Veggie Growing

Dear All

How has the rain affected your crops.  For me, my rhubarb is burgeoning, as are my salad crops – radishes, lettuce, spring onions, garlic, beetroot, etc.  I also have a lot of lovely bronze fennel plants coming up and some nice nasturtiums – the flowers are so pretty and good for the bees and the leaves are very tasty in salads and cooked too.

Sadly some of my potato bags got attacked by aphids in the greenhouse – goodness knows where they came from, but most are OK.

My perpetual spinach is doing very well and I hope to crop some soon!

I know there was a widespread frost last night so I hope it did not affect too many of you on the veggie front.     All this rain has had a very positive effect in many ways.

1.  No need to walk up and down endlessly with watering cans because of the hosepipe ban.

2.  Veggies are green and healthy.

3.  Rain water is always better for healthy plants than tap water.  (makes you wonder what tap water does to we humans …)

Anyway, hoping to get some sunshine this weekend so I can do a bit of weeding and maybe a bit of planing but depends on the ground too.  If it is too wet, not so good for the seeds.

Will get some nice photos added at the weekend too I hope.

Would love to hear comments about how the rain has been affecting all of you.

Has anyone out there tried growing asparagus.  I absolutely love it and understand you buy crowns but that they do not crop in the first year.  Does anyone have any knowledge and experience in growing this as I would be interested to try next year?

Also I have a nice recipe from the Internet to try too!  

Preparation method

Prep: 25 mins | Cook: 20 mins

A nice recipe from the Internet using squash, mushrooms and spring onions.  Always good to put our home grown veggies into a new and exciting recipe.  I think spring onions are great in cooking, particularly stir fries and salads.

Ingredients: (Serves 4)

750 g/1 lb 10 oz luffa squash (or other squash as available), peeled

30 ml/2 tablespoons groundnut (peanut) or sesame oil

2 shallots, halved and sliced

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

115 g/4 oz/1.5 cups button (white) mushrooms, quartered

15 ml/1 tablespoon mushroom sauce

10 ml/2 teaspoons soy sauce

4 spring onions (scallions), cut into 2 cm/0.75 inch pieces

Fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves and thin strips of spring onion, to garnish

Method:

1. Cut the luffa squash (or other squash as available) diagonally into 2 cm/0.75 inch thick pieces. Heat the oil in a large wok or heavy pan. Stir in the halved shallots and garlic, stir-fry until they begin to turn golden color, then add the mushrooms.

2. Add the soy sauce and the squash. Reduce the heat, cover and cook gently for a few minutes until the squash is tender. Stir in the spring onion pieces, garnish with coriander and spring onion strips, and serve with white rice.

I was given some pots and seeds for sage, rosemary and thyme in March so I planted them up and put them in the greenhouse.  I can see a few seedlings showing, so hope they will do well.

I am growing potatoes from chitted seeds in bags in the greenhouses.  They are growing, but rather slowly.

Has anyone else had much luck with these so far this year.  I think the weather has been a bit cold and has stopped them from romping off and progressing quickly, so I guess I shall have to be very patient.

For those of you with a small or large pond (good for frogs and newts and also the birds like to drink from the edge) it is an excellent idea to plant Marshmarigolds.  These wonderful plants bear fabulous golden flowers for weeks and they attract bees and hoverflies, all good for the garden.  These plants spread fairly quickly but do not really choke up a pond and can be split and spare ones passed to neighbours with ponds.  Sharing plants is an enjoyable thing to do, often plant swaps are good too.

My perpetual spinach is in its second year.  In my experience it tends to go for three seasons and that is it, so my plan is to plant successive spinach in the second year so it is established by the time the third year of the current crop arrives and then I will have spinach every year.  These plants are wonderful, offering tender young spinach for salads, early on and as the plants mature during the season, larger leaves for cooking, as they are a little tougher.  The plants die back towards the end of the year and spring back into life around February and last until about October.

Now this one has done very well.  This is a new bed my Husband built along with the one I mentioned in my previous post with lettuce, radishes and beetroot growing in it.  The one pictures the garlic plants I transplanted from overwintered bulbs and also I split my chive plant into three and put them in this bed.  Then I planted seeds for carrots, spring onions and lettuce and these have all done very well.  I put a basil plant in the corner as this will flower and attract bees – also my chives, weirdly enough, are beginning to get buds already.

Well folks, you can bet your bottom dollar that nothing gets it raining like the weather people telling you there is a problem with a drought – still we needed this rain and luckily, whilst I had little news at the beginning of the month when it was rather dry and the soil was taking a hit and having to be watered with a watering can owing to the hose pipe ban from early April, now that there has been masses of wonderful rainfall, my seedlings and established veg have been romping away!

Actually, earlier in the month (as we are currently having some building work done outside) I was finding it a real pain having to fill up the watering cans and navigate the obstacles and holes in the garden made by the construction work in order to get to my raised beds at the other end of the garden, so the rain came as a welcome boost to my plants and to my pleasure in not having to carry said water vessels up the garden, returning to fill them over and over.

The net result of the rain is that my seedlings have thrived and so has my spinach and my rhubarb.  OK, so I haven’t managed to plant new things as the ground has been a bit sodden, but I plan, as soon as the rain subsides a bit, to get my beans, peas and mangetout in.

I have attached some lovely pics showing my seedlings.  I know I shall have to thin them out once they are bigger, but none shall go to waste if I can help it – I shall remove the surplus and plant them elsewhere, even if it is in a pot.  I cannot stand gthe profligate waste of seedlings, as seen on TV when gardeners say that they have too many in one place and they just discard them on the compost heap, after all, they have struggled and striven to make it and I want to make the most of my and their efforts.

I also have a pic of my rhubarb, which was in a sunny position for the first two years but at the end of the second season, owing to pending building work, my Husband moved the plant to a slightly shadier position in the back garden and I think the plant likes it more, having put on about a foot of growth in 4-6 weeks.  I guess it prefers a bit of shade to full sun (although we have been pretty lacking in full sun in the past couple of weeks) but we did need that rain.  At least April showers are back to the seasonal norm and I don’t know about you but I think I would prefer the Seasons to return to their normal patterns as that works out best for us all, then no droughts and no heatwaves.

Dear All

This weekend I planted several rows of salad veg in one of my nice new raised beds, built by my very kind Husband.  I put in some rows of lettuce, beetroot and radishes, all different varieties, as well as some land cress.  Have taken some photos and will post later on as I need to load them on to the PC.

My rhubarb has really taken off in its new slightly shadier spot and I think it prefers it there.  As for my perpetual spinach, that is doing extremely well.

The seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are just visible as tiny seedlings (lettuce, carrots and spring onions) and the potato bags are showing the first signs of sprouting!  Hurrah!

This weekend, I plan to get my pea and bean bed ready and I intend to include some sweet peas up the canes for scent, beauty and most of all, for the bees!

Please could I ask you all to consider the bees, whose numbers have diminished over the past few years, along with many insect species, and suggest you all put in at least one wildflower bed or some wildflowers in the corners of your veggie beds, or both.  I always put a flowering plant or two in the corner of each of my veg beds and this year I intend to plant up a small bed of annual and perennial wild flowers too!

I also planted up 3 herb pots with sage, rosemary and time (a Birthday gift) and some pots with chilli peppers and some with sweet peppers but I gave each a plastic bag hat with a few holes in to aid germination as I have not had much luck with these types of plants in previous years.

Pics will be added for all of the above later today, hopefully.

HAPPY SOWING AND GROWING ALL!