BY JOYCE RUSSELL
The garden is heading into a more dormant stage, where things don’t change much. Any work you put in to clearing, pruning and tidying will have a long lasting effect.
There are still other jobs to be done, of course, and reflections on successes and failures are always helpful. I’m thinking about clearing tomato plants, lifting roots and pondering how I managed to rescue my brassicas.
Last tomatoes
It can be hard to know the right moment to pick any remaining tomatoes and remove plants from the polytunnel or greenhouse. In some years you may get a few ripening fruits until Christmas or even beyond. A lot depends on the weather and the health of the plants. There’s no point keeping a source of mould and blight spores in the greenhouse in return for a handful of soft split fruits, so weigh up the factors and decide when to get busy and pull the plants out.
• Are tomatoes still ripening and are they healthy? There was a lot of blight around earlier in the year and once a plant is affected the problem will only get worse. If there are blackened leaves and brown hard patches on green fruits, then call it a day and lift the plant. Some plants may stay in longer than others by this reckoning.
Whenever you lift them, don’t put any diseased material on the compost heap. Small thin-skinned tomatoes often split at this time of year. If they split as you pick, then you can use them immediately. If they have mould in the split, then throw them out.
• Pick remaining tomatoes to ripen indoors. Harvest all healthy fruits whether green or red. If you leave them together on a window ledge, the red fruits will help the green ones to ripen. This doesn’t work unless fruit has reached the right stage of growth to start ripening, but it is always worth a try and you can get ripe tomatoes over a few more weeks.
• Don’t worry, just act – it might be a relief to clear plants out. Once the job is done and the bed is dug, you can let go of all the worry of caring for failing plants. The bed can be replanted with some winter and spring crops, or you can leave the soil to dry out for a few months in an attempt to reduce disease spores. Whatever you do, look forward not back. There’s a whole new year coming and it won’t be long before you are buying seed for another round of tomato plants.
Brussels sprouts aren’t just for Christmas...
Harvest lower sprouts first when big enough. (Photo: Ben Russell)
…although they are very nice then! Well, maybe sprouts are a love or hate thing – it all comes down to whether you have the receptors to receive the bitter taste or whether you don’t get the bitterness. This is down to genetics so you can’t change it much.
For those of us that are sprout lovers, this vegetable can be a garden favourite. Sow seed in March to give a good long growing season. Small plants should be protected from cabbage root fly and don’t grow them on soil infected with club root. Each plant needs plenty of space to grow a long stem and they need supports to keep them upright. Add some lime to acid soil and try to control slugs and snails.
All this sounds fine and in all my gardening years up to this one I would have said that sprouts are easy to grow. Climate change caught up with me and, as I mentioned before, my brassicas suffered this year from planting in beds that got waterlogged in a hot wet summer.
Roots rotted in warm wet soil and I resorted to lifting quite large brassicas that had started to fail. I transplanted them to raised beds, that drained well, and they did start to recover slowly. I had never moved such large plants before, but faced with losing them I had little other option.
I am delighted to say that the move worked – my brassicas recovered and grew strongly once new roots could form. I didn’t rescue all the Brussels sprout plants, but I have enough to enjoy eating up to that Christmas dinner and maybe beyond.
An urgent job!
Lift and store parsnips. (Photo: Ben Russell)
Lift any root crops that are still in the ground. Beetroot won’t grow more outdoors and they can become fibrous. Some people leave parsnips until they have been sweetened by a touch of frost, but you can lose roots to canker, pest attack, freezing and rot. Lift roots when soil is as dry as possible or allow any adhering soil to dry, then rub it off. Parsnips and beetroot store well in sand, sawdust, or compost in a dry shed. Use them over the next few months before they lose flavour and texture.
