The more time you spend in the garden the more you realise that however careful you plan the weather will dictate the outcome. Early blooming trees and shrubs can be caught by a late frost, cold wet cloudy days delay sowing and plants, perennials and seedlings seem reluctant to emerge. But you shouldn’t despair, whatever the weather and however the season progresses plants have an amazing ability to catch up and provide a space to wind down, just enjoy the peaceful company of plants.
We are now starting to harvest the early planted crops of peas and beans, and have been eating lettuce and salad leaves grown in repurposed gutters in a cold greenhouse since late April. The bulk of the vegetable garden is planted, onions, potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli, peas and beans. Sowings of root vegetables including carrot, beetroot and parsnip are developing well.
Towards the middle of this month we will be sowing later batches of carrots and beetroot sown directly into prepared drills. These should be ready for pulling mid to late autumn for storing through winter although they can be eaten immediately after pulling if you want to.
It’s a good time to sow brassicas for autumn and winter use, I start most of my seeds in module trays to give them a good start, sow one to two seeds per cell and remove the weakest one just as the first true leaves start to develop. You can usually pick up second hand module trays from you local nursery for a few pence, give them a rinse in greenhouse disinfectant and you’re good to go. Just remember when you are sowing, a packet of seed can contain over a hundred seeds but only sow what you need. I grow in batches of 10 to 12 plants of say cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli, which means we have a steady flow of greens rather than a hundred cauliflowers all ready together.
Continue sowing salad vegetables and what I call salad herbs such as basil, dill and coriander, again I use modular trays and sow just two or three seeds in each cell, leave them all to develop and either plant them in the vegetable plot or in pots on the patio.
Who doesn’t like the heady scent of sweet peas, whether grown up climbing supports in the garden or in rows up 8ft ( 2.4m) bamboo canes in the vegetable garden. We use both methods, but for cutting blooms for the house the longest stems are achieved if you grow single plants up canes in the vegetable garden. We use plant rings to fasten them to the cane, it’s much easier than tying with string. Although sweet peas produce tendrils we cut them off and remove side shoots so you get long stems and large heads of flowers. The tendrils are removed because they invariably attach themselves to flower stems and make them all wonky. We feed them with tomato liquid feed every week which keeps them flowering for ages. In late August we carefully take off all the plant rings and lay the plants down along the rows tying the top 12 inches (30cm) to the nearest cane and continue up the cane again, The key, whether grown in the garden or on canes is to remove fading flowers and feed the plants, that way they should keep going until the first frosts.
There is nothing quite like the taste of freshly harvested soft fruit on your breakfast cereal or yogurt, the flavour is much more intense and flavoursome. The problem is that every bird in the neighbourhood thinks so too and protecting your soft fruit plants and bushes can be a challenge at times. We use woven bird netting, available on line or from your local garden centre or nursery. They usually sell it ‘off the roll’ so you can buy just what you need. Measure the size of your fruit bed and add about two yards (2 metres) to allow for the sides. We use road pins as stakes. They are used on the highways and are a steel stake bent at the top to form a hook, although many contractors use plastic barriers and they are still available. Easy to install and very durable the net can be hooked over the top and the net draped down to soil level. Cheap tent pegs can be used to secure the net to the soil. Once the soft fruit is harvested the net and road pins can be removed and stored until next year. You could go to the expense of purchasing a fruit cage and whilst they are great they are not cheap and are not usually dismantled after harvesting so you will have to live with the structure which may spoil the general view if your garden.
Happy gardening, Martin
Next month, (keeping the garden tidy, pruning philadelphus and wistaria and harvesting crops.)
