It’s one of the great pleasures of gardening to grow some crops for the family to eat. However modest the quantities, something grown at home, freshly harvested or carefully stored over time adds to our diet and the pleasures of eating. To this end, the greenhouse and the raised beds work in conjunction to extend the growing season, providing an early bite and a late garnish.
I like to grow early salads in bowls in the greenhouse, moving on to herbs like dill and coriander when the weather gets warmer. Then I plant out red and green pick-and-come-again varieties of lettuce, followed later by the hearting varieties. all of these started off in the greenhouse. For more than six months of the year it’s possible to ignore the salad section in the supermarket. We have parsley all year round, under glass and outdoors, though this year a nasty frost in November put paid to a lovely row of that all-round useful herb. It can be seen in the pictures below, flattened next to the first sproutings of garlic.
In 2023 the garlic crop was exceptional and saw us through to harvesting in late June this year. But the 2024 crop was meagre by comparison. The bulbs were small in general and in some cases did not subdivide into cloves. Come planting time this year I bought in fresh seed stock and am hoping for better results in 2025.
Potatoes, however, did superbly well this year. One half of a raised bed kept us fed for five months. The crop was heavy and generally in good condition. The leeks too have been very excellent, and I continue to stick with the reliable old-fashioned short variety, Musselburgh.
The apple crop I have already described. The last ones in store are the Bramleys and they will see us through until the end of January. The raspberries yielded enough fruit to make a batch of jam, but the patch is in need of two things: some fresh canes to replenish old stock, and a hefty mulching of well rotted manure.
At the moment (21st December – the day of the Winter Solstice) the weather is very mild. I am tempted to sow a bowl with salad seeds in the greenhouse. There’s just a chance they will germinate and provide a few leaves to add to a sandwich before the new year is too far advanced. I’m keeping an eye on the rhubarb patch too, and hoping to force a few early stems.
As elsewhere in the garden this year, the vegetables, salads and fruit have been like the Curate’s Egg – good in parts. Yes some things did well, but there was nothing quite like the spectacular escarole, seen in the picture below, which did so much to excite an Italian visitor in August 2023. But 2025 is another year, and who knows what culinary delights it will bring forth?
The full list of pieces that make up my A-Z in the Dumfriesshire Garden in 2024 can be found here: https://davidgrahamclark.net/a-z-of-the-dumfriesshire-garden-in-2024/
Quotidian 