I’m the person who buys a bunch of flowers from the supermarket, unwraps them, chops the ends off and dumps them in the vase, ready-arranged. I’m certainly no florist. But there’s something about Sweet Peas and their mouth-watering scent that makes me want to throw caution to the wind, pull out my kitchen scissors and cut a new bunch every day. Once I started chopping there was no stopping me. The few Cornflowers that were flowering quickly found their way into my new garden posy, as did one or two unlucky Lavender heads. Of course I had to tie it with string to give it that true Victorian look - all I need now is a sweetheart to give it to. Or better still - I’ll just keep it myself.
Courgettes (or Zucchini as some will have it) get a bad press. They are stupidly easy to grow, produce large, sometimes overpowering, plants and pump out produce until we are so sick of eating them that we need help coming up with new ways to eat them. Of course then there is the curse of the marrow. Go away for a few days and when you return you find that your lovely, dainty little courgette has turned into Shrek’s baseball bat. Yes Courgettes get a bad press - even at mtp - but today, for one day only, all that has changed. Why? because they officially have the most beautiful flowers of all the vegetables.
I love the way that the green blends into the yellow here - is it a leaf or a petal - I like to think it’s both.
Inside, the petal-leaves protect this delicate, furry mini-flower which looks like it’s spent a lot of time getting ready for a hot date with Mr Male Courgette Flower.
And last of all - the colour! Was there ever a yellow as intense as this that didn’t say, ‘Summer is here!’.
A few of you have been asking for an updated photo of the garden - well here it is. We’re in full swing here at mtp. The Peas have come and gone, we’re one row of potatoes down and currently munching through our 50th lettuce (or thereabouts). Everything is going really well with the new design. I have more than enough room to grow everything I want to - maybe just a smidgeon more lettuce? No?
Things that have gone well: Runner Beans looking fab on old-fashioned bean-poles, Sweetpeas that smell gorgeous, the biggest Strawberries in-the-world, Tomato jungle, Mange Tout for the first time, the promise of some corking Sweetcorn and 8 Queen Cox apples (still) on the apple tree!
Things that have gone ‘um’ not so well: Peas taking over the garden, ants eating the Pear buds (if I ‘ever’ find out where they live…), no Redcurrants ( I know not why), some onions going to seed, the usual Cauliflower debacle.
Other than that my garden, like Mary Poppins, is practically perfect in every way and I love it.
This week we’ve been holidaying at a place called Bell Vue Farm which is part of the Featherdown Farms network. I call it ‘posh camping’ because while you do stay in a field under canvas in the usual way you also have your own running water, flushing toilet and wood-burning stove in the tent too - not exactly roughing it, is it?
As we were running out of the door, with the car fit to bursting and enough baby burp cloths to sink a small boat, I rushed into the garden to harvest some fresh produce for our camping trip. In the bag went a fresh Lettuce, some new Potatoes, a handful of fresh Herbs, some Mint, a few sticks of Rhubarb, a clutch of Spring Onions and this little box of the soft fruit that happened to be ripe. As you can see there was a mix of Strawberries, Blackcurrants & Whitecurrants (sadly no Redcurrants this year). Not a bad harvest.
When we arrived at our new home - and after we had petted the geese, chickens, donkeys, goats and lambs - we lit the stove and I started to make use of the berries. As I didn’t have very many ingredients to hand (usually I would use Balsamic Vinegar), I just cooked them up with some sugar on the wood fire.
Once cooked through but still whole I poured them over some fresh vanilla Greek yoghurt and tried to find some poor soul who would eat my creation. I didn’t have to look far!
Summer is in full swing and most plants are in the ground now. You should be harvesting salad crops, peas and potatoes by now with some strawberries and other soft fruit for pudding.
- Gather the last of the peas and clear the ground
- Sow late Carrots
- Turn your attention to Autumn crops and sow things like Raddichio, Pak Choi, Mizuna and Endive
- Keep cutting Sweet Peas to encourage more flowers
- Harvest Shallots, Onions and Garlic as their leaves goes brown
- Cut off any Potato leaves affected by blight and burn
- Feed Tomatoes every other week with high potash liquid feed
- Cut off Strawberry runners as they appear (unless you want to make new plants)
- Plant a second bed of Sweetcorn in between your onions - once the onions are gone the Sweetcorn will have enough room to grow
- Buy some ‘ready-grown’ lettuce plants to fill gaps where needed
If you have any more suggestions for July jobs, add them to the list.
As you can see, the Peas are in full swing. I have learned some useful things about peas this year that I want to share with you. Firstly, I grew two varieties, Kelvedon Wonder (my usual) and Rondo (a new variety for me). Early on in the year I sowed both seed separately in lengths of guttering in the coldframe. Then once it got a bit warmer I put the guttering peas out and started to sow peas directly into the ground. I alternated between Kelvedon and Rondo so that I would have a successional crop of both varieties.
This sounds nice and neat on paper but in reality it didn’t work out so well. This was for several reasons. The first was that the two varieties germinated and grew at different rates. So even though I sowed them at different times, the Rondo seeds seemed to catch up on the Kelvedon pretty quick. Secondly, Kelvedon is a very short, squat variety that produces short(ish) pods with big fat peas inside. Rondo is a tall variety (1.5 metres at least) that produces larger pods with the peas spaced out inside. However, the pea sticks that I put in were really not designed to support a pea that tall and eventually the Rondo peas started to flop over - putting them at risk of slug attack and also they started to shade my carrots (which incidentally I planted way too close to my peas).
So now both varieties are pumping out at the same time and I have more peas than I can eat. So I’m busy harvesting peas everyday and freezing them until I can use the. I’m also stuffing as many into my mouth on a daily basis too - don’t want to miss out on that fresh, green taste.
So what I’ve learned is that if I grow two varieties then they should be grown in separate beds with appropriate support. And maybe choose some more distinct early and late varieties.
I just had to share this photo with you. We’re calling it Strawberry Peak - like Henman Hill only slightly more berry-like. And you can’t get better than home-grown Strawberries with cream on Wimbledon week, can you? Come on Nadal!
Remember to snap off onion flowers as they appear. If you let the plants flower they will become woody and unusable. Try to remember which ones started to bolt and use these first as they won’t keep well if you try to store them.
Whoa! Look at the size of them! I don’t think I’ve ever managed to grow strawberries this big. I can only put it down to the sizable amount of wood ash that I dumped on them in early spring. Whatever I did - it worked. Obviously I have more than two! I’m thinking about grilling them in some Pimms and serving them with vanilla ice-cream. What do you think?
We went on an impromptu picnic by the canal today so before we left I ran out and picked a few things for the basket including my newly bulbed up Radish. These went into my tuna salad sandwiches along with Little Gem and some Chives. We also had some Mange Tout with Humous and New Potato salad. Plus a couple of beers obviously!
