This time of the year allows us to do all those things we didn't have time to do during the growing season.
Clean all your tools and put them in the shed. Tools easily rust if not cared for and their lifespan greatly reduced. Today I cleaned my scythe, gave the blade one last sharpen for the year and then put oil on the blade to keep the moisture off.
Outside in the garden, I tidied up anything that could become a haven for slugs and snails. My neighbour's pear tree had lost most of its leaves in our garden. Instead of disposing of the leaves I raked them into the soil so the worms can have a good feed.
I didn't have half enough containers to grow in this year and so I shall advertise on Freecycle and see if anyone has large tubs to give away.
Soon it will be December and I can put some of this year's potato crop on the windowsill to chit. By February there will be plenty of green shoots on the potatoes and they can then be buried in tubs to grow as next year's potato crop.
Winter tasks
Urban farming
You will be surprised how much food there is in an urban area that goes unnoticed by the public. With the credit crunch and looming recession I have noticed many people this year, harvesting food from the roadsides.
There are many patches of rough land in urban areas, ideal for blackberries to grow upon. I saw many people this year picking blackberries for the first time. In other areas there were Elder trees straining with masses of elderberries.
I myself found three cherry trees. In the same park there were crab apples, which although not desert apples make good apple pies and can be mixed with blackberries for jam. Nettles are overlooked and have much potential as a green in soups or for colouring and flavouring past in place of spinach or for making nettle beer.
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Time to mulch
After cropping, your vegetable patch is probably looking a little forlorn. All there is to see is brown earth. Weeds are probably starting to grow but they are to be expected because nature doesn't like to see bare earth.
Soil needs to be fed so nature wants weeds to grow to produce dead matter, in the future, to litter the surface of the soil. Now, you could weed the soil but the worms below will get rather hungry. There is nothing a worm prefers to do more than convert waste vegetable matter into humus.
I often see people with urban flower gardens constantly tidying up the soil. Anything dead is immediately cut or removed from the soil and thrown away. These same people will then buy compost or expensive liquid fertiliser to feed their barren soil.
A far better thing to do is to compost dead matter yourself so you don't have to buy compost. Also you should adopt nature's way of composting, which is to mulch. Mulching is the laying down of dead matter upon the surface of the soil, whereupon it rots and is dragged below the surface by worms. Mulch covers the soil with a protective layer, which reduces the amount of weeds that grow. This layer is also a valuable feed for worms to convert into humus.
Now, you could go out and buy mulch but we don't do that. Do we? At this time of year you will find mulch lying everywhere. Take a walk to a local park or anywhere where there are trees. You will see plenty of mulch in autumn, in the form of leaves. Grab a few bin bags and fill them with leaves. Cover the bare earth, in your garden, with free mulch.
If you are lucky enough to live by the sea then bring home as much seaweed as you can. Remember to wash the seaweed through, by washing it with rainwater away from the soil.
Do you have access to wood? A shredding machine can make wood chips to mulch your soil with too. Wood takes longer to break down so remember not to overdo mulching with wood. Mix it in with other matter too.
You can also mulch with cardboard boxes, the brown kind that come from supermarkets. Cover your bare soil with cardboard and then early next year dump the contents of your compost heap on top of the cardboard. The cardboard will have kept the weeds down and then rot away under the compost.
It's that time of the year again
That time of the year when your head is buried in a seed catalogue, deciding what to grow next year.
I still have no idea where I am going to be living next year so I will be container growing again. This limits me but I will still be growing potatoes. I have kept about 30 small potatoes from this year's crop, as seeds for next year. That will save me having to buy any more seed potatoes.
I eat a lot of onions and shallots so they'll be on the list. Onions will have to be planted within the next couple of weeks, if I am to get big bulbs next autumn. As long as I travel to my new destination afore spring then I can keep the onion seedlings in seed trays until then. Shallots can be sown next year.
My salad greens can be grown from spring onwards, as they are relatively fast growers and don't need to be grown until I have moved.
Other than that, I won't be growing anything that takes up a lot of space or has deep roots and can't be container grown. I need mobile vegetables that can be moved around in a trailer when it is time to move.
A nice haul of potatoes
This year I grew Desiree potatoes. Halfway between waxy and floury, Desiree are an all round potato, which can be boiled, roasted or chipped.
The pinkish skins are more than edible so they can be left on and boiled. Yesterday, I made a nice Spanish dish with chorizo, fried onions, carrots, potatoes, tomato sauce and half a teaspoon of pimenton dulce to thicken and flavour the sauce.
I grew most of the potatoes in two large tubs, with a few others grown in the soil. The total crop was about twice what you see in the photograph. I like these potatoes more than the Cara potatoes I used to grow so I will keep many of the smaller potatoes as seeds for next year's crop.
Nowhere to grow?
Even if you don't have much of a garden or backyard you can still grow food in containers. You'll be surprised as to how much can be grown in a pot. A couple of pots can produce all the salad greens you can eat during the summer.
For those who are more ambitious, and want to grow all of their vegetables, but still don't have the space you will have to look further afield. You may be lucky to find a friend or neighbour who is willing to lend you the use of their garden. In return you can split your crop with them.
Another alternative is an allotment. These are plots of land rented out by your local council. They are getting and more popular so you may well have to go on a waiting list. Travel around your town and you will see plots of land set aside for vegetable growing. They will have a sign on the front gate with a phone number with which to enquire about getting a plot.
Take a look at the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners for more information.
NSALG - National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners
Humanure
Many growers will have made their own compost. Some will also have added horse manure to their soil. However, there is a manure that is plentiful but, more often than not, goes to waste. Human manure, or humanure as it is often called, is simply a manure made from human waste.
The use of humanure is an emotive subject as many will be turned off by the mere thought of putting human waste to such good use. Many buy vegetables grown in horse, cow and pig manure so what is the problem with composting your own waste?
On my compost heaps I have always added my own urine. Not only does it enrich the compost but it saves on flushing toilets. Think of using a toilet like this. You fill a bowl with fresh drinking water, add your own poisonous waste, and then throw the water away. Madness? Of course it is.
Using urine in your garden is very simple. You can either pour it over your compost heap and let nature take its course or you can dilute it 10 to 1 and use it as a liquid fertiliser on the soil. If you are going to use it as a liquid fertiliser then it is best added to the soil and not sprayed directly onto a plant. Also, never use urine form a person on medication that may taint food with drugs.
Human waste solids are a slightly different prospect. They need about two years to break down before they can be added to the soil. To that end I recommend the building of a composting toilet.
For more information on Humanure I recommend The Humanure Handbook, which is available online. It can be viewed at http://www.weblife.org/humanure/.
If you want to buy the original book then it can purchased at Amazon.com in the US or Amazon.co.uk in the UK.