The End

The sun is now setting on Harbill's Garden and we have reinstated the fortnightly veg box order (put on hold since June! That's £13 a fortnight saved! Although we dread to think how much we have actually spent on Harbill's Garden...). We have harvested all our squash, eaten, frozen or preserved all our runner beans, carrots, lettuces, spinach, cucumbers, courgettes, 3 tomatoes, baby beetroot (babies because they never grew), kohlrabi, borlotti beans (not very nice). All that remain in the veg garden are our Jerusalem artichokes, old runner bean plants and a few patches of rocket leaves.

Runner bean chutney

As we look back over the long and challenging months we have spent nurturing our garden through disaster and grief as well as triumph and joy, the Harbills have learned a number of lessons:

1. Do not plant things out before the last frost if they are not supposed to be planted out until after the last frost.

2. There is no need to manically and obsessively start planting squash in February inside the house; it is better to plant seeds just a month before they need to go outside.

3. Do not plant squash seeds gathered from squash planted the year previously, they are very likely to have cross-pollinated and the result tastes disgusting.

4. Carrots do not grow any bigger if you pull them up, see that they are too small and promptly return them back into the soil.

5. If you put food out for the birds, they will also eat all your blueberries and you will get none for your cereal.

6. Despite being easy to grow, one does not actually get very many broad beans from broad bean plants.

7. Shouting at tomatoes to turn red does not seem to work.

8. Without a greenhouse, there's not much point in bothering with tomatoes. Tomatillos however, are the new tomatoes. They seem to grow happily outside, are plentiful, low maintenance and most importantly, taste lovely.

9. Edemame beans do not grow in our garden

10. Muffin's main purpose in life is to destroy our garden.

"Hmmm, what can I kill next?"

But do not despair, dear Blogsciples, this is not really the end of our blog. We plan to keep you updated with garden activity over the bleak winter months and perhaps even post a few recipes using produce from the garden. If you are very lucky, we might even do a special feature on our compost heap...