing outdoors to pick a few herbs or to put a tool in the shed, your attention may be less than perfect when battling November weather. Make sure your routes around the garden are accident-free areas.

■ ORDER SEED CATALOGUES This is the time to order some of the new catalogues from seed companies. You may not look at them until next month, but they will be waiting to tempt you to try something new.

8 | www.kitchengarden.co.uk

If you live at sea level, and in a place where the winters are mild, then you might be able to take some liberties with what you grow in the colder months. A summer lettuce may grow just as well as a winter one and a perennial runner bean plant may continue to grow outdoors. For the rest of us, variety is everything. Plants bred to grow in the winter are hardier and less likely to fail with a frost or a snow shower. So much effort goes into growing each plant that we may as well get it right from the start and grow varieties that can be relied upon to crop well in an average winter.

Always ask neighbouring gardeners for recommendations – weather and soil conditions all play a part.

Some good winter lettuce: ‘Veneziana’ has long jagged leaves. ‘Marvel of Four Seasons’ has red leaves.

‘Valdor’ has large firm heads. ‘Winter Imperial’ is a hardy butterhead. ‘Winter Density’ has a firm, crispy heart.

TACKLE A PLANT PROBLEM: FIND HIDING PLACES Many pests hide away through the colder months of the year, only to emerge when the weather warms up again. Look under piles of decaying plant material, under loose timber, paving or bags stacked in corners.

Pests and their eggs can be removed and their impact reduced in this way.

Other pests hide in the heart of plants. Cut open a cauliflower and slugs, earwigs and woodlice may all tumble out. Soak in salted water for half an hour and evict them all before use.

THINK ABOUT PLANTING FRUIT BUSHES First decide where the bushes will go. Be sure to allow enough room for each one to grow to full size and mark out the positions so you have good access on all sides.

Think how a net might be fixed to protect the fruit and choose the best varieties for your plot.

If the weather is too cold or wet to plant out, then heel young bushes into the soil until conditions are right for digging, feeding and getting them off to the very best start.

USE STORED FRUIT AND VEG There’s nothing quite like the thrill of filling the larder, freezer and sheds with all the glorious produce from the summer and autumn crops. We store everything up and think of the delight of eating all those home-produced treats during the colder months.

It’s all too easy to forget that some things don’t store for all that long and some things deteriorate in storage so they need to be used before they are lost. Other things last a long time, but there is no point in saving the frozen berries from this year until next year’s fresh ones are ripe and ready to pick.

Stores are to be used, not just admired. Start using what you need now and continue using supplies through the next weeks and months. Check regularly and use the apples while they are crisp and the marrows before the skins turn tough. Check for rot in the pumpkin and potato crops and remove any carrots that have dark blotches. If any stored crop starts to suffer then think of ways that you can use the sound ones – make carrot soup for the freezer or jars of apple sauce. Storing garden produce is a continuous task. Produce needs sorting and checking, removing and using, and will be added to as new crops arrive. www.youtube.com/kitchengardenmagazine

GREAT ■ There is just about time to sow some fast-growing salad leaves to enjoy as baby leaves in early winter.

■ Check through leafy salad or brassica vegetables and remove any yellow or dead leaves around the base of the plants.

■ Keep harvesting salads crops and other fresh produce from the polytunnel or greenhouse on a regular basis.

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■ Bring potted figs back undercover if they’ve been out over the summer. This helps protect the embryo fruitlets

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■ There is still time to plant garlic into the greenhouse or polytunnel border but do it by mid-November to give it time to establish a root system before winter.

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WITH MARTIN FISH

PICK THE LAST OF YOUR TOMATOES Very often you can keep tomato plants going into early November, especially if the autumn weather has been fairly mild and sunny. In fact, I have a friend who puts an electric greenhouse heater into his polytunnel to keep the air circulating and take away the chill, with the aim of having freshly picked, ripe tomatoes for Christmas!

In my polytunnel, early November is when the tomato plants are removed so that I can start my winter clean. The last few fruits are picked and if they are showing signs changing colour, I ripen them on a warm windowsill.

Most tend to ripen with a little care which means my wife Jill doesn’t have to make green tomato chutney, which I’m not very keen on! www.youtube.com/kitchengardenmagazine

JOBS FOR THE MONTH

HARVEST POTATOES IN TUBS I reckon that with a little planning you can be harvesting fresh potatoes from the polytunnel for around nine months of the year.

I know that main crop potatoes store well for many months, but there’s something special about digging up or knocking a root of fresh potatoes out of a large pot. Over the past couple of years, I’ve started planting a few pots of potatoes every month from February through until August in the polytunnel to provide us with a steady supply of delicious tubers as and when we want them. The ones that are being harvested now were started off in pots in early July and they’ve done very well and are lovely and clean.

HARVEST DWARF FRENCH BEANS One of the great things about growing undercover is being able to extend the growing season and growing a range of plants at different times to outside. A good example of that are dwarf French beans. My outdoor plants finished back in September, but these fresh pods are from plants growing in the polytunnel and they are a real treat at this time of the year.

The variety is ‘Ferrari’ and the seeds were sown in July and the young plants planted directly into the polytunnel border. Alternatively, they can be grown in large pots if the borders are full of other plants. We’ve been picking for a few weeks and they should carry on until the end of November.

PULL OUT OLD SQUASH PLANTS When I grow squashes, I tend to grow them in the greenhouse or polytunnel where they thrive much better than outside in the garden. I get plenty of growth outside but the summer temperatures in North Yorkshire aren’t always warm enough for the fruits to develop and ripen. Some years I get fruits and others not, so growing undercover gives a much better chance of picking fully developed, ripe fruits.

The downside to this is the vigour of the plants and amount of space they need, but with a little trimming I can usually keep them under control. When the last of the fruits have been picked, it’s case of getting rid of all the long stems and foliage!

CARROT ROOT FLY Carrot root fly is a serious garden pest on carrots and to a lesser degree parsnips, celery and celeriac.

Plants growing in the open are often attacked, but even carrots growing undercover are prone to damage.

The small fly lays its eggs in the soil around the carrots and the small larvae burrow down and eat into the roots. There are two generations of eggs laid, May-June and August-September.

This late generation can be particularly troublesome on summer sown seeds to harvest over autumn and winter. If your polytunnel doesn’t have insect-proof mesh over the doors and vents, you do need to protect the plants with fleece to keep the flies off, or use nematodes watered into the soil.

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■ As the last of the summer crops are cleared out you can soon find yourself with a mountain of old plants.

Many such as tomatoes have thick stems and other such as squash have long trailing stems and large leaves. To help all this waste break down faster on the compost heap, chop it into small pieces by hand, or if you have one, pass it through a shredder.

■ Leaves will soon be starting to fall from the trees so make sure gutters and down pipes that feed water butts are kept clear.

■ If you do use a heater to maintain frost-free conditions, November is when you are likely to start using it, so check it’s working properly first.

Use a maximum-minimum thermometer to make sure it’s maintaining the temperature required on cold nights.

■ Check greenhouses, polytunnels and cold frames to make sure they are secure before winter. Any structural repairs should be done as soon as possible before the rain and wind cause more damage.

■ When clearing crops from the soil borders, keep an eye open for any vine weevil larvae lurking in the soil. If you spot the short creamcoloured grubs with a brown head, get rid of them.

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YOUR PLOT

ALL THE LATEST NEWS, PRODUCTS & FACTS FROM THE WORLD OF KITCHEN GARDENING

LARGE SPIKE IN ALLOTMENT APPLICATIONS The National Allotment Society has reported that councils across the UK have seen a 40% increase in applications, with a staggering 300% increase in one case. According to the Association for Public Service Excellence, which works to support local councils, the average waiting time for an allotment plot is 6-18 months, with some councils saying they had 100-400 people on their waiting list.

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, founder of the Black Farmer food brand said: “The Government, Ministry of Defence and Church of England all own vast swathes of land and could be doing a lot more to welcome people from diverse urban cultures – but particularly black people – into allotments and ultimately into the countryside. Gatekeepers of pastoral Britain have the power to make a difference and it’s time they were challenged to do so.”

BENEFICIAL BRASSICAS New research from Edith Cowan University in Australia found that higher consumption of brassicas such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage was beneficial in preventing advanced blood vessel disease in older women.

The study revealed that of the 684 older women monitored, those who had eaten more of these vegetables had a lower chance of building up fatty, calcium deposits in the aorta (the largest artery in the body), which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.

FEAR OF FOOD Neophobia is an irrational fear of anything new. Child development specialists have argued that toddlers g through a period of food neophobia go around one to two years old and that this may be an innate survival mechanism to prevent them from eating poisonous substances.

Your child a fussy eater?

Maybe not!

GARDEN SPENDING SPREE According to research conducted by American Express, UK gardeners have spent an average of £105 each on their gardens during lockdown, amounting to £3.7 billion in total. The most popular purchases were outdoor plants, closely followed by compost and seeds.

DO YOU HAVE SOME HOT STORIES FOR OUR NEWS PAGES? SEND THEM TO TFLANAGAN@MORTONS.CO.UK 12 | www.kitchengarden.co.uk

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