Month in the life of an urban gardener: September 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 → August 2024. / July 2024. / 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 eleventh 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 September 2024 in the form of a reel here.
You can also listen as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts — and below →
Images: 1. The chunkiest chioggia beetroot weighing in at 1.5kg; 2. Some beetroot used in a fresh raw salad, made by my colleague; 3. The helichryseum strawflowers looking vibrant.
Harvesting.
It’s perhaps subtle, to a normal person, you know, not a gardener, when the light starts to dwindle. As the equinox draws nearer, there is simply less daylight and that means less hours for the plants to photosynthesise, which means grow. The temperature also starts to shift, and in September we experienced a week where night temperatures dropped to 5˚C. This makes plants go into dormancy and so their growing slows. This shift can also change what pollinators are up to, so any remaining flowers won’t be pollinated, and anyway, they won’t have the warmth or light to fruit. For food growers, this signals that your crops are on the way out. Our tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and beans were now at their end.
Harvesting then becomes a real act of gratitude. After this, you’re back to imported veg and fruit — or you stay seasonal.
Tomato plants are thinned completely, so removing all leaves and especially any new shoots, as then the energy will go into the fruit rather than fresh growth. Similarly with any curcubits, you want to ensure energy goes into the fruit. It can feel harsh, to take so much off. You’re also taking pollen away from insects, but it’s pointless for you as a grower to have the plant be pollinated, and so you have to sacrifice.
The chilli had been heavily pruned leaving fruits that still needed to ripen. These started falling off, so were harvested and dried on a dehydrator outside, avoiding any eye-watering incidents. The corn had given some very wonky tiny cobs, and my blue ones were left on the plant to cure a little bit; I was unsure if I should be leaving them on there for seed, or removing the cob for a fresh dye. The kohl rabi also came out, these ones not as perfect as the beauty in August, but they just wouldn’t have the chance to grow much bigger, and we needed to use the bed to put in the winter kale anyway, particularly before they got even more destroyed by caterpillars.
Images: Rocoto chillies; Purple, golden + chioggia beetroot; Bounty of tomato varieties.
Salad bolted quickly, mostly because we didn’t have a customer and so weren’t harvesting regularly enough. It was essentially a lot too late, though this is one of the crops that I truly appreciate and miss when it’s gone. We’d still been harvesting and using some of the veg to make salads, including raw courgette and beetroot mixed in with some of the basil varieties or parsley, though they were so one-off and took away our gardening time that it felt inconsistent. Instead we mostly took the veg for ourselves.
We got a handful of grapes. The green seedless were tiny and gave furry mouth. The red seeded tasted like fake grape juice, and also gave furry mouth.
One beetroot sits in the fridge waiting to be used. It was the biggest of the lot and weighed in at 1.5kg. A chioggia too, so very pretty candy stripes inside. But it takes someone with purpose to use it. Fortunately organic beetroots, as long as unwashed still with soil on, can store for at least a month in the fridge.
Images: Corn cobs; A massive courgette; Wonky cucumbers.
On clearing the space to ready for winter, the handful of squashes were harvested, which were dated and left in storage until they could be used.
Apples were harvested from our orchard and from local houses, along with pears, ready for your Apple Day on September 14th. I’ll come to this later.
Images: White seedless grapes; Pitiful amount of cute squash; A bag of apples gleaned from a local house.
The biggest excitement was likely that the bed of pink oyster mushroom spawn fruited, and fruited rapidly. Just days apart the mushrooms had gone from 5mm to 80mm. We shared these out and I had my batch on toast. The next week, 6kg were harvested, with these dehydrated because we didn’t have a customer.
On 30th September my colleague harvested 3 beans. The remainder were drying on the plant so that they could be saved for next year’s sowing.
Images: Pink oyster mushrooms having just fruited and the size of a thumbnail, then a couple days later ready for harvesting.
Sowing + planting out.
We were now changing over for winter crops. Beetroot was removed from a bed, weeded and topdressed then sown with a green manure mix. The end of this bed was left for the sweet potatoes to grow on until the first frost. Green manure seeds were also sown in two smaller beds that had had our squashes in.
The purpose of a “green manure” or otherwise known as a “cover crop” is to replenish the soil. Depending on the mix you choose, this can also benefit over-wintering insects and can provide support with water retention (generally because the soil is healthy). Mostly they’re intended to: bring a mixture of root types and depths into soil, so breaking it up and making channels for water drainage and microorganisms; ensure there’s a living root so soil doesn’t dry out or run off and that microorganisms and fungi have food; allow fungi and microorganisms to introduce micro and macro nutrients that are missing via symbiosis with the plant mixture; and sometimes to remove unwanted pests and diseases by refreshing the soil with a new crop type. I’m unsure what our chosen mix was as it was my colleagues taking this on, but would at the very least be something to do with nitrogen-fixing and pretty flowers. By the end of the month it had germinated so in October we’ll start to see what there is.
As mentioned, the kohl rabi were removed and kale went in. We have a large and a small bed of kale. The plantlings needed to be put outside because in the glasshouse they were being nibbled by caterpillars easily missed due to their camouflage. We’d oversown kale as our seeds are eaten just as they germinate by slugs, or plants completely disappear from caterpillars, and so actually we had far too many. But, the large bed needed a handful of plants backfilled after they were nibbled. Provided we get some dry weather, the smaller plants should bed in and not need to be replaced. We have some kale plants that have been in the ground for a full year now, still looking mighty and strong, though a bit like palm trees.
Winter mustards and lettuces were sown, then sown again, and then sown again. Some germinated and were potted on, some additional varitieties were sown to compensate, and then some of the same varieties were sown to cover for the seedlings that were slug-eaten.
Spring onions, parsley and coriander were sown, essentially just as nice crops that could be an addition to any salads we make, and to ensure we have some diversity. When I was checking out the babies, I managed to drop the newly germinated tray of parsley (which usually takes a week to germinate anyway) and so these will have to be redone.
Radish seeds were sown into a tiny bed that revolves through winter lettuces such as chicory and endive, and then spring onions, and basil and radish. Generally, what we can’t put elsewhere but has previously been happy in this spot. Our radishes were bolting too quickly and not bulbing, or were eaten before they germinated properly, and so we weren’t going to do them again. However, when a bed is empty and you have time before another crop goes in, radish is usually a fun speedy one that will at least give you living root. The spring onions that we’d left to go to seed, simply because the massive flower umbels are beautiful and bees love them, had now sprouted seedlings here too.
Images: 1. Finding a caterpillar on a mustard seedling; 2. Trainees saving seed of a few chosen tomatoes; 3. The glasshouse tomato plants after being thinned.
Maintenance.
Our cob oven was being fixed by Frank, who was the original builder. It’s ten years old, and was patch repaired in 2021 when some cracks appeared. But hadn’t had a proper look in for some 7 years, apparently. This time around Frank was building an additional insulation layer so that it was more protected. It’s a long old job, requiring drying time, but we hope by Samhain we can have a magic pizza day again.
Otherwise, weeding continued. With deliveries of wood chip we could start mulching some areas where bare ground had appeared, particularly pathways, readying them for the rainfall run-off they’d receive in coming months. Other areas were tidied up a bit whenever there were pockets of time, just to get ahead of things before it was too cold and wet to have the energy to do so. This included chopping a bank around the front of the building, which actually has a cover crop in it, to ensure seed can bed in and simply to keep it looking tidy. I also weeded around the kerbs and nooks, and pruned some overhanging elder and blackthorn branches for that reason. The trainees also pruned a rose that was overhanging, so we have rosehips in the freezer ready to use, but unfortunately no sloes as I’d forgotten to remind them that a fruiting blackthorn was entangled within and that got chopped.
And as usual, the fairy circle made of logs had to be put back. If I went into your home and moved around furniture, I’d expect I’d have to put it back, but here there’s such a lack of empathy for why we may place logs in this way. Not only is it seating, they’re habitats!
In October, jobs like removing the raspberry net will come, cleaning out and fixing the comfrey tea barrel, updating the leaf mould bay, re-establishing weed suppressants on pathways in Herbistan, and in fact chopping of the herbaceous perennials and weeding where possible in those beds ready for winter.
Images: 1. The cob oven receiving its layer of straw insulation; 2. Prunings and a freshly chopped grassy bank; 3. Navigating the webbing spiders was a continual task.
Wildlife.
There was a toad in a hole. When watering the tomatoes I’d stick the hoe nozzle in the soil so water would get to the roots, leave it for five minutes and then switch it out for the next plant. This creates burrows that are the perfect habitat apparently for toads.
A dragonfly was spotted perched on a jostaberry leaf. These shrubs are over by the pond in the forest garden, so maybe it had been out mating, or drinking?
At the same time, a robin sat in a hazel and serenaded us with a morning song.
Caterpillars were all over the brassicas and mustard seedlings.
Some pigeons came to eat from the freshly revealed soil of a kerb I’d just weeded.
I scared a moth on a shelf when I moved a tub, and I swear it made a noise at me when I asked if it was alive.
We watched a leopard slug slurp up a piece of cooked kale from a lunch plate.
Images: 1. A toad in a hole; 2. A dragonfly resting on a jostaberry leaf; 3. A leopard slug slurping a piece of kale off a lunch plate.
Apple Day.
On September 14th we hosted our annual community apple pressing. We welcome random folk in to the garden to give us free labour in chopping fruit up so we can scrat it (mash it), then press it. The press we use is a huge bulky metal delight so it looks impressive. There is a system though, and if the initial steps are too slow then we don’t press quick enough and we’re there until dusk pasteurising the juice bags.
The pressing itself is fun and interesting, and we sell cups of fresh raw unpasteurised juice with donations going to the National Food Service, a local community food hub. We’d had a donation of Howgate Wonder apples, with one of the apples as big as a hand and weighing in at 1508g. This particular variety is in the Guinness Book of World Records, and was originally bred on the Isle of Wight from Blenheim Orange and Newton Wonder. It’s good looking, and multi-functional. Because we had 60 kilos worth — that I’d carried on my back in a rucksack — we did a single origin press. The owner came around and got a bottle, and we had the biggest apple out with a “guess the weight” competition that actually really got folk excited. The winner received a mini bottle of the single origin press. The apple itself is still in our fridge, like the beetroot, awaiting a special occasion.
We managed to press 107 litres that day. On top of previous presses that included some juice that went in for cider and perry making, it was a healthy lot. And we still have some more crates and gleans to do. The importance of supporting local apple varieties cannot be understated; not only do orchards offer community events like this, they support biodiversity from insects to fungi to fauna. Growing varieties that fruit across the season and have different speeds of ripening and uses means that you can have fruit from early summer through to late autumn, and then produce from that. I’ve just started an 11 month Level 3 Community Orcharding course with The Orchard Project and hope to better understand these ecosystems so I can help them flourish here and elsewhere.
I’d also saved a bag of the apple scraps, which you get once all the juice has been pressed out. I fermented these and on this day that I write, I’ve racked off 5 bottles of apple cider vinegar.
Images: Top row (L-R): 1. Collection of apples sorted into grades of rottedness; 2. Scratting the chopped fruit into much; 3. The Howgate Wonder "guess the weight" competition; Bottom row (L-R): 1. Apple mush layers; 2. Celebration that the juicing had started; 3. Juice coming out of the pressed layers.
I’d spent a good chunk of September away. In the second week I went up north to run the Great North Run and spend some days with my mum, actually doing some of her gardening. In the fourth week I went up north again, but to the west and Cumbria to have an actual holiday. As we’d also had one garden day removed for a business staff workshop, I feel I have little to show for the month. As with August, it slipped away. I knew I’d go to the Lake District and return to a proper autumn, and that indeed happened, with a total rainy day requiring boots and many layers.
I don’t mind this time of bedding in. It’s when you can consolidate and tidy. I’m getting excited about the jobs that maybe, just maybe, I’ll get around to this winter, like making new signs (including one to ward people off moving our bloody furniture). Though I know that my main task will actually be to tidy the apiary, clean the equipment, and make new solitary and bumblebee boxes, on top of ensuring the existing four families have enough food to survive the winter.
I’m currently sat in my garden on a day when I should be at work, but I’d tested positive for Covid, probably caught during my stay in a hostel. The temperature has risen slightly and the skies are blue, which is welcome after days and days of downpours. I’m grateful that I’m able to sit out and have somewhat fresh air, amidst a body that is bunged up and wheezy. Earlier in the day I’d racked off my apple cider vinegar into five bottles, and also the plum wine — which could also be vinegar — into two. There’s my Covid remedy! Months and months of homemade shrubs.
Images: 1. The blue corn being somewhat eaten by little worms, but unsure when to harvest it; 2. Batch of plum wine; 3. Bags of apple scraps for folk to make cider vinegar from.