Month in the life of an urban gardener: July 2024.
The tasks, problem solving, wildlife spots, learnings and reflections from an organic food grower in a North London kitchen garden.
Welcome to this separate reflection — as part of the Food-Fibre-Fashion publication — on what it’s like to be an urban organic food grower. This started as short snappy videos to condense moments across a month, before realising that actually the narrative and context behind them could be useful, whether successes or mistakes.
As this is part of the wider Food-Fibre-Fashion publication that shares essays, articles and resource newsletters, there will be stories and musings to raise your awareness of how interconnected these systems are, even when we’re looking in small scale, such as an urban garden.
Watch reels of previous months here →
June 2024. / May 2024. / April 2024. / March 2024. / February 2024. / January 2024. / December 2023. / November 2023. / October 2023. / September 2023. / August 2023. / July 2023. / June 2023. / May 2023. / April 2023. / March 2023.
This is the ninth in this series of articles — A Month in the Life of an Urban Gardener. To read about the context of where I work, head to the first article.
Watch July 2024 in the form of a reel here.
Listen below or on Spotify:
Images: Post-mulberry harvest with purple hands; harvesting a bunch of rhubarb; the fleeting moment with a flax flower.
Harvesting.
We started harvesting a few more things, now that the sun had shone more warmly and directly, and that there was less rain, so produce could grow fruit and veg rather than just leaves — or be decimated before they even got to that point.
We’d had all the currants, gooseberries and strawberries in June. This month July was about the glut of raspberries, tay and loganberries (whichever hybrid we have), mulberries, cherry plums and more chunky rhubarb. We got some plummy plums, which were great, but the trees simply aren’t in great condition so weren’t fruitful, as it were. There were even a few blackcurrants from a bush that has never fruited, and a handful more jostaberries from four ailing bushes; this shows that time and care in pruning does pay off, even if only for the excitement that you’ve done a good job not necessarily a whopping amount of produce.
Images: Crate of yellow cherry plums; freshly harvested mulberries and purple juice hand; three lone blackcurrants; variety of courgette.
We had a small 2kg harvest of beetroots, though the remainder were too small really to harvest. They’re just not growing as quickly as they ordinarily would, with their leaves even being stunted, and so we’ll probably only get another few kilos and that’s it for that crop. They’re in an experimental bed with celeriac and sweet potato whips; celeriac have been totally eaten but the sweet potatoes are putting on foliage. In fact, the only celeriac that has survived is sitting next to a genovese basil in the sand of the staging area in the glasshouse, so we’re just leaving them be.
Usually we have banging salad. Like, top notch can’t find it anywhere else this good type of salad. But every batch of baby plants were eaten after planting out when weather reports said there was no rain and of course there was rain. This is sad because a lot of this was the trainees’ work, with them sowing (ahem, oversowing), potting on and planting out. As I write this on August 7th, I’ve done another two batches, with the first germination having gone in and mostly survived. But, I’m not holding my breath for a glorious salad mix. We don’t even have a customer for it, but it’s genuinely saddening not to have a summer of really lovely lettuce.
Images: first small harvest of tomatoes; first harvest of marketmore cucumbers; peas with an interplanting of nasturtium; beetroots.
Peas and beans also finally came, which was quite surprising as last year’s pea crop was non-existent. I’ll just go ahead and state that it was my idea to interplant nasturtiums with the peas, which have done very well, along with a nice batch of mangetout and pea peas. The bean bed was looking really under-nourished, but the French and runner beans coming off are good-looking, and the bed has since had a succession crop directly sown into it while the weather is somewhat more stable.
The apple trees also started throwing off windfall, so collection started on these. Our storage isn’t great, and last year it was a total faff, but with our annual pressing day in September, much local gluts to glean, and a load of our own apple and pear trees, we just have to find a solution. Perhaps in the interim we’ll try a mini press, or some dehydration.
Images: sad eaten lettuce bed; rhubarb stalks; mix of purple pea pods and green mangetout; berry medley with yogurt; first apple of the season from the James Grieve tree.
Lastly, I can’t forget about the one apricot! Years ago we had to hack down an apricot that was found to have bacterial canker. The other tree close by in the apiary was ok but tiny. It was supposed to be trained as a fan, though being in the apiary it was forgotten about and also overshadowed by an unruly goji hedge and tall mahonias. I’d needed to do some clearing in the apiary and spotted the lone apricot, though then with help of a colleague, discovered the apricot was on a different type of wood with a different leaf; the graft had reverted to its original rootstock, which by the look of this was some type of plum. We harvested the one apricot, which looked and felt ripe but obviously hadn’t had the full brunt of the sun so was underwhelming. The tree we’ll just leave to see what happens, and probably train it in winter. On the same day I discovered that the persimmon (kaki) tree had also put on some fruit growth, which is the first time this has happened too.
Images: baby celeriac plant and genovese basil plant living harmoniously in the staging sand; lovage came back to life and has started seeding; persimmons coming on the tree; the single apricot; rocoto chillies in full swing on the bush.
Maintenance.
I guess ‘maintenance’ could cover tidying and pruning, but I’ve kept it separate. For July, maintenance is the sort of daily things that you’d do for yourself. The trimming, the checking, the grooming. Wellbeing.
A lot of it is weeding, particularly if you’re changing over a bed, because the warmth and sunlight doesn’t discriminate and plants take what they can get. They’re stealthy, these weeds, or crops that bolt and start seeding. You’ve got to be on top of this so they’re not taking nutrition from your main crops, or harbouring slugs and snails and caterpillars, or seeding where you don’t want them to, or blocking airflow so causing mildew to form.
Tomatoes get trained each week; this involves removing any leaf stems that are yellowing or scorched plus any lower down on the stem so that airflow is better, and also halving the length of upper stems so they’re not crossing with the neighbouring plant; it involves removing any armpit leaders that take energy from the main leader you’ve left at the top; it can involve topping the plant so you’re removing the main leader and it’s flowers encouraging it all to bush out rather than simply get taller; it involves wrapping the plant around the twine so it’s not flopping and sometimes the main stem breaks and you have to use a gaffer tape fix. The tomatoes — plus other heavy feeders including courgette, cucumber and squash — will receive a feed into their roots, usually of comfrey tea.
Watch a video of me training tomatoes in our glasshouse and polytunnel.
Courgette and cucumbers will have their leaves thinned out; which starts with anything clearly full of mildew or yellowing or dead, and then additional leaves as required to make it easier for pollinators to reach the flowers. Squash are also thinned, but as ours aren’t growing, there’s no point!
Images: green fingers from tomato training; topping up and aerating the comfrey barrel; trimming the salt bush to create space underneath and for the opening door; watering new plantings.
Other maintenance tasks involve watering, indoors and out. Though we have drip irrigation to get water into the soil and consequently plant roots, rather than just the topsoil where it evaporates in the average 28˚C temperatures, it’s just not enough to really soak certain areas. It’s especially important to keep moist any new plantings or sowings, for which in July there was a lot. Even if rain is scheduled, on such hot days you know that rainfall won’t penetrate and so you need to water regardless. The indoor tomatoes have been getting a once weekly drip irrigation, plus a fortnightly individual water where I’m sticking the hose in the ground by the roots and leaving it for five minutes — so I can leave it to get on with other jobs while they get a good water. The outdoor veg often gets drip irrigation and a late afternoon individual hose too.
We’ve had an issue with the comfrey barrel, in that it needed to be aerated but this dislodged sludge that blocked the tap. The tap needs to flow freely so we get juice — or the ‘tea’ — to dilute with water to feed crops. We think we need to empty it, clean it out, and my idea was to skirt the inside with a nylon mesh net to catch sludge but allow liquid to flow.
And our main taps have been leaking, it seems due to minute differences in measurements of components. Our builders are sorting this out, but it’s been terribly boggy over in that area; our trainees did a lovely job of scraping everything up, resheeting it, and adding wood chip. It makes putting the hoses away somewhat less horrific a job.
We also had to chop and drop a grassy bank out front that is brimming with clover, but also grass that we don’t want to seed. I did half on a hot day and then decided it was enough. We currently have a half and half bank.
Images: weeding salad beds; chopping a grassy bank only for it to look like you haven't done anything; mixing up a batch of 'effective microorganisms'; experimenting with fermenting banana skins to release the potassium as a soil amendment.
Pruning.
Main pruning sessions are out of the way by July (though admittedly I didn’t get to three of the gooseberries, and didn’t tidy up what the trainees failed to do well enough with some small currant and gooseberries). But, you cut bits off plants and what do they want to do? They want to grow. So we end up having to maintain the original prunes by removing more foliage — as with the grapes, raspberries, kiwi, chilli and hazels — to keep them out the way of paths or to ensure energy is going into fruits.
Have to say that we’re terrible at doing any pre-summer and summer mulching of trees and bushes. This covering of the ground around a tree or bush (with cardboard, straw, wood chip) aids in water retention, limits weed growth and can keep topsoil from disappearing so revealing roots. Really we should be doing this when we prune, but each tree requires such a lot of work that there isn’t capacity. However, with such dry periods like we’re experiencing, it is going to become increasingly more important to ensure this additional level of attention. I did feed an ailing rosemary bush with EM (effective microorganisms), a proper water, a mulch of cardboard and old flax straw, then another water, and have been trying to remember it needs care. It hasn’t died yet.
Images: cutting back the chilli's excessive foliage; trainees thinning the grapevine foliage; checking out how nice the shape of the James Grieve apple tree is.
Tidying.
The annual garden party was coming up, so we had to tidy up our roundhouse. We use this space this to harvest everything, weigh, store and also shelter in. So stuff amasses and it was a job completed over many days. All gardeners will admit that having navigable clean tidy spaces makes things feel overall nicer, but they’re jobs that take you away from the real gardening. It was good to organise some spaces — including the platform where I was to host my hapa zome workshop, and the indoor area where space for our beekeeping equipment is shared with routesetters — but you’ve got to be in that consolidation mindset. Fortunately having recovered well from a 100km trail running race, I was in the mood to sort stuff out. Ripping up bindweed, shearing edges, flattening cardboard. Really mucky and sweaty, especially on the hot days we were having, though it felt useful not only for the space but for keeping my body moving too.
Images: cardboard boxes stored in our roundhouse flattened and packed up (hard work using that plastic strap tool); neatening the grass edges of the wooden platform; attempting again to tidy up the beekeeping equipment storage area (always gross).
Planting out.
I’ve already mentioned the many lettuce plantings. After the trainees had planted out in segments of the beds but it all got eaten, I did some clearing of weeds on another full bed, topdressed it, gave an EM feed to each of the three, and replanted. It wasn’t due to rain. I put some companion crops of spring onions and nasturtiums on the bed ends, in the hope that the strong odours would prevent molluscs from going for the lettuces. Of course, it did rain. Really, really heavily. Everything got decimated again in two rounds. They — the molluscs, the weather gods — lull you into a false sense of security. Come the end of the month my next sowings and babies were ready to go in and had managed to survive. All they need is to establish strong roots and they’re more resilient, but it’s a fine line between the size of them in the staging (roots coming out the bottom of the modules or being nibbled when potted on), whether they last the outdoor hardening off boxes, and then if they establish well enough in the beds. Fingers crossed.
I finally put in the effort to plant out my batch of three indigo varieties, three mini weld plants, two mini woad plants, corn marigolds and scabiosa. I’d held off because I didn’t know where my dye garden would end up, but it’s such a long project that it made sense to use the available space and investigate what happened — rather than wasting more baby plants as I’ve done for the last few years. The top two beds of Herb Terrace were looking pretty nice with pink cosmos getting bushy and rudbeckia coming on, and other random stuff that was directly sown, like hollyhocks, amaranth, toadflax, sitting alongside self-seeded chard and magenta tree spinach. The aim is to have these as continual annual flower beds to attract pollinators, look nice, and perhaps be an addition to dyeing/printing.
Images: baby dye plants that still need a home establishing (lady's bedstraw, dyer's greenweed); three varieties of indigo babies ready to be planted; indigo plants in the bed.
The indigo went into one small bed, and now it’s just about ensuring they stay hydrated as they’re a thirsty crop. The beauty of the terrace is that should it rain, water will flow from top to bottom, though it’s not a particularly sunny area. One weld and one woad were eaten just days after (or shrivelled in the sun), but should these establish (plus any additional seeds I sow) then it’ll look incredibly wonderful up here behind the tall wormwood and spiky gorse windbreak.
Yacón is a South American tuber of the daisy family. Each year we overwinter the tubers, plant them out in July, let them grow massive, and when they die back with the first frost (which is getting later each year), they’re dug up with the roots cured and eaten. It’s totally pointless frankly, because no one knows it and it’s taking up space, but it’s only for maximum five months, it requires no maintenance, likes the couple sandy beds we randomly have, and the leaves feel like velvet and look like dragon skin.
Images: potting on lettuces; watering in scabiosa and corn marigold into the annual flowers bed; freshly planted greek bush basil plants edging the cucumber bed.
Wildlife.
What a month it was for cats! All of the varieties have been in — except Ginger Tom, we don’t know what happened to him. The curious Norwegian fluffy, the grey tabby, the black-brown shiny one, and classic River. It’s a game to coerce the new ones that we’re ok, but slowly they’re investigating and discovering all the spots. We want them anyway, but also so that come winter they deal with the office mice.
Images: grey tabby watching me from behind the bean structure; brown-black sniffing the kiwi prunings (as they all do); Norwegian fluffy having a curious run around.
Also a month for caterpillars. Usual cabbage whites being naughty, some spiky ones hanging about, and then a blue unicorn horn one that research showed was a lime hawkmoth, and we don’t have lime trees! One particular mini cabbage white caterpillar was taken off a kale plantling to join in with our morning meeting where I tracked it’s movements across a notebook with dots. Fascinating.
Images: following the trail of a cabbage white caterpillar on our task notebook; yellow woolly bear caterpillar on deadnettle; lime hawkmoth caterpillar with blue unicorn spike.
A wasp nest was discovered in a ton sack by our wood store. And what I thought was a cool shiny red and teal solitary bee on a plantain leaf was in fact a parasitic wasp that will affect solitary bees, so then I didn’t like it anymore.
A stag beetle latched on to my shorts. A magpie with a bald head started hanging around, we called it Barry.
Spiders were webbing in all the awkward spots, and a false widow was living in the window of a bee hive. Another one had webbed across plants in the cuttings tray where honeybees go to drink and one was captured and cocooned.
Images: false widow spider in the window of a warre honeybee hive; a stag beetle latched to my shorts; a ruby-tailed parasitic wasp on a plantain leaf.
Beekeeping.
The hives were quiet this month. I’d anticipated with the surge in hot temperatures and sunny days that they’d be swarming, particularly as one of them was rapidly building and another had previously gone three times. However, it seemed that they were managing to keep themselves stable. After June’s travesty of swarms and deaths and random queen, it was good that nothing major was occurring.
I’d needed to get in to chop a fig branch that was hanging over the log hive, and this led me to do some tidying of goji, mahonia and the above-mentioned apricot. But not much other work needed to be done. The newest family was getting on, very busy, nothing strange. The national hive, which is biggest of them all, had really slowed down their foraging. We had considered taking a frame or so of honey from them to give them additional room, but with the activity decline, it’s prudent to just let them be. Ideally we do need to inspect as we hadn’t done so all season, despite them having swarmed multiple times.
The original and biggest warre hive had started building well into its bottom box, so we knew they’d need an additional one soon. They had completely cross-combed the top two boxes, which I’d discovered when inspecting for the random queen, and so can’t be officially fully inspected or have bars removed for honey, and it’s likely they’ve done the same with the bottom box. Even if you put bars in that have some foundation on, they don’t necessarily follow these lines and instead build wherever they like. It can make decision-making harder, but it doesn’t affect them, so just leave them alone.
As we move into August we’ll start to see dead drones around the ground, as mating season ends and they start to settle into a rhythm for winter. This is where extreme changes in weather is disruptive, so we’ll be monitoring what they do to decide what they need.
Images: crosscomb of a honeybee hive; close up of honeybee comb cells with honey; bumblebee on the oregano flowers.
I feel frankly that nothing happened in July. When I was compiling this diary post, I felt that the month came and went with not much to show for it. Because the start was about my Groundswell come-down and 100km running race prep, the middle was about the race, and the end was about race come-down, I found it difficult to acknowledge what other stuff I did. The point, I guess, is that you get into the swing of things and it doesn’t feel quite so dramatic or exciting all of the time. Some months are harder, leaner, smoother, bushier, hotter, soggier… nature doesn’t stop and you’ve got to slot into it with what energy you have, appreciating that you’re allowed to be part of it at all.