Early Goose

Gooseberries do fantastically well here. Almost too well. Not only are the first fruit developing, but they're putting on lots of new growth - and thorns - too. It's a job to keep them pruned and even more difficult to deal with the needle sharp prunings.

Architectural Flavour

 

Angelica's one of those plants that looks great all the time, even when it's dead and its skeleton stands defiantly through the winter. In May, it often attracts large iridescent beetles, but it's starting to look like a poor year for insects. It's worth making crystallised angelica at least once, mostly for cake decoration and it might be an idea to use it to flavour gin.

Green Fatigue

it's not all chilled and peaceful in the garden. It's that time of year when everything demands attention, everything needs repotting or planting out or sowing again, weeds grow out of control, slugs and snails munch through everything precious, the sun can dry out pots and seed trays, the wind plays havoc with tender things and downpours waterboard seedlings into submission. Important to sit and do nothing sometimes and not want the moon on a stick.

Flowers AAB

'A' is for Alyssum and Aquilegea.
'B' is for Blackcurrant.

Broccoli end

That's it for another year: the purple sprouting broccoli season comes to and end, just as the spinach harvest begins.

Rich pickings

Outdoor Floral

A few days of fine weather, allowing verbascum and irises to bloom.

Last leeks

Starter module

 

Plenty purple

Inner tulip

Truly Tulip

Future Casserole

Fennel, onions and broad beans. Add water. Ready for the pot in about three months.

Old beans and new

Found some of last year's broad beans at the back of the freezer and planted out the last of this year's plants.

Plum Out

Purple patch

Ready, set, go!

Choggia beetroot, carrots and spinach beet all survived, even thrived over the mild winter, providing a traffic light of colours and food for the pot. The rain's here now, just in time after a dry month, but the accompanying high winds, which often seem to occur around equinoxes, would be damaging to any seedlings waiting to be planted outside. At this time of year there are never enough sunny window ledges and warm spots indoors to bring on seedlings and young plants.

Good Friday

          Things to do:

• Plant summer flowering bulbs; lilies, gladioli, iris, spraxia,

• Plant out broad beans and onion sets

• Sow outdoors; peas, parsley, sunflowers, marigolds, calendula, sweet peas

• Sow indoors; lettuce, rocket, coriander, courgettes, tomatoes, leeks, celery, basil, cosmos

• Look after seedlings indoors; chilies, tomatoes, rudbeckia, carnations, black-eyed Susan vine,

• Pot up dahlias, check on delphinium and echinacea for growth and slug danger

• Weed strawberry bed and feed with potash

•  Last bonfires of the season; wood ash for fruit bushes and onion sets

       

          Harvest:

• Kale

• Purple sprouting broccoli

• Rhubarb

• Leeks

• Carrots (last year's overwintered in the ground)

Garlic

Ten years without losing the plot

A sixteen month sabbatical from this blog, but all the while busy on the plot. It's ten years this month since taking it on, but this year, time's going to be very limited so it's worth considering what to grow and what not to bother with - which is extremely difficult for someone who wants to grow everything.

Is it worth growing carrots when it's hard to protect them from carrot root fly and they're so cheap in the shops? The same goes for potatoes, wire worm and potato blight and onions, garlic and white rot. Those all take up a fair amount of space too, which is limited, like the sunny patches and the beds with the best soil and drainage. Marrows, pumpkins and squash are all a bit fussy, thirsty and hungry and take up loads of space, if they don't get eaten by slugs and snails before they get the chance to, or battered by cold winds in June. They might not be worth bothering with anymore. Well, maybe a courgette or two and a pumpkin.

Greens and fruit are the least labour intensive and the most expensive in the shops. Healthy and tasty too.They tolerate quite a bit of shade, but need protecting from slugs, snails and birds. At this time of year, the allotment's full of plots with brassicas - broccoli, kale and cabbage - torn to shreds by pigeons. (Why don't people protect their crops?*) Soon the sparrows will be after emerging blackcurrant and redcurrant buds.

*There's never enough netting and it's forever blowing away or getting ripped. Last month, a pigeon got trapped in a neighbour's netting and it took a while to set it free. It's best to use heavier scaffolding netting, which won't trap birds but still lets enough light through for the brassicas and protects them from snow damage in late winter.

Birds never seem to go for the strawberries, or perhaps they leave enough behind to make it unnoticeable and they seem to find harvesting gooseberries as potentially painful as humans do, what with all the sharp thorns, so don't bother. Strawberries are rather high maintenance though, forever requiring watering, weeding and checking for slugs and snails and when they're ripe, it takes half an hour a day for a fortnight to harvest them and they rot quickly.

Blackcurrants aren't so demanding, though they take an age to pick and unlike strawberries, seem to ripen at random over a much longer period. Like everything, it's a good idea to water them well when they're in flower, quite early in the year and to give them some potash to help fruit formation. Rhubarb's very low maintenance and has few predators, though it's not a good idea to let it dry out, which can happen quite easily as the large leaves prevent the rain from getting to the roots. Like rhubarb, apple trees, once established just get on with it without much need for attention, but if you're not careful this lack of attention can be mistaken for lack of ownership and someone might pinch your crop.

Herbs, flowers and a peaceful green space are all worth cultivating. It won't really matter if it all runs wild this year.

Thin the spin

Lots of self sown spinach seedlings have popped up and need thinning out a bit.

Sun Flowers

Costoluto Fiorentino

Harvested several kilos of these beauties with more to come. The plants are so vigorous that they grew over six feet tall and are still putting out new shoots.

Tabac

Autumn Collection

Turning point

The beefsteak tomatoes are finally turning red and ripening despite a lack of sunshine and a rather damp month. Autumn's in the air.

Ballerina Tutu

The name of this datura belies the toxicity of the tropane alkaloids contained within. The flowers don't last long and wilt quickly in full sun. This one lacked the strong moth-attracting perfume of the white one grown a few years ago (2011).

Amaized (?)

Harvesting daily cobs of juicy sweetcorn a little earlier in the year than usual, thanks to the near perfect weather conditions in July.

Winter hedge fund

Lots to harvest at the moment but also a good time to plan ahead for winter and plant out young kale plants, under netting to protect them from peckish pigeons.

A little squash

August Fayre

Echinacea Purpurea Alba

Sweet

Harvested the first couple of sweetcorn cobs and was eating one, smothered in butter, about an hour later. The recent storm had blown a few of the plants sideways, so it was time to put a curtain of netting around them to prop them up and protect them from badgers and other predators.

Lycopersicon esculentum

                         It's been a good year for cherry tomatoes.

Running away

Into the season for runner beans now and the more they're picked the more they'll produce: Much like sweet peas, once the seed starts to develop the plant stops producing more flowers and pods. Courgette plants behave similarly and one of them has now shut down because one of the fruits was allowed to develop to the size of a marrow. The dill is now flowering. All parts; leaves, flowers and seeds are great for the kitchen.

Big roots

Harvested some early parsnips that had self-seeded on a patch where the broad beans grew, which needed clearing to make way for some winter crops. Beetroot hasn't done brilliantly this year and there probably won't be enough for pickling, but there are always enough to brighten up a salad or stain a bowl of rice or couscous.

Little Roots

Harvested the first baby carrots, more climbing/french beans and some lettuce.

Plum Month

                                    Into August; plum month.