Jobs to do in November

 Cutting Back Autumn Raspberries

It’s around this time of year you see sticks flying through the air. 

It’s not the prevailing winds that cause this phenomenon its children and their parents attempting to get conkers out of the trees before they fall down by themselves. It can be fun to watch, the sticks have more chance hitting the thrower on the way down than the conker and there’s some dodging to be had. It’s a good job everyone has on their winter woolly hats for protection. I’m surprised the people who ban playing conkers haven’t picked up on this as it appears far more dangerous than anything happening in the playground. For now though we’ll enjoy the unregulated fun and frolics, both the taking part and watching. 

Sweet chestnuts can be fun to collect too. They don’t make very good conkers, they are similar to inedible horse chestnuts but you’d have to be in a pretty dark room not to spot the difference. The ones you want are covered in fine, hedgehog-like spines and the nuts look slightly flattened with a tuft at one end. If you are roasting them (yum) you might want to make a small slit in the shell before roasting or they might explode. I used to eat them raw at school instead of sweets and loved the way the inside furry bit seemed to take all the moisture from your mouth. 

Another bit of fun at this time of year is kicking your way through the mountains of fallen leaves, made all the more enjoyable when they are dry and crispy.

If you have a lot of leaves in the garden it might not be as much fun though.  Make life easy for yourself and only collect leaves where absolutely necessary. You can clear some off the lawn if they are thick as this might kill the grass, if there are just a few the worms will take care of things. 

The worms can also sort out the ones that are sitting in the borders too.  This isn’t laziness but necessary to keep the cycle replenished and gives a nice protective mulch to keep in moisture, protect young plant shoots in spring and keep weeds down. However, where leaves have drifted deeply or are smothering smaller plants or silver Mediterranean herbs and perennials, clear to keep the plants dry and airy. You can lightly turn the soil and put the collected leaves straight into the ground around plants if needed or put them in bags to rot down for next year.

Sweeping leaves off paths and patios is all you need to keep the garden looking cared for and covers for a wealth neglect in the beds.

Gone with the Wind

If you live in a windy area as most of us do in Inishowen, you might want to trim a few brittle or shallow rooted shrubs. Roses and buddleia can be topped by a third to prevent wind-rock, which can undermine stability over the coming months. If you have autumn raspberries that aren’t on supports you might need to cut them down to ground level. A clean cut is advisable, but more accurate pruning can follow on the other side of winter when the sap is rising.

More Suggestions

Keep an eye out for annual weeds. Winter may be approaching, but they will still grow if weather is mild. They probably won’t set seed now but they will be itching to in early spring.

Shore up spring cabbages by drawing up soil around them to steady the developing heads against wind rock. We have Kale and broccoli which is far too high to mound soil around so I might need to stake them with bamboo to keep them upright. I’ve found that even if they do fall over it doesn’t really affect the crop in spring.

Excessive moisture can rot alpines, so protect groups of plants by making a shelter from two columns of bricks with a sheet of clear rigid plastic or plastic stretched over the top.

Wash slippery surfaces. Algae, moss and other grime can easily be removed by scrubbing with water and a few drops of specialist cleaner, such as Jeyes Fluid Path, Patio and Drive Cleaner. If you have a large area to tackle, pick up a pressure washer.

Make the most of dry spells by painting fences, sheds, arches and wooden garden furniture with preservative.

Cover the compost heap with a piece of old carpet or cardboard to maintain temperatures suitable for the rotting down the material inside.

Clean up your mower before putting it away for the winter. Put it on its side and remove caked on grass and mud with a stiff brush, washing off any really stubborn bits with soap and water.

Planting spring bulbs can be completed early this month as possible, check the planting depths.

You Are Gardening Crazy When...

 Why take 1 cutting when you can take 1000?

I’ve spent the best part of this year trailing mud into the house. 

It’s just a bit too much trouble to untie my boot laces when I come in from a bit of gardening work, so I don’t generally bother. I do have a bit of an end of the day run round with a cloth to clean the white floor tiles we have (Why on earth did we buy white bathroom tiles?) so I can start a new day clean and fresh. I also always wear a shopkeepers coat now. If you’ve ever seen episodes of ‘Open all Hours’ you’ll know the style of it. I actually wear it to the shops now too as I think it makes me look like I’m busy in the same way people walk around workplaces with a sheet of A4 paper in their hand to look like they are doing something or going somewhere. Most people think I am a mechanic in our local shop. I have the coat on permanently and always have muddy boots but what else can turn us into local gardening characters? 

Maybe there are certain traits we should be looking out for to see if we are going garden crazy.

You know you are garden crazy when you…

Feel uncomfortable in some-one else's house if there's a badly placed houseplant and desperately resist the urge to move it to a more suitable spot.

Find it difficult resisting dead-heading in some-one else's garden.

Buy weak straggly, reduced price plants because you think you can bring them back to life but generally end up in the compost bin – which is OK as it’ll feed other plants.

Read the labels on plants at the garden centre and disagree with what it says as well as not having enough information on the label for people not as knowledgeable as you.

Look at neglected gardens as a challenge.

Name your children and pets after flowers.

Think £50 is a lot of money for a pair of trousers, but a great price for a particularly wonderful plant.

Can give local directions based on particularly fine hedges and specimen trees as landmarks without mentioning roads, post offices or pubs.

Stop talking mid-sentence when you see a plant you don't recognize.

Wake up in the middle of a cold night and wonder if you should go out and cover your succulents and tender perennials.

Water other people's plants when out for a walk from your own water bottle if they look thirsty.

Only watch football matches on the TV to assess the pitch quality and percentage of artificial grass added.

Taking cuttings from peoples gardens

Always have a pair of secateurs in your pocket in case you see overhanging plant hazards.

Have a mountain of plastic pots and sheeting squirrelled away as it’ll always come in useful.

Give courgettes to friends and co-workers (and sometimes the postie)

Proudly show your compost pile to visitors.

Have more pictures of your plants than your children/grandchildren.

Are pleased when some nettles grow in your garden because they're great for the compost heap, and they show that the soil is rich in that area.

Forever trying to give away plants to friends and neighbours because you propagated far too many. Why take one cutting when you can take 100?

Feel that seed catalogues are one the year's most anticipated thing posted through your letterbox and you have the bookmark tab full of links to online catalogues.

Garden looks better than your house.

There is no item of footwear you own that hasn't at some time had soil on them and all your clothes are gardening clothes.

Car has so much soil on the carpet you could germinate seeds in it.

Ensure every annual holiday has a nursery and /or botanic garden included.

Find that most people share all their plant problems with you.

Have plants in pots at the back door waiting to be added to your garden at some stage when you have either the time or room.

Spend a lot of your free time just watching your garden grow.

Making Pots and Soap- Things to do when the grass doesn't need cutting

The grass didn’t need cutting this week. Yay!

The whole process from start to finish only takes me around ten minutes so I don’t really know what the exclamation mark is all about, but there is a feeling of calm knowing I’ll only need to give it a trim once every few weeks now. I like to keep a bit of length to the grass as the growing season ends as I think it gives a bit more protection from really wet weather.

I’ve also stopped mowing the chamomile lawn. I only started trimming it back this year as a lot of regular grass is creeping in so I run the mower over the area to stop the grass going to seed and speeding up the time when I need to dig the whole area up, clear it of weeds and start planting new chamomiles again. I think I’ll get away with not doing it for another year.

The chamomile selling season has slowed down now and this has given me a bit more time to catch up on a few creative jobs that needed doing. 

Clay

The first job to do was make a few stoneware clay pots. My lad’s mates have opened up a vintage clothes shop called The Storefront in the Glassworks in Derry and I said I’d do a few small glazed key bowls with their logo on it as a promotional item.  I wanted to keep my identity anonymous so they suggested I come up with a pseudonym and seeing as ‘Banksy’ is taken I had a think and came up with a few. Dan Dale or Mantis Toboggan was nearly top of the list but I have decided to go with ‘Arthur Sixpence’ I think that has a cool retro vibe the youth are looking for. I can use that name and still keep my anonymity when walking around town.

I also made a few small tea cups for myself made from plaster cast molds of my vintage Carley’s Bridge Pottery plant pots which I think came out quite well. They don’t have handles which is probably a good thing as they will be used in the garden. 

I don’t know about you but I always tend to put my cups of tea in the most unsuitable places without thinking, on the top of fence posts, balancing on a wall or in the wheelbarrow. I often find an old, cold cuppa on top of the wheelie bin days after losing it.  You can guarantee wherever the cup is left there’s a dead fly floating in it within seconds.

I was thinking of mass producing the plant pot cups and selling them to people who wanted ‘that something special’ for the gardener in their life at Christmas but like most things I make I don’t think they have the mass appeal. I have created a spoon rest though which I think might be the next big thing. One side is a spoon rest but turn it over and it magically turns into a used teabag holder.

It sounded better in my head at the design stage.

Soap

I’m also making some soap for the lads to sell or give away as a promotional item in their shop. It’s my first attempt and I used around 4 types of oil (there are hundreds you can use) and lye which is caustic soda. The whole process was like a chemistry class and very enjoyable. I have embossed the cut soap with their shop logo and will wrap them with thin strips of my wax cotton wraps which I made last year and tie them off with some jute string. They are scented with orange and ylang ylang and are currently smelling out the house for six weeks until they have cured.  I haven’t used any colouring in the soap as I wanted to keep it natural but I did cut the heads off around 50 calendula flowers growing in the front garden. I dried the leaves, scrunched them up and sprinkled them into the mix. They are one of only a few flowers which keep their colour in the chemical reactions that go on in soap making. They have made the soap look a really vibrant orange colour which complements the orangey smell from the soap. So far I’ve done twelve bars but I’m sure there will be more to come as it’s a very satisfying process.

Making soap is definitely more enjoyable than producing sauerkraut. Those jars are still sitting on my garage floor and only get the odd sniff from the dogs as they walk past. 

More future fill for the compost bin.

Make Your Own Sauerkraut

I generally have a supper. Just to clarify, this isn’t a late dinner; it’s merely a light snack before retiring for the evening. According to my lad ‘suppers’ as such don’t really exist anymore (only in my head) and he claims the word supper has been declining since the beginning of the 1900s, while the use of ‘lunch’ has been increasing. 

I was confused for years when people ate Fish Suppers in the afternoon and just what time of day do you turn up for something like dinner, anytime between just after noon to eight in the evening? I’ve never been able to fathom it out. 

My supper is at a pretty constant time though and I always been partial to anything pickled. I have in the past made my own beetroot, onions, and gherkins (baby cucumbers in my case as I didn’t grow the smaller West Indian Burr kind) 

They were all very successful so I have decided to rekindle my enthusiasm by making something similar this time to have as an accompaniment to a lump of cheese. I made some sauerkraut from both green and red cabbage. Sauerkraut or "sour cabbage” isn’t in vinegar though, it’s a fermented liquid made from sugars, salt and bacteria and lactic acid, just the stuff to be digesting before bed (maybe not).

This finely cut raw fermented cabbage has been cultivated for longer than almost any other vegetable on record. Although sauerkraut - German for "sour cabbage" - is thought of as a German invention, Chinese labourers building the Great Wall of China over 2,000 years ago ate it. Their cabbage was fermented in rice wine though, which sounds more fun. It’s said that the idea was brought to Europe 1000 years later by Gengis Kahn after plundering China. The Dutch, who were great sea-fearing traders, used sauerkraut on their ships as it did not need refrigeration and helped prevent scurvy.

Eastern European families prepared for winter by putting up several barrels of sauerkraut. Depending on the size of the family and the size of the cabbages, a clan might ferment as many as 300 whole heads of cabbage in wooden barrels. Occasionally, along with the salt, spices like caraway seeds, wine, or other vegetables were added.

By the late 1800s, the cabbage was shredded before being placed in covered crocks. If the family couldn't afford their own shredding tool, a peddler went door-to-door and performed this service for a fee in much the same way people would come around and sharpen your knives.

There are other vegetables that have been preserved by a similar process. Also, silage, a feed for cattle, can be made the same way.

Sauerkraut is said to have a raft of health benefits and there are the usual ‘cure all’ claims. Done right it’s is packed with B and C vitamins and minerals, works as an immune booster and balances the bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract.

Here’s my recipe for basic no-claims attached sauerkraut. There are loads of recipes online, but like most things in my life, I like to keep simple.

Recipe for Sauerkraut 

    2kg very firm, pale green or white cabbage (any leathery outer leaves removed), cored and finely chopped (think coleslaw)

    3 tbsp coarse crystal sea salt (or 6 tbsp flaky sea salt)

    1 tsp caraway seeds ideally but I used fennel seeds as they were in the cupboard

    1 tsp peppercorns

Other things to consider would be use clean containers. I’ve used glass jars but you can use stoneware and glazed pots too.

My first batch wasn’t quite covered completely with the brine juice so the shredded pieces above the waterline went mouldy and I had to compost it.

Check it daily and also release the gasses. My second batch of red cabbage leaked all over the worktop one night as the pressure got too much inside the jar. I’m now looking at effective methods to clean off red cabbage stains from kitchen worktops. The jars are not sitting on the garage floor out of the way until they are ready to put into the fridge. It can be ready in a week and the longer the leave it at room temperature the sourer and bitter it gets. Yum.

One teaspoon a night of my “fermented cabbage” will be enough for me and I hopefully won’t be looking to cure anything apart from my inability to understand when dinner is.