Clever ways to extend your harvests
Sally Nex shares her tried-and-tested tips to help you keep on producing delicious fresh veg throughout the coming months
String out summer harvests well into autumn by leaving peas and beans in the ground
The nights may be drawing in and the tang of autumn is on the air, but that doesn’t mean the fun has to stop! Even in winter, my veg garden is busy feeding me and my family, so I’m still down on the plot every day, pottering about happily, tending to my veg and keeping everything ship-shape. In this new series, I’ll be showing you how to make the most of your veg garden in the off-season. So over the coming months, wrap up warm and come outside with me and we’ll fill the kitchen cupboards with hearty, nourishing fresh food even when there’s frost outside. Right now, I’m busier than ever as I have two jobs to do – gathering in the last of the summer harvests, and preparing for the cold weather to come. This month it’s all about stretching out summer as much as possible, so the good times go on long after the sun sinks lower in the sky.
September can be a surprisingly pleasant month in the veg garden, sometimes as balmy as high summer. The soil is still warm and usually damp, creating ideal growing conditions for plants, and the days are relatively long, so there’s plenty of sunshine to go round. This is your blessed moment of calm before the barometer plunges and winter comes howling over the horizon – so make the most of it!
I redouble my efforts to gather in the harvest now, as almost every plant in the garden is mature and at peak production – and I want to keep them that way for as long as I can.
You can string out your summer harvests well into autumn simply by leaving plants in the ground, especially now that winters are milder. Mangetout and podding peas, French beans and cucumbers all carry on producing fruits, albeit in diminishing quantities, until the first frost if you pick them regularly.
I also eke out the harvest from summer brassicas like calabrese by leaving stumps in the ground after I’ve cut the main heads. They re-sprout several times before the cold weather hits. Even then, don’t pull them up: if the winter is kind, they’ll come back for another small harvest in spring.
Mind you, after a long, productive summer, many plants (and the soil) can get a little tired, so I add a splash of fast-acting liquid seaweed fertiliser to the watering can to buck them up.
Disease can also stop plants in their tracks, so keep plants tidy and pick off any yellowing leaves, which can harbour grey mould (botrytis). My number one enemy, though, is mildew – an early-autumn scourge that can seriously curtail my courgette harvest. I pick off any leaves dusted with tell-tale white powder to stop the spread, and spray weekly with a 40:60 mix of milk and water to keep this fungal disease at bay.
Storing your bounty
At least half my daily haul is squirrelled away to eat long after the crops are cleared, so we can enjoy summer veg out of season without buying imported food from the supermarket. Most of it is frozen. With veggies such as courgettes and aubergines, which don’t freeze
well, I cook them into pasta sauces, then pop those in the freezer too.
Peas and beans go in as they are – I don’t bother to blanch in boiling water first (I’ve never found it makes much difference). Freeze peas and broad beans straight from the pod, and don’t process French beans: freeze them as they are, uncovered on trays, without even topping and tailing them, and they keep their crisp texture and flavour better.
Growing in pots
You can really beat the seasons, though, by growing veg in containers. I’ve got pots full of salads, annual herbs and leafy veg like spinach dotted around the garden right now, as well as sacks of second-cropping potatoes for harvesting until Christmas and beyond. They can easily be moved into an unheated greenhouse, coldframe or conservatory to keep them growing when the cold weather arrives. Some, like coriander, chard, parsley and baby-leaf salads, stay green all winter.
I also max out my windowsills with potted chillies (compact ‘Numex Twilight’ holds its fruits through winter) and an array of herbs. Pot up clumps of mint, marjoram and chives, as well as holy and Greek basil (both are able to cope with lower light levels). They’ll stay leafy long after plants outside die back, so you can enjoy the flavours of summer all winter.
See overleaf for tips on late tomatoes
LEFT Cut cucumbers as soon as mature, so the last fruits ripen BELOW, FAR LEFT Sally sprays courgettes with diluted milk to deter powdery mildew
BELOW CENTRE Grow colourful ‘Numex Twilight’ chillies on a sunny windowsill BELOW Pot up mint and bring indoors so you can keep picking