Pushing up the daisies

I had a bit of a tidy up on Sunday, as the summer draws to a close. Overall it has been mediocre, too cool and humid to get any of the real summer crop flourishing. It's a year with 13 moon cycles, so I am told, and some people say bullshit but the old timers seem to believe that they are bad crop years (like 2007), and I am inclined to believe that.
Anyway I ripped up all of the tomato plants and stakes and the black plastic, the useless melon vines and the summer cabbages (digging only the cabbage leaves into the ground so as not to waste their nutrients). I covered that area and have decided it will make the onion and garlic patch for the new season. I guess roughly speaking, the rotation plan for 2009 will be:

• spuds 2009 vs beans 2008
• alliums 2009 vs tomatoes 2008 (and follow them up with the winter cabbages)
• Three sisters 2009 vs spuds 2008 (I will probably have time to do a little dabbling in that patch, spring radish, or seed beds)
• Beans 2009 vs brassicas 2008
• Roots 2009 vs three sisters 2008

State of play:

• the brassicas are doing very well, I think they like it cooler, the red cabbages are terrific.
• The last lot of dwarf beans should be giving fruit in the next couple of weeks.
• The late carrots are growing well but they need to plump up a bit still.
• I have left the last three pumpkins on the vine for now, they still seem to be growing.
• The rhubarb is slowing dying off, it has finished for the year. Soon I will divide it and plant a third root and I will do the same with the artichokes. I want to mulch them both well with manure over the winter and spring.
• The celery is a bit of a mystery. The branch type doesn't seem to be growing well, although it is healthy enough, just too small, and the root type, I don't know what is going on with it. Maybe not enough water?

Sigh so what to do next year? I guess this year was a small improvement over last year, I got lots of fruit and a decent crop of alliums and potatoes. But I guess it is still not the bumper crop that I was expecting. Although I do know where I went wrong in most cases, so maybe I can make it better next year?
Good resolutions for 2009:

• Plant more earlier and under cover (works well for peas).
• Get a salad leaf box going for all year round greens (and give up on sowing individual lettuces, they just don't work for me).
• Plant more spuds, closer together, heavily mulched, more maincrop and a really nice salad variety. That Caesar variety was good, very big spuds.
• Repeat the Three Sisters experiment, adding in runner beans and planting the corn closer together. Get a nice variety of Butternuts going.
• Really look more into the varieties: this year was an improvement but next year should be better. Remember that the Colmar carrot was a success, the Lark corn and Coco de Paimpol beans do well here, the Gatrenperle tomatoes were crap but the Harzfeuer were nice and tasty. Get better varieties of beans, broccoli, beetroot (try that Cylindra type). Try two types of garlic to see which works best.
• Sow my own onions in January and plant them out.
  
• Get a polytunnel up and running and do aubergines, sweet peppers and chillies.
• Mulch and cover, mulch and cover, mulch and cover and GET A WHOLE LOAD OF HORSE CRAP ON THERE!!!!

Well I am glad I got that off my chest...

Labels: cabbage, carrots, fruit, summer, tidying, tomatoes