Garden journal · zone 6b · clay soil

Notes from a narrow garden

This is a plain record of what I plant, what grows, what fails and what I would do differently next year. The plot is four metres by nine, behind a row of houses, with three raised beds, a compost bin made from pallets and one old apple tree that refuses to stop producing sour fruit. Nothing here is a guide. It is a diary that happens to be useful to someone, I hope.

14 November

Garlic is in, mulch is on

Forty-two cloves of a hardneck variety went into the north bed last week, each about five centimetres deep and a hand's width apart. I cut a thick layer of shredded oak leaves over the top and weighted it with a few bricks so the wind does not take it into next door's yard. Garlic likes the cold; it needs the winter to split its cloves properly in spring, so I am not worried about the frost this year.

Clay, sand and a bucket of worms

The soil in the middle bed finally drains after two seasons of adding leaves, coffee grounds and a bag of coarse sand from the builders' merchant. The worm count is up. I counted nineteen in a single forkful, which pleased me far more than it should have. I have stopped digging, mostly. The beds are now a mound of compost on top of the old clay, and the roots seem to like it.

Soil notes

19 October

What the apple tree taught me

The apples are small, green and slightly bitter. Last year I sprayed nothing and got a wormy crop. This year I wrapped a strip of corrugated card round the trunk in late July and checked it every few days, which caught most of the codling moth larvae underneath. I will not claim it is a cure. It is a habit, and habits are easier to keep than cures.

Apple notes

This year in the beds

Bed	Main crops	Result	Next year
North	Garlic, shallots, spinach	Good spinach until the first frost	More shallots, fewer chives
Middle	Beans, courgettes, nasturtiums	Beans poor, courgettes too many	Two courgettes only
South	Tomatoes, basil, a single pepper	Tomatoes ripened late in a tin of water	Move to the wall, use a longer cane
Pots	Lettuce, radish, mint	Mint escaped into the path	Mint stays in a pot, always

Seasonal checklist

Spring: test the soil pH, sow peas under cloches, divide rhubarb
Early summer: water deeply, once a week, rather than lightly every day
Late summer: save seed from the best beans and label it with the year
Autumn: lift the potatoes, mulch the empty beds, plant garlic
Winter: prune the apple while dormant, sharpen the spade, read the seed catalogues

Tools I keep using

A hand fork with a bent tine, for loosening clay without turning it
A long-handled hoe that is too heavy and therefore effective
Soaker hose on a cheap timer, set for twenty minutes at dawn
A notebook, pencil and a tin for seed packets with dates on the lid
Old bedsheets for frost nights, pegged down with clothes pegs

Earlier entries

28 October Pulled the last of the carrots. Short, twisted and sweeter than the shop ones. Two went to the neighbour's cat-proof compost by mistake.
21 October Frost on the windowsill and a whole row of lettuce gone soft. Lesson noted: the cloches go on a day early, not a day late.
12 October Dug the potatoes with a garden fork, very carefully. The Charlotte variety held up well in the clay. Kept the smallest for seed.
3 October Cleared the courgette bed. The plants were enormous and the fruit was not. Next year, two plants, and I will pick them small.
22 September Tomatoes ripened on the windowsill in the last week of the month, which is about the only good news in the south bed this year.
9 September Beans finished. Left the best pods on the vine to dry for seed, and labelled the tin with the year in pencil.
26 August A long dry spell. Set the soaker hose on a timer for twenty minutes at dawn and the courgettes perked up within a day.
14 August Nasturtiums covered the path edge and drew the aphids away from the beans. Not a scientific finding, but a useful one for me.
1 August Mint escaped from its pot again through the drainage hole. It now lives in a bucket with its own brick. I have stopped arguing with it.
18 July First ripe apples in the old tree, small and tart. Wrapped the trunk in card to catch the caterpillars on their way down.

Weather and water

Rainfall is recorded from a plastic gauge on the fence post, read every morning and written in the back of the notebook. The figures below are rough, and the gauge has been knocked over twice.

Month	Rain (mm)	Dry days	Watering
June	38	9	Hose on timer, 3 times a week
July	21	14	Daily at dawn, pots twice a day
August	47	6	Twice a week, deep soak
September	62	4	Only the tomatoes
October	71	3	None
November	crop in progress	—	Mulch, not water

Varieties on the seed shelf

A short list of what is in the tins this winter. Most of it was saved from the plot; the rest came from a swap at the allotment society, which is the best source of seed I have found for this soil.

Crop	Variety	Source	Sown from
Runner beans	Scarlet, old strain	Saved, three years	Pods left to dry
Garlic	Hardneck, purple stripe	Bought, then saved	Largest cloves
Potatoes	Charlotte	Saved tubers	Smallest, sprouted
Spinach	Winter-hardy, round	Swap	Autumn sowing
Lettuce	Loose-leaf mix	Swap	Pots, every two weeks
Tomatoes	Early bush, small fruit	Bought	Windowsill in March
Nasturtium	Climbing, orange	Saved, unlabelled	Path edge
Carrots	Short Nantes type	Bought	Middle bed, thinned twice

Things I got wrong this year

A list kept honest on purpose. It is shorter than it should be, and longer than I would like.

I sowed the lettuce too early under cloches and then forgot to ventilate them on the first warm week. The result was a row of leggy plants that bolted before they could be picked.
I planted the courgettes too close to the path, where they shaded the beans and then walked on the bean roots every time I went to the shed.
I left the apple windfalls on the grass for a fortnight. The wasps did well and so did the mice. Next year they go on the compost the day they fall.
I trusted a seed catalogue's “heavy yielding” claim for a bean variety that suited a warmer garden than mine. It flowered beautifully and set almost no pods on this clay.
I watered the pots at midday in July, which scorched the basil and did nothing useful for the mint. Dawn is the time, every time, and the timer exists precisely for the days I forget.

The garden does not care whether you are finished. It only asks that you come back tomorrow and look again.