Apologies again for this being a few days late, but here’s my guide of what to do on your plot in September.

September is the end of summer, although we’re often lucky to have an Indian summer with blue skies and sunshine, nothing is certain with the weather! The bulk of the harvest comes home now and as crops come out the plot begins to empty

Harvest

The maincrop potatoes should be ready now. To repeat August’s advice regarding harvesting potatoes:

When you harvest your potatoes take care to remove all the tubers. Any left will not only sprout next year and become a weed but will also be a reservoir for disease and potato blight spores. It’s often worth forking over a few days after harvesting potatoes because more seem to miraculously appear.

It’s worthwhile to empty the sacks after a few weeks or a month and check that there are no potatoes going off. Discard these before they rot the sack.

You may well have reasonably sized parsnips now but they will stay perfectly happy in the ground and do taste better after they have had a frost on them.

The runner beans and French beans will be continuing to produce and the last of the peas should be coming in. Compost the foliage of the peas but leave the roots in the ground as the nodules on them contain nitrogen.

The harvest will be in full swing and in addition to the above you should have:

• Beetroot
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflowers
• Courgettes
• Cucumbers
• Globe Artichokes
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Leeks
• Marrows
• Onions
• Pumpkins
• Radishes
• Spring Onions
• Spinach
• Sweetcorn
• Tomatoes
• Turnips

From the greenhouse you should be picking aubergines, chillies and sweet peppers as well as cucumbers and tomatoes.

If you grow fruit then the picking should be in full swing there as well:

Apples, pears, plums, peaches from the trees, blackberries and raspberries from the canes and strawberries from the bed.

Sowing

There’s not a great deal to sow now but surprisingly it’s the right time to sow winter lettuces such as Arctic King for spring harvests.

The other salad crop is the winter hardy spring onion. I’d suggest White Lisbon but ensure it is the winter hardy version.

Green Manure

Early September is the time to sow green manures. If you do not need to dig over your plot as you do with heavy soils or intend to spread manure on a patch then following on the last of a crop with a green manure is a great idea.

The first benefit is that the green manure will hold onto soil fertility that would otherwise be washed out by the winter rains. In fact, sowing a legume such as Winter Tares will fix nitrogen from the air.

Secondly, they will prevent weed growth so you will have less work to do.

Finally they help improve the soil structure. In the spring you just need to dig over and allow them to rot down for a few weeks.

Planting Out

Your spring cabbage plants can be planted out now and over wintering (Japanese) onion sets can go in for an early onion harvest.

You can plant out garlic as well although I prefer to plant it out later in the year.

Cultivating

Keep feeding your tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. It’s not really worthwhile feeding other plants at this time of year as they are nearly finished and the nutrients are best saved for the spring. Keep the side shoots in check on the tomatoes.

Fruit

Tidy up the summer fruiting raspberries, cutting off the canes that have fruited and tying in the new shoots that will bear next year.

The summer fruiting strawberries can be attended to now as well. Cut off the foliage about 1″ from the ground, clearing and weeding as you go. Any runners can be planted up to replace 3 year old plants that are best replaced now.

General Tasks

Keep an eye on your brassicas for butterfly eggs and caterpillars, these will most probably be under the leaves. The greenhouse pests should be declining but keep an eye out if the weather is good.

Making Compost

If you’ve not already done so, empty your compost bins. The compost that is ready can be spread on the ground and the compost only partially rotted returned to the bin to finish off.

You will probably have quite a bit of foliage ready to compost and building a heap properly will help the transformation from green waste to valuable compost. At the base of the heap place woody material, sweetcorn stalks etc to allow some airflow up into the heap. Next place a six inch layer of green material and add some dried blood to add nitrogen. Just a small sprinkling is sufficient, about 50g per square metre (2oz per square yard) is about right.

Another layer of green material but this time lightly sprinkle with lime to keep the pH up. Repeat the process and top off with a piece of old carpet or some plastic sheeting to stop it getting too wet in the rain and to keep the heat in.

The heap should heat up after a few days and be ready to turn in four or six weeks. The smaller the particles the more surface area they have relative to weight and the faster they will decompose. If you have a shredder, this will be ideal but otherwise cut things up with shears, crush things like brassica stems and they will go down much faster.

This week, since I have elected alcoholic ginger beer as my tipple of choice at the moment, I decided to do a little bit of research to see if I could make my own.

This wasn’t just a mad rush of blood to the head, together with a thought of “I can do that!” I dimly remembered my parents making ginger beer in my long gone youth.

So, after a little searching on the internet, I found recipes for a ‘ginger beer plant.’ Obviously, this isn’t a plant at all, but more of a ‘starter’ like a sourdough starter that you feed everyday with ginger and sugar. You can then use this to make ginger beer every week provided you continue to feed it.

So I now have my ginger beer plant/starter bubbling away in the spare room. So, depending on how things go, this time next week, I’ll be able to make some very nice home made alcoholic ginger beer, or there will be a minor explosion, and the walls of my spare room will be 40% proof.

This year has been a little weird so far. First we got an allotment, then the chickens, then I won the competition to be Wahaca’s Chilli Guru.

However, the weirdest thing of all is that I have made my first appearance on TV!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have appeared on Britain’s Best Dish this week on ITV cooking my starter of ‘Thai Spiced Mackerel With A Cucumber & Green Papaya Relish.’

For those of you who have never seen it, it is a cooking programme that is broadcast on ITV every weekday at 5pm, and each contestant cooks one dish only. Eventually the best starter, main course and dessert cook off against each other in the final to be voted ‘Britain’s Best Dish.’

It all started off when I received an email from the production team asking me if I wanted to enter. I went along to the audition in Nottingham thinking nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Imagine my surprise when, a few days later, I received a call saying that I had been picked to appear on TV in the Midlands heats.

To say that I was nervous was an understatement! Although I had cooked the dish over and over again at home, the pressure of having the cameras watching my every move, together with three professional judges, one of whom has a Michelin Star to his name, sat on the other side of the studio within earshot commenting on every move got to me!

I also overcooked my mackerel so it started to disintegrate as it came out of the pan. There was no time to rescue it, so I plated it up as best as I could, and hoped for the best. I really thought that I had blown it, as the fish looked like it had been through someone else’s system before it hit the plate.

I think you can tell by the look of shock on my face when they announced the result how surprised I was to be put through to the next round!

I had very little time to get over the shock of getting through before going back down to London for the next round of filming. This time it was for the Midlands finals, and there was the added carrot of £500 being up for grabs for whoever won.

Although I knew what to expect this time, I was up against someone else who had won their heat, so the pressure was still as intense. It wasn’t helped by the delicious smells coming from the food from her side of the kitchen, as I love duck, and the dish she was creating looked and smelt gorgeous.

Again, in the line up I was thinking to myself “Oh well, I’ve had fun, and it was an experience that I would never have expected at the start of the year.” So, hopefully again that explains the look of shock on my face when my name was called out as the winner of the Midlands starters and that I was going through to represent the Midlands in the National Finals.

Oh and also that I had won £500 to boot!

The nerves then kicked in again, as not only would I be cooking off against six other cooks who had won their regional finals, but I would also be being judged by three restaurant critics as well as the three judges.

I would also be cooking in a professionally kitted out kitchen at Hackney Catering College.

So, what happened in the National Finals? Well, you will have to watch ITV at 5pm on 20th September to find out!

A little while ago, I was lucky enough to be chosen as a contestant on ‘Britain’s Best Dish’ and I will be appearing on tomorrow night’s show on ITV at 5pm.

I’m cooking a starter of Thai spiced mackerel with a cucumber relish using my own homegrown chillies!

I’m looking forward to seeing it, but also terrified in equal measures, because like everyone else, it is the first time I will have seen how I look on TV. It will also be the first time I will have heard the Judge’s criticisms and feedback on my dish, as we were taken outside to do interviews while they tasted it.

I’m going to do another blog post tomorrow night giving my thoughts on my fifteen minutes of fame, as I can’t say much more without giving away what happened.

So you will just have to watch it to find out how I got on …. but also think of me cringing watching it on my sofa at home at the same time!

I know this is a little bit late, but then again the growing season is late this year as well, so here goes anyway ….

August is often the summer month with blue skies and hot so a lot of time may be spent watering. You can save yourself some time by preventing water loss by mulching with a layer of organic matter, which will help preserve moisture but may encourage slugs so you will need to take action against them.

Another good method of preventing water loss is to hoe. This not only kills the weeds but breaks up the top of the soil stopping water from being drawn to the surface by capillary action and evaporating.

Harvest

The harvest should be doing well, providing you with both fresh vegetables and vegetables to store over winter. Stuff ready to harvest now should include -

• French Beans
• Runner Beans
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Courgettes
• Cucumbers
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Spring Onions
• Peas
• Early Maincrop Potatoes
• Radish
• Spinach
• Tomatoes
• Turnips

When you harvest your potatoes take care to remove all the tubers. Any left will not only sprout next year and become a weed but will also be a reservoir for disease and potato blight spores. It’s often worth forking over a few days after harvesting potatoes because more seem to miraculously appear.

If blight has struck your potatoes the best method to preserve the crop is to remove the haulm and dispose of it then leave the potatoes in the ground for a fortnight to stop the spores getting onto the tubers. It’s best to harvest potatoes fairly early in the day, rinse them off as they come from the ground and then leave in the sunlight for a day to thoroughly dry off and harden the skins before storing.

Sort carefully and place perfect specimens into hessian or paper sacks in a cool dark but frost free place. Damaged tubers should be used first before they have a chance to rot and spread their rot to the rest of the sack.

It’s worthwhile to empty the sacks after a few weeks or a month and check that there are no potatoes going off. Discard these before they rot the sack.

Sowing and Planting

There are still quite a few things you can sow in August -

• Spring Cabbage
• Chinese cabbage
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce (sow a hardy variety for winter use)
• Spring Onions (White Lisbon winter hardy)
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Turnips

August is also the month to plant out Savoy Cabbages, Cauliflower and Kale.

Green Manure

When you have harvested your potatoes you might like to consider sowing a green manure crop. Mustard is fast growing and is supposed to confuse the potato eel worm into breeding at the wrong time. It is a brassica so don’t use it if you suffer from club root.

Another fast growing crop you can use as a green manure is French beans. Even if you have enough beans to feed an army, the plant produces a fair amount of leaf and stem plus the roots, as with all legumes, have nodules containing bacteria that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Free fertiliser as well as organic matter!

Cultivating

Runner beans that have reached the top of their supports will benefit from having the growing tip pinched out.

Keep on top of the weeds, it really is far easier to hoe them as small seedlings than as grown plants. Even if you can not see any weeds, hoeing will actually be killing tiny seedlings you have not noticed and will be helping reduce moisture loss as I said above.

Keep your tomato sideshoots in check, you want tomatoes not masses of foliage. Ensure they are watered regularly, drying out prevents the plant from taking up sufficient calcium and the deficit causes blossom end rot.
Keep feeding your tomatoes, we demand a lot from them and need to keep them well fed.

In the greenhouse

Stop tomato plants now to encourage fruit to swell and ripen. Stopping is the process of cutting off the growing tip so the plant’s energy is not diverted into foliage from fruit.

Keep a close eye out for pests such as whitefly which can controlled with either biological controls or sticky yellow cards. The fly is attracted to yellow and once on the card cannot get off.

Ensure good ventilation. It can get incredibly hot in a greenhouse with strong sun and scorch your plants. You should also consider shading the house either with blinds or films or with a shading wash.

Fruit

Many fruits are ready to harvest or swelling. Swelling fruit requires a lot of water so ensure they have enough.

Finish summer pruning apple trees and prune mature plums after fruiting. Plant new strawberry plants and pot up runners from established plants.

General Tasks

Keep on top of the pests. Aphids and Blackfly are a particular problem. You can control them with pesticides or just wash them off many plants with a strong jet of water. A wash with soft soap will do no harm to the plants and will reduce numbers.

Turn your compost. The warmth will be helping your compost break down and turning it out to in will ensure even breakdown. Water if it is dry as the microbes need some water but don’t make it absolutely sodden.

Keep an eye on your brassicas for butterfly eggs and caterpillars, these will most probably be under the leaves. Pick or wash them off before they dine on your dinner.

Time for a little bit of a catch up I think, since I have been a bit stingy with blog updates recently!

I was a little worried about Gladys, one of our ex-battery chickens for a while, as she seemed to be very much out of sorts, and would not stand up for more than a few seconds at a time. We had to lift her in and out of the nest box and place her near the food, and we were dreading the day when she stopped eating.

Then one day we went down to open them up, and after the other three had come down the ramp at Mach 3 to head towards the food, Gladys then announced herself in a flurry of squawks and feathers as if to announce “I’m back!”

She’s now barging the other three out of the way at the feed, and instead of being very scrawny, is growing all of her feathers, and giving the others a run for their money!

All of the chillies are benefiting from having more room in my new polytunnel and have put on a massive growth spurt and are producing bucketloads of chilies. It’s good that I discovered the trick of how to freeze them last year, as I’m going to need to do the same this year.

All of the spuds have been lifted, so we have enough to feed an army. We want to have fresh spuds for Christmas Day, so we are going to plant some more in a patch of our allotment that could do with some help in being cleared, and the soil being broken up.

The sweetcorn is also teasing me as it looks like it is ready, but everytime I pull back its covering to have a peek, it is not quite there, so I have to wait another day at least before I can fire up the BBQ.

I’ve also harvested four bags full of purple top turnips which will come in useful in stews in the Autumn and Winter. Planted up some more as well, as I love them!

We’re also having the usual game of hide and seek with the courgettes, but still miss the odd one which then turns into a marrow in the blink of an eye. However searching for those means we can spot all of the pumpkins that have kicked into life that will be used in due course to make pumpkin and chorizo soup. spiced pumpkin risotto …..

You may remember that recently I was lucky enough to win the competition run by Wahaca, the Mexican restaurant chain opened by Thomasina Miers, to be their ‘Chilli Guru!’

The first of my video tutorials has just been published on their blog, but if you’ve not yet had the chance to see it, here it is. Keep your eyes peeled here for the next video shortly, both here and on Wahaca’s blog.

I’ve just had a very tiring, but such a fabulous weekend.

On Saturday I went to the West Dean Chilli Fiesta with Chris Jagger (@VolcanoChilli) and his wife Rosie.

It was bigger and better than ever with over 120 stalls, and the weather held good until the end of the day. It was also great to meet all the other chilliheads that I have been talking to on Twitter these past months

I spent the day from start to finish grazing from stall to stall, sampling all the varied products that can be made from the humble chilli, from the most delicious mole sauces to the hottest producs laced with Naga chillies!

I’ll be doing a longer post with videos both for my blog and for the Wahaca very shortly, so keep your eyes peeled!

As you know, I like my chillies. This year I’ve decided not only to grow twice the amount of varieties this year (19), but also to come over all Heston and experiment with different ways of growing them.

I had a tip from @VolcanoChilli at the start of the season about growing chillies in square pots and lying the on their side to encourage side shoots, and this seems to be doing the trick so far.

Some of the varieties I’ve potted on into larger pots as they’ve grown on, while keeping some of the same variety in smaller pots.

I’ve also been feeding some of the plants with tomato feed and some with ‘Chilli Focus,’ to see if that makes a difference, and the chilli food definitely wins!

I’ll decide at the end of the year if any of this makes any difference, but with all the experimenting, I’m sure to end up with another huge crop this year, both in my greenhouse and in my new polytunnel!

This week, since my greenhouse was becoming increasingly overcrowded, I decided to treat myself to a polytunnel, so that I would have more room to grow what I wanted.


I’ve started moving some of the chillies, papalo, tomatoes, cucumbers and tomatilloes from my greenhouse to my polytunnel, and to be honest, it doesn’t seem as if I have made any difference at all. The good thing is that there is still loads of room left in the polytunnel, so eventually I will be able to reach the watering can in my greenhouse without having to hack my way through all of the undergrowth in there!

I’ve now got more room to grow some of the more unusual Mexican herbs such as Epazote or Hoja Santa.

The chickens are coming on in leaps and bounds, and they have blessed us with two eggs between them a day. What has surprised my wife is that, although they have only been out of the battery farm for a week, they have already learnt how to take themselves to bed.

I’ve also been busy this weekend sorting out my first ‘Chiili Guru’ video for Wahaca, and that will be appearing on both their and my blog very soon.