Grow your own

[jellomello]

So, hoping to have move early Autumn to a house with a large garden.

Can anyone recommend a simple idiots timetable style book to plan growing my own vegetables.

Also, any advice on storing apples, pears and plums as trees produce more than we can eat!

Am I right in thinking that there is very little that's harvested in March/April?

Hi you might be better off moving this or looking at the allotment/veg/gardening board instead :)

We have a surplus of Apple's every year and we make apple sauce and freeze it, and sometimes some chimneys (e.g. apple and ginger). If I had plums, I'd make plum sauce, or jam.

So you'll need to stock up on sugar, and lemon juice (cheap bottled lemon juice is fine).

Agree about looking at the allotment type boards. They'll advise on root vegetables etc that you can grow over the winter to be ready in spring, depending on where you are geographically.

apples

I hate that ridiculous corporate auto-correct with its damn apostrophe!

chutneys

Things you can plant in the autumn:
Overwintering broad beans (e.g. Aguadulce)
Garlic
Swiss chard
Overwintering lettuce
Peas depending on area and garden
Possibly cabbage.

Also, winter is the time to put in raspberries, blackberries and currents from bare root canes.

Grow Your Own Vegetables by Joy Larkcom is a good straightforward book to doing just that. It's got planting / harvesting timetables as well as a crop-by-crop section setting out how to grow each individual type of veg.

Apples - pick through & use (bottle/freeze/dehydrate) any that aren't perfect, then store in crates in a cool spare room or frost free garage etc.

Plums - bottle/jam/chutney

For food preservation you can't go wrong with this book - it comes as print-on-demand these days, but is cheap as chips from ebay.

March/april harvest - once you're established in the garden then a fair bit of stuff - overwintered leeks, kale, spring cabbage, chard/perpetual spinach etc (even more options if you put in a polytunnel). But if you're not moving in til autumn then it'll be more limited for the first year as things like leeks need to be in already.

for the people with Apple's, if you have the room you could store them whole for a few months.
www.pickyourown.org/Apples_how_to_store_for_the_winter.php

books I have (off the top of my head) is a Huge fearnley whittingstall, the river cottage year.

A really old book called food from your garden, all you need to know to grow cook and preserve your fruit and veg.

I have others but haven't really read them properly.

Great suggestion @Sadik - I dehydrate and pressure can but always interested in different options.

I've had a fridge load of aubergines from my greenhouse on my allotment, any ideas would be welcome as to what to do past curry and pasta dishes, I will be getting chickens in September so eggs will be plentiful hopefully if the girls a happy! Also lots of tomatoes and chilli peppers(very fiery ones 🔥 ) so I will try and dry them.

You can dehydrate aubergine apparently. Make baba ghanoush with it?
I'd look at making pickles too.

Thank you I will have a go.

Can all onions be planted in the autumn, or just certain types? I'd love to try my hand at them, especially if there are kinds that can be grown in grow bags.

A quick googling brought up various opinions - some saying they're not suitable for any container, some saying they're ideal.

Bumping this as I would really like to get some bits and bobs growing. Like OP we will only be able to start planting in the next few weeks.

Lettuce or, for personal preference, perpetual spinach can go in now. The latter will cope with outside temperature.

There are all sorts of things that can go in now:

salad leaves - most types
perpeual spinach
onions
shallots
leeks
garlic (my garlic was fab this year and I now have a years' supply for practically zero effort)
broccoli
cabbage
turnips
chinese cabbage
kale
spring onions
radish
broad beans
peas (for next year or for shoots)

October is also the time for planting rhubarb. We love it and have five good sized plants already but more is going in this year.

I like John Harrison's books & website.
I know the site is called allotment garden, but there are pages of advice on polytunnels, container growing, storing/cooking with/preserving what you have grown (at the bottom of the how to grow page for each thing there is a box of links to recipes using them) etc.... so it's worth checking out.

There is a month by month guide there for things to do/plant/tend, with whens & hows for pruning etc...

www.allotment-garden.org/garden-advice-month/

@cloudtree - garlic is the one thing of my planting that just didn't go for me. Will try again.

@cloudtree I'm very interested in trying my hand at growing garlic. Did you use regular supermarket garlic, or did you go to a garden centre? Any growing tips?

Also that's a lot of rhubarb. We have 3 plants and struggle to use it all, so I'm always on the lookout for new ideas and recipes. What would be some of your favourites, if you don't mind me asking?

I bought garlic bulbs from a nursery last year but the price difference between doing that and buying from a supermarket was negligible. I didn't want to take the chance on the supermarket ones not taking. It was very simple. literally put each clove into some potting compost in small pots and then I planted them out once the shoots came through. I then ignored them until the stalks turned brown and started folding over at which point I dug them up and dried them on the patio for a week.

We are massive rhubarb fans. Rhubarb, apple and strawberry crumble is a firm favourite, rhubarb muffins are good and I make rhubarb compote to eat with yoghurt. It definitely gets eaten here. Rhubarb jam is supposed to be very good but I haven't tried making it. You shouldn't take from the plants for the first year and then only limited amounts for the next year so the crowns I am putting in this year won't be eaten from for a couple of years.

Thanks cloudtree. Looks as if a trip to the nearest nursery is in the cards very soon

My rhubarb plants are about three years old and flourishing, and I really want to make more use if them. Rhubarb jam is one of the things I do make and it's usually very good. I really like the sound of rhubarb muffins! I think I'll do some research into rhubarb recipes this winter in preparation for next year's season.

Thanks @cloudtree - I will give it another go but I did all that you suggested. Given that everything else took really well, I just can't figure it out.
Fingers crossed.

what happened to them bellini? Did they just not grow at all?

The "cloves ", as it were, sprouted beautifully. I put them in my square foot garden next to some onions (which grew beautifully). And they just died. I got them from a specialist nursery. Then I thought, feck it, and tried some lovely organic ones from a local market. Same result. So I thought, feck it, again, and tried a bog standard supermarket one. Same result.
I will try again.

Hmm. Maybe not enough water once they were transplanted? They're quite thirsty. Mine seemed to grow whatever I did. I had a few cloves that I didn't have enough pots for so I just left them on the potting table (no soil or water) and even they grew.

They do look like they're dead before they're ready to pull (well mine did but that might have been partly the very dry weather).

Mine were slightly too close together last time and so I will plant further apart this time to get larger bulbs.