Showing posts with label Veg garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Veg garden. Show all posts

18 Jun 2021

Suddenly it was summer...

 ... and then it wasn't.  

Stems of pink chard

Rain has stopped play. Am I unhappy? Not a bit, I'm actually very grateful for the promised deluge. Plants thrive on rainwater rather than the chemical-laced hard tap water that serves my area of London. Temperatures will drop to a comfortable level and I'll no longer feel that I'm slowly melting. My only gripe with this bout of rain is that I was unable to finish my evening’s work of  ruthlessly clearing space in the veg patch to make room for more crops; I had to call a halt as the slight drizzle became a clothes soaking torrent.  Have mentioned that I'm woefully behind this year?

Courgettes, kales, cabbages and beans will have to go out when the rain stops, hopefully on Saturday - no point in setting out a banquet for marauding molluscs! This feels more than a bit late to me but, in this wonky weather we're being subjected to, it may still be a bumper year for home grown food.

The veg patch has actually been quite productive so far this year - I could barely keep up with the purple sprouting broccoli in late winter and had my fill of kales at that time. By the time those had finished, I had radishes, lettuces, spinach and a few peas from the salad garden; the heat of the past week has done for the spinach and radishes, both now bolted, composted and needing to be resown.  

In my third large Veg Trug, I've planted out cucumbers, chillies, tomatoes ... and a little courgette called Patio Star which is meant to be grown in a container.  What a fabulous thing if this tiny plant produces a good crop! Expectations are low but excitement levels are high.

Tiny red woodland strawberries

Meanwhile, back in the veg patch, I've been bringing home large plump strawberries as well as tiny fragrant woodland strawberries, fat pods of broad beans (so delicious eaten raw) and freshly cut asparagus spears are still on the menu. Gardener’s lore says to leave asparagus to grow and re-energise after the solstice so I may only have one more cut this year. 

First early potatoes flowering end of May

Three weeks ago, those strawberries were still flowers, as were the broad beans.  Potato flowers have been and gone - and what's happened to the herbs!? They’ve doubled in size! My mint plants are enormous and Clary Sage (which I grew last year as an annual) has shown her pretty face once more. The year seems to be rushing onwards with reckless haste.

The summer solstice is just a few days away (Monday 21st, sun up at 04.32 BST for 16 hours 38 minutes of daylight in case, like me, you wondered), heralding the start of astrological summer. Which school of thought will you follow - that summer has properly arrived or that it's all downhill to winter once the days start to get shorter? 

Me? I'm always an optimist and enjoy whatever the seasons may bring. 



30 Mar 2019

March in the veg patch garden

White blossom in springtime
Regular as clockwork - blossom on the plum tree. 

Tonight the clocks go forward in the UK, heralding the start of British Summer Time. Tomorrow I'll wake as usual at 7am and change the hands on all the clocks to 8am and feel that the day has stolen a march on me.  It's all very unsettling but, despite my curmudgeonly attitude, at least I'll feel one step closer to summer!

The first quince blossom this year

Now that April is only a day or two away, the garden is really coming alive.  Mostly with flowers, to be fair, but when those flowers are sparkling on the pear and plum trees, you know you can start to get excited. There's even one small blossom bud on the quince tree planted at the northern end of the veg patch; the other quince (a patio variety in a pot) has never flowered and I'll be pleasantly surprised if I see any blooms this year.  I'm not sure why it's never flowered but no flowers means no fruit.  More feeding is needed I guess.

And so to rhubarb. Choosing the best cultivar is key; I've already indulged in some delicious stewed rhubarb a few weeks ago thanks to a friend who grows a large patch of Timperley Early and, serendipitously for me, doesn't like rhubarb!  Regular readers may remember that I got rid of my Glaskins Perpetual clump last year. It was too big and too green - but fantastic if you want stems for most of the year.  I like a nice red stem (a must for fruit fools or stewed fruit) so pinned my hopes on a new Siruparber plant from Lubera in Switzerland as well as the two Red Champagne plants struggling to survive under the apple trees.

Red Champagne rhubarb - and a matching tulip

In the past few weeks I'd convinced myself that the Siruparber was a goner as there was nothing to indicate where it had been last year, but this week I've spotted a couple of tiny leaves poking up and quickly put a wire basket over the top for protection against fox cubs.  The Champagne plants have produced a towering flower stem in the past, (not a good thing for rhubarb), clearly demonstrating that they are Not Happy.  And this is where you learn by doing - I'd read that rhubarb could be grown in light shade ... or apparently not in this case. I have two Champagne crowns so one will be carefully dug up and moved into the light - or as much as it can get with a four storey block of flats in close proximity on either side of the veg patch. (The patch gets around 6 hours of sun on a good day, which is fine for most veg and annuals.)


Spring flowers - Honeywort, Bleeding Heart plant, Starflower
Cerinthe / Honeywort
Lamprocapnos / Bleeding Heart
Borage / Starflower

I do think colour is so lush in spring - I have primulas, cowslips, daffodils, forget-me-nots, tulips and muscari (grape hyacinths) to keep bees happy. I've only seen a couple so far but they'll buzz over once they know the nectar bar is open. This year self-seeded Cerinthe (honeywort) and Borage are blooming under the fruit trees - perfectly placed for pollinators - and one or two calendula plants have over-wintered. I don't even mind that the purple sprouting broccoli has finished and started to flower.  It's possibly the prettiest time in the veg patch and all part of the circle of life.

Last year's tulips return. Did I put those colours together?



16 Mar 2019

Lessons learned from last year and what you can do in March

Having resolved not to be overly hasty in seed sowing, I sat outside on a bench on Thursday with my eyes closed, my face lifted to the warm sun and pondered the big question at this time of year, 'Is it warm enough to start sowing?'.

Sometimes I think it could be but, on the other hand, I had my hot water bottle out two nights ago and this morning the wind is battering my windows. Typically for March, the weather is completely unpredictable and makes me long for a sturdy greenhouse where I could raise hardy seedlings. (And shelter from the weather!)

Realistically, I know it's best to keep to my plan to sow direct next month but I've been re-reading Charles Dowding's 'Veg Journal' - the man is such an inspiration - in which he suggests sowing spinach indoors, 2 or 3 seeds to a module or small pot, and then planting out in 5 weeks time, ie mid-April when the weather will hopefully be less turbulent. Ditto for beetroot and leeks, which is a good reminder for me as I always forget to sow leeks in time and then worry as their skinny little stems look so fragile if the weather gets too hot ... or cold ... or windy.

But, before this season of veg growing starts in earnest ...

What have I learned from last year?


Baby Boo squash: A lovely creamy white on the vine but have yellowed over the winter months indoors. 

Every year is different and there's always something new to learn. What works one year may not work the next so it's good to look back and take stock before starting off again on your gardening journey.
  • Write it down! I always start off well, recording seed sowing dates in a notebook or cheap diary but often forget to record transplanting or harvest dates. This year I'm inspired by The Green Conspiracy's garden planner where each vegetable is recorded on it's own page so its progress can be easily tracked. The planner is being produced in Germany after a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the first printing and looks to be amazing for new growers. A printed planner is too expensive for me at around £30 (it needs to be replaced every year) so I'm buying the cheaper (£6) pdf version to see what it's all about.
  • Last year I was super excited to grow Baby Boo squashes - seven of the cutest 4 inch wide white pumpkins from one plant. They were beautiful for natural autumn decorations but I was disappointed to find there was very little flesh inside. Last summer's heat (and lack of water) may be to blame but I'd rather play it safe with a different squash this year. (Possibly spaghetti squash which is delicious with butter.)
  • What did work well was letting Baby Boo ramble through sweetcorn - a very symbiotic planting and worth repeating again this year. The squash leaves minimised moisture loss around the sweetcorn roots while the corn stalks gave the squash something to grab onto as the vines grew. Two sisters, rather than three. (This would also work with courgettes.)
  • Will I bother with peas this year? No. Nor mange tout. I've thought long and hard about this but, if I'm honest, I'm happy with frozen peas and the mange tout weren't plentiful enough to bother with in my small space patch. But I will be keeping my eyes open for varieties that claim to produce prolific crops and might grow a few in large pots.  When you've not much space, it pays to be practical as well as considering alternatives like container growing to expand on available space.
  • Always grow kale.  In 2017, I let a Cavolo Nero plant go to seed (the bees love the flowers); one tiny seed dropped and grew through the 2017/18 winter and produced leaves from early summer onwards. It's now taller than me and still growing (just starting to flower but the flower stalks are edible) - must have saved me a fortune in the shops!
  • Always grow Purple Sprouting Broccoli (PSB). Not only is it expensive to buy but gathering home grown vegetables from the garden in the depths of winter (even a mild one) feels like a real treat. The same is true of kale, leeks, parsnips and sprouts. And I get to feel very smug that I have fresh psb growing and looking so much perkier than the ageing produce in the shops.
  • I experimented with turning my metre square asparagus bed into a square foot planter - I divided the space into a grid of nine square foot spaces and put one plant in each of the squares not already occupied with an asparagus crown. I planted tomatoes in between the asparagus fronds as they make good companions; it nearly worked except that a neighbouring redcurrant bush partly shaded the tomatoes. The small plum tomatoes did well, the beefsteak toms were still trying to ripen at the first frosts! A stupid mistake on my part. This year I'll put the tomatoes next to a sunny wall and plant calendula and spinach around the asparagus.
  • Don't forget the verticals.  Every year I regret the lack of a sturdy arch. My cheap metal arches lasted two seasons before toppling in gusting winds but oh how I loved seeing beans climbing up and over the top. This year I want to try again with growing luffas and Malabar climbing spinach. The search for how to build a sturdy structure is on.
  • Say yes to salad onions. I used a lot in cooking last year and they take up very little room. I'm thinking of lining a section of the veg patch path with them. I'll also sow some around the edge of my carrots as I find this helps to keep carrot root fly away. Or maybe I just don't get carrot root fly. Works for me, anyway.
  • Don't panic if you haven't mulched. Recent research suggests that if a thick mulch (minimum 5cm) is applied one year, it can be skipped the next. The same research also advised mixing the mulch 50:50 with garden soil or compost as too rich a soil can make plants sappy and weak. Personally, I never have enough mulch for a thick layer so tickle a thin layer into the top layer of soil in the veg beds and put a thicker layer around perennials (like rhubarb and raspberries) and fruit trees.

Here’s what you can do in March: 


There are no hard and fast rules for when to sow - what matters is warmth and light. Waking early yesterday, I noticed that in south-east UK we're now getting a good twelve hours of daylight but the weather is still chilly at night and wet/windy during the day. In his book, Charles Dowding suggests that vegetable seeds fall into three categories - cool, medium and warm temperature veg. Cool-type seeds can be sown outside once temperatures are consistently above 5°C/41°F (roughly now in the UK) but will rot if the weather turns wet and cold before they successfully germinate. Anything sown direct in the last couple of days here would have got washed away. The warm seed category (tomatoes, chillies, etc) need to be germinated and raised with heat above 64°F/18°C so tend to be raised under cover.

Outdoors: 
  • Plant garlic cloves, onion sets, and potatoes. I'll also be replanting some oca saved from last year's harvest. 
  • Sow broad beans, radish, spinach, sorrel, peas for shoots, parsnips, brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cauliflower).  
  • Edible flowers - try sowing nasturtiums and calendula now. Self seeded borage is about to flower in my veg patch which tells me that the soil is warm enough to grow things. And I have so many violets in flower that I might try moving a small clump.
  • If the daytime weather forecast for my area comes true (58°F/15°C), a first sowing of medium temp veg seeds might be possible - carrots, spring onions, winter lettuce - but would need fleecing against wind and lower nighttime temps. Probably best to wait a while longer. 
  • Weeds - take them out while they're tiny otherwise they'll be soon be hogging light, water and nutrients intended for the plants you do want. 
Indoors/under glass: 

I haven't sown anything yet but will get going over the next few weeks with germinating the following on warm windowsills in seed trays.
  • chillies, 
  • tomatoes, 
  • peppers 
  • aubergines 
I'll be sowing pea shoots and micro leaves indoors and beetroot can also be sown into modules - I use this lovely paper pot maker * as I can plant the whole module when the time is right with less root disturbance.

And while I wait for the right time to start sowing, I'm going to be enjoying all the gorgeous spring flowers in the garden.


* Disclosure - the paper pot maker was gifted to me last year by Burgon and Ball but I genuinely love it, finding it easy to use, efficient, and perfectly suited to my as-plastic-free-as-possible lifestyle.







10 Sept 2017

And then it was September

Is that it? Is summer over?  You'd better believe it.  Leaves are falling from the fruit trees, children are back at school (hello again peaceful days!), seed catalogues are thumping onto the doormat and apples are blushing up nicely.  Unlike previous years, I'm feeling strangely calm about it all. Que sera sera, and all that.

The weather's been a bit tricky these past few weeks - hot one day, wet and mild the next. Luckily I'm no longer obliged to be outside putting my waterproofs through their paces; instead, as summer slips away, it's been the perfect chance to pop the kettle on and take stock.


4 Aug 2016

Rain stopped play (again)



Is it summer - or have I missed it?  The school holidays, which will always equate with summer in my mind, have just begun and yet it feels as though the garden is almost at its autumn crescendo. Flowers are starting to fade and yet veg (beans, courgettes, broccoli, beetroot) are just getting going - admittedly, that one is down to me sowing late.  I have only a few precious hours each week to spend in my garden and the roller coaster weather has not been conducive to gardening when time allows.

However, last Monday I found myself with an unexpected day off, a day to myself that I immediately earmarked for gardening. It was the best possible way to start the week - I wish every week could be like that!  With one eye on the weather (rain forecast for mid-afternoon),  I had firm intentions of potting up some seedlings and planting out a few pots intended to fill gaps left by summer plants having done their thing.

At least that was the original plan. As soon as I got into the garden I noticed plants needing deadheading (geums, calendula, leucanthemum, centaurea, sweet peas), plants needing bringing under control (nasturtiums, oregano, horseradish) and plants needing tying in (asparagus ferns, more calendula, scabious). This is the garden tidying that I usually do in early September, if memory serves. The overall look of the garden is currently at the forefront of my thoughts as I rashly entered into Camden in Bloom again a couple of weeks ago. There was one evening when the garden was looking awesomely lovely and I rushed to get an application form in. Naturally, it's all gone to pot since. There's no news yet as to who might have been shortlisted but, if I get through again, I'm considering telling the panel not to bother coming over.

~ the garden looking quite spanking a few weeks ago, ie before my Camden in Bloom application ~


As I was on a roll with my garden tidying, I also had a go at the raspberries. So far, it's not looking like a brilliant year for raspberries (historically, I pick regularly from early July, even though they're autumn raspberries) so I decided to cut out the weak spindly stems, water and mulch. Leaves on some canes were yellowing -  possibly inter-veinal chlorosis (a sign of magnesium deficiency in older leaves) or possibly due to the soil having become baked dry (clay soil) or even lack of water in this stop/start summer we're having.  I'd read that raspberries like a slightly acid soil and I had a bag of Dalefoot Ericaceous Compost in reserve so plonked a bit of that around the canes and let the forecast rain water it in.

It's incredible how much can be achieved with a deadline (rain showers) looming. In the end, though, I didn't get any planting out done but managed to get a several bags of green waste to the recycling centre before the rain started and afterwards returned to send a host of snails flying over the railway fence as they celebrated the damp weather by making a beeline for my plants.  All in all a very satisfying day.

And, for the record, here's where I'm at with the food growing in early August:


Cobra bean flower (no beans yet but plants climbing vigorously), 
Raspberries (only the tiniest handful of raspberries so far)
Beetroot (looking quite promising)
Redcurrants (three tiny strings that the birds missed. Strike one to me!)


There's also achocha, chard, broccoli, radishes, baby kales and, hopefully at some point soon, tomatoes and spinach.

The weather's cheered up slightly since Tuesday's downpours so, in hindsight, maybe this summer isn't so bad after all!  How's everyone else feel about this summer?  Just about on target or lagging behind?  Things seem to be different all over the country!