Culling in the cool
After a disappointing summer down south, Diana Noonan plans to be ruthlessly pragmatic with greenhouse space this month.
You can greenhouse-garden till the cows come home, but if the weather doesn’t cooperate, you’ll also need a Plan B. This summer, the sun shone about once a fortnight, and even then, only briefly. Endless heavy, overcast skies don’t make for fruit-setting, and so, although it’s desperately disappointing to have had just a handful of tomatoes and the odd cucumber after months of hard work, I’m leaving all that behind and switching to Plan B.
Plan B involves my being seriously pragmatic and making some uncomfortable decisions. But let’s face it: if a capsicum plant has been in the greenhouse since November, and five months later it has produced just two flowers and a fruit the size of a bee, it’s a waste of space. Similarly, a tomato vine with just five tomatoes isn’t earning its keep. It’s also unlikely to make up for that during the greenhouse wind-down months of autumn.
So, hurt me though it does, i’m now culling unproductive greenhouse plants three months early, and taking what fruit
(if any) they have, indoors, to ripen. And with that difficult decision over and done with, i can now use the valuable space that’s been freed up to crank an extra pre-winter season from my greenhouse.
pre-winter greenhouse gardening
To do this, i’ll fast-grow edibles that would usually be tapering off in the outdoor garden during autumn. These include zucchini, snow and sugar snap peas, lettuce, lemon and mint.
Zucchini plants will, unfortunately, have to be purchased from the garden centre, as there’s no time now to raise my own (i was so sure the weather would improve!). But, by super-charging the greenhouse soil with lashings of rich compost and regularly feeding the zucchini plants with liquid kelp, they will romp ahead and produce the first fruits before the frosts arrive.
For me, liquid kelp is the secret ingredient in hurrying along growth in the greenhouse. among other goodies, it contains natural growth hormones such as auxins, cytokinins and gibberellins. Between them, these hormones promote
cell division, blooming and flower development, plus a strong, healthy plant body and root system.
as well as watering the liquid kelp into the soil around plants, i will also apply it to the foliage. This allows the natural fertilisers it contains (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) to directly access cell membranes rather than being leached through the soil during watering. it also strengthens fruits (it can help prevent bruising) and increases the shelf-life of produce. The latter is particularly important because if there’s an early cold snap, i may have to pick young zuchs and bring them inside to prevent the frost from damaging them.
into my pre-winter greenhouse garden, i’ll also transplant lettuce seedlings (i always have a row of mixed lettuce in the garden to provide seedlings). By choosing loose-leaf varieties, i can be harvesting them within 5–6 weeks – and at this time of the year, they are more tender than those growing outdoors.
bringing things indoors early
i use a lot of mint in the kitchen (it helps meld together the flavours of fruit, veges and berries in smoothies, and it’s a must in the wide range of ethnic cuisines that are enjoyed in our house). For that reason, i’ll be towing the mint container into the greenhouse this month (8 weeks earlier than usual!) so it can put on loads of leaf that can be picked to use fresh, as well as dried and stored for midwinter cooking. mint is super-invasive, so even though mine is growing in a pot, it will be raised off the ground to stop it from infiltrating the greenhouse soil.
also coming indoors early this autumn will be my potted lemon. i usually leave it outside until the last minute (before the cold weather hits), but this year, with the summer greenhouse being unproductive, i’ve decided the lemon can enjoy a little extra heat by taking up residence in the greenhouse sooner. i’ll also be liquidfeeding it because, although citrus is normally fertilised in spring and autumn, mine has had such a chilly summer that I believe it’s sufficiently confused enough to think a few weeks in the autumn greenhouse is summer!
Sugar snap and snow peas take only
8–12 weeks to produce a harvest, so although they take up a good deal of space in the greenhouse, i’ll be able to coax some tender young pods from them before i require the under-cover ground for the seriously big winter goods such as cauli, broccoli and cabbage.
i may not be able to control the weather, but by doing everything i can to hurry along growth, i will be able to crank an extra round of edibles from the greenhouse this year.