Come the end of July, with broad beans and peas finished, and garlic, shallots, red onions and the early potatoes lifted the veg patch is starting to have availability again.  Some of the space (okay, quite a bit of the space) has been promptly reused for fennel (ahh — the thought of roast dinners in the autumn…), but even then there are some gaps left.  So what to do?  I guess if I were organised I would have had lots more crops growing on in modules ready to pop in, but I’m not, and so instead I’m looking for things to sow now.

A bit of searching has ended up with me buying a bunch of things I’ve never tried before.

– Chicory Bianca di Milano.  Says, “Sow May-August and harvest September-December”.  I sowed direct on July 31 with 30 cm spacings each way.

– Spring Onion Toga (red bunching).  Says, “Sow March-August and harvest September-March”.  I sowed one row direct on July 31 at 5 cm spacings.

– Savoy Cabbage Napoletano Quarantino.  Says, “Sow March-August and harvest August-March”.  I sowed a row of seeds for subsequent transplanting on July 31.

– Pak Choi Green Revolution.  Just says they can be sown in the autumn.  I’ve sown a few in modules and a few direct (today — August 12).

I’ve also thrown in a row of Amsterdam forcing carrot (July 31).  Not one of the varieties that are specifically listed for sowing late, but I had some so thought it was worth a try.

I’ve no idea if any of this will actually work — the cabbage in particular seems optimistic as I can’t see any other varieties that claim they can be sown this late and still be harvested before next spring, but we shall see  I will let you know how we get on…

OK, so when I said last time that I would post again soon, I admittedly had intended it to be rather sooner than this!  I blame the weather for meaning that there have been better things to do than sit inside at a computer, and since the sun is still out, I shall keep this short and sweet

Really everything is just plodding along nicely in the vegetable patch at the moment.

The peas (once again growing Waverex after they did so well last year) were excellent — beautifully sweet when picked young and massive yields from short rows (1 3ft row — actually a triple staggered row) provided as many peas we could eat for a two-week period.  The broad beans have also been good, although yields have been disappointing.  This year I grew three types in succession Sutton dwarf first which were good, then Masterpiece Longpod and then Witkiem Manita.  The Sutton dwarf provided excellent yields for their size, but the others were disappointing only producing pods on the lower parts of the plants.  Perhaps a consequence of the strange weather we’ve had this year with a very hot and dry spring?  Anyway there were plenty to keep the peas company in our favourite salads (see recipes page).

The courgettes are busy doing their thing, and this year we’ve experimented with Courgette cake (both chocolate and non-chocolate versions) which have gone down very well.  Personally I prefer the non-chocolate version, and I would highly recommend the recipe at netmums.  I wouldn’t however get as excited about the health benefits as some of the mums seem to be — I think each little fairy cake contains ~ 1 small slice of courgette which is rather outweighed by the butter and sugar .  Strangely, given that the courgettes are doing well, the cucumbers are very disappointing — last year we were inundated, whilst this year we’ve only had a couple.

Sweetcorn being grown for first time this year also looks excellent.  Hopefully the cobs have pollinated OK — watch this space.  I’m slightly nervous as the flowers that released the pollen seem to be an awfully long way from the tassles that need to receive it but I’m sure it will be fine!

Otherwise it’s all the usual candidates …Garlic is lifted and dried (Early Wight seems to have performed really well again), lettuce, beetroot, shallots, red onions, spinach, celeriac, french beans, runner beans, florence fennel, sprouting broccoli, parsnips etc. are all doing their stuff…  Sorry to anyone who got left out!

Only a couple of other things particularly worth noting…

In the herb bed, the (herb) fennel has been truly spectacular this year (see photos below).  I wonder again whether that’s been caused by having had such a hot spring?  And having had some disappointing years with tomatoes recently, this year the plants (Gardener’s Delight as usual) are the healthiest I’ve ever had.  Having got stuck with a small growbag again, I decided this year to grow them in pots in the growbag — I’ve no idea if that’s why they’re doing well, but certainly something I will be doing again in future.  And finally, the Welsh Onions which are also new this year have looked wonderful (and been much enjoyed by the bumblebees and hover flies), although I have yet to figure out exactly what to do with them in the kitchen!

I hope you are all enjoying your gardens, and I leave you with a few other non-vegetable related photos from ours…

We also had some leeks — somewhat small, but given the ordeal they had been through first being badly attacked by rust and then pretty much finished off by leek moth, we were pleased to get anything

Facts and figures?  I’m interested to know just how much the veg patch actually yields so I try to keep a record of how much of each crop we’ve had, and convert this to a monetary value based on “the price I would have paid at the supermarket / local veg shop”.  Importantly, I take the supermarket’s price for the bog standard non-organic/non-taste the difference version as more often than not that’s what we would have bought had we not had it in the garden.  I also subtract any significant costs (e.g. seed potatoes), and provide “discounts” on things we haven’t enjoyed.  The result was that this year yielded over £250 of veg.  That’s obviously not the real value at all — the real value is the GYO bit, the exercise, the enjoyment of the garden, the fact that Sam at two and a half is able to show you where all the different vegetables come from in the garden and all that good stuff — but I think it’s an interesting figure nonetheless (and I make Helen pay me the money out of the food budget, so now I’ve got £250 to treat myself with

A very belated happy 2011 to everyone!

For me May marks the end of one veg growing year, and the start of the next, so I thought now would be a good time to wrap up the 2010-2011 year.  So what’s happened since the last update in December?

Well, we had lots of parsnips (10kg) which were excellent.  Better quality than last year due to the fact that they seem to have been less affected by Carrot fly and canker, but rather more variable in size — I think because germination had been poor, and many had to be re-sown very late on.  The idea had been to compare the three varieties, “Gladiator”, “Tender and True” and “Countess F1″, but with so many not germinating and then later being replaced by others they all ended up getting rather mixed up!

We also had some leeks — somewhat small, but given the ordeal they had been through, first being badly attacked by rust and then pretty much finished off by leek moth, we were pleased to get anything

Last of the parsnips and leeks

And then of course the sprouting broccoli — 3 plants of red-arrow and 1 of white-star.  The plants looked pretty bedraggled and sorry for themselves at the end of the winter (perhaps not surprising — I’m told December was the coldest for 120 years), but as usual they rallied and produced a good yield when there was nothing else to eat (not that it’s like we are entirely dependent on the garden and would have starved without it!).  It’s the first year we had grown white sprouting broccoli, and it was interesting for the variety it provided (looks more like small heads of cauliflower) but I’m not entirely converted — for me it has a slightly “bitter” (?) taste compared to the purple sprouting.  As in previous years nearly all the broccoli was treated as asparagus and eaten as a starter with olive oil or butter, Parmesan and black pepper.  Some got the VIP treatment this year though and was served with poached eggs and hollandaise —  superb, but I do have to try hard not to think about just how much butter goes into the hollandaise!

Bedraggled broccoli - Feb 2011

Broccoli - April 2011

White sprouting broccoli

Facts and figures?  I’m interested to know just how much the veg patch actually yields so I try to keep a record of how much of each crop we’ve had, and convert this to a monetary value based on “the price I would have paid at the supermarket / local veg shop”.  Importantly, I take the supermarket’s price for the bog standard non-organic/non-taste the difference version as more often than not that’s what we would have bought had we not had it in the garden.  So it’s a measure of how much money having our own veg has saved us rather than how much it would cost to buy the equivalent.  I also subtract any significant costs (e.g. seed potatoes), and provide “discounts” on things we haven’t enjoyed.  The result was that this year yielded over £250 of veg.  That’s obviously not the real value at all — the real value is the GYO bit, the exercise, the enjoyment of the garden, the fact that Sam at two and a half is able to show you where all the different vegetables come from in the garden and all that good stuff — but I think it’s an interesting figure nonetheless (and I make Helen pay me the money out of the food budget, so now I’ve got £250 to treat myself with

(Click for larger image…)

I’ll try to post again soon with some thoughts on how 2011 has started.  For now, you will have to make do with a few photos (they’re the best bit after all!)  [Sorry, gallery below includes duplicates of the photos above -- I can't find a way to exclude them]

So, as we approach the end of 2010 and having not written anything here for a while, now seems like a good time for a roundup of the year.

2010 has been a rather mixed year in the garden, with unfortunate events “off the field” somewhat dominating!  That said, it’s been far from a complete disaster…

Highlights

• Sprouting Broccoli
• Broad Beans
• Peas
• Garlic
• Spinach
• Shallots
• Courgettes
• Raspberries
• Fennel
• Winter Squash (Uchi Kuri)
• Celeriac
• Parsnips

Raspberries, courgettes and green & yellow cucumbers

The calendar year started well with the crop from last year’s late purple sprouting broccoli — after a somewhat barren few months, the tender spears lightly boiled and served as a simple starter with butter, parmesan and pepper were a real treat.  An important lesson was learned though — late sprouting broccoli really is late (April/May), and so this year I’ve grown earlier varieties (White Star and Red Arrow).   My plants this year are also much stronger and healthier having been protected with fleece until they were about 3 foot tall to provide protection from the dreaded caterpillars.  If plant size is anything to go by, we should be in for a bumper crop to start next year, and it will be interesting to see what the white variety is like.

Next year's sprouting broccoli (White Star and Red Arrow)

The broad beans and peas provided the next highlight.  As you may recall, broad beans were something of an experiment for me this year never having been a fan previously.  I can now consider myself a convert though — attractive plants (masterpiece green longpod growing to about 6 foot tall, with delicate purple flowers), bright green beans carefully wrapped in furry linings, and great to eat in all sorts of ways: with roasts, in salads, as houmous or even as a chilled soup.  The peas were also a revelation — having almost not bothered this year due to disappointing yields in the past, this year they were excellent (“Waverex” in particular).  See my July post for more.

Another experiment this year was the garlic.  This was also excellent, having provided us with a plentiful supply since May, lots still hanging in the shed, and a few bulbs of the Early Wight having been replanted for next year (all the varieties I grew were good, but Early Wight produced both the earliest and largest bulbs so seems a clear winner).  Drying it was a bit of a hassle, and I’m still not sure what the best solution is but it seems to have generally stored fairly well.  The ”Echalote Grise” were also a definite success, mostly getting used in trays of roasted mixed veg alongside courgettes, garlic and potatoes.

Freshly lifted garlic

The Enviromesh cage came into its own for protecting early and late crops of spinach from the dreaded leaf miner.  Spinach is a crop which I’m finding increasingly more valuable for both small tender salad leaves, and cooked when larger in a wide variety of dishes.  See my spinach page for more.

This was also the first year for Raspberries, having planted 8 canes of Autumn Bliss around the back and right hand side of the vegetable patch.  Another definite success, these provided enough raspberries for the three of us to have either on porridge in the morning or for dessert (typically as a simple variation on Eton mess J) for a good couple of months.  In terms of total yield (about 2.25 kg) you could consider it disappointing (I think you can get that from each cane with summer raspberries), but it was only the first year and they were delicious!

Elsewhere, the fennel and celeriac have been/are being excellent as always (although in both cases yields have suffered a little from being planted out too late), and the parsnips look set to be excellent — we have only eaten two so far, but the second in particular was probably the best I’ve ever eaten!  Books talk a lot about how your home-grown vegetables will taste better than anything you ever buy from a shop — that’s not always my experience, but in this particular case there can be no doubt.  Unfortunately, I grew three varieties of past that this year, and for various reasons I am no longer certain which are which.  D’oh!   Fennel, celeriac and parsnips remain three of our absolute favourite vegetables: nearly all of our fennel gets simply roasted with olive oil, lemon  zest and juice, fennel seeds and chilli flakes (a recipe which has converted even my brother who normally avoids anything green), most of the celeriac gets mashed (equally good with roasts or fresh tuna) and parsnips of course get roasted but have also been made into a rather good soup with chorizo.

Fennel -- a perennial favourite

Oh, and I forgot the cucumbers.  I grew one plant each of Marketmore and Crystal Lemon (round yellow cucumbers), and both were unqualified successes.  No issues with bitterness, and more cucumbers than we knew what to do with well into the autumn…

Cucumber Crystal Lemon

Less successful

• Summer Squash (Patty Pan)
• Potatoes
• Leeks
• Red Onions
• Chilies
• Tomatoes
• Strawberries
• Borlotti Beans
• Runner Beans
• French Beans
• Rhubarb
• (Gooseberries)
• (Currants)

I will keep this brief, because who wants to dwell on the negatives when so much was so good?  :-)

The yellow patty pan squash looked pretty and tasted “okay” but the yield was significantly smaller than an equivalent courgette plant would have provided and the taste was certainly no better.

Potatoes you can read about here.

The leeks were probably one of the biggest disappointments, as I introduced them this year to provide a crop through the winter.  Unfortunately they were first ravaged by rust, and then pretty much annihilated by leek moth (with caterpillars tunnelling down inside the stem and turning them to mush).  Instead of about 60 large leeks I have 30 very weedy ones which we are yet to start eating.

After being savaged by leek moth there seemed little point in weeding

The chilies were also something of a flop, with it taking me so long to get the seeds to germinate that the plants never got large enough to actually produce any fruit (a shame as chilies have always been something I’ve had success with in the past, and this summer being so hot should have been perfect).  That said, I have brought two plants inside and they are so far surviving pretty well, so with a bit of luck I’m hoping that I may be able to keep them going until next summer.  Ironically (given the difficulty I had getting seeds to germinate) the chilli plant that grew best was one that grew in a crack in our paving outside presumably from a fruit dropped last year!

The beans were pretty much a complete non-starter.  Having been inundated with both runner beans and French beans last year, this year I attempted to grow a single wigwam of beans in the potato border with a mix of Borlotti, Runners and French.  It didn’t work.  The Borlotti were the only ones that grew and they only yielded about one jar’s worth of beans.  Oops.  I think there were multiple issues: I failed to get the Runners and French beans to germinate until quite late, I don’t think they liked competing with the then well established Borlottis, and I think the soil was too poor.  Unfortunately, the necessity of crop rotation is going to make it difficult to find a much better place next year…

The red onions were fine, but they haven’t stored well and the yield didn’t justify the space or effort.  The strawberries which were excellent last year for some reason produced virtually nothing this year.  Tomatoes were okay, but yields were disappointing (in fairness probably as a result of neglect).  One of the two new rhubarb plants was lost to disease (see July), and the crop from the new gooseberry and currant plants was almost non-existent (fingers crossed it’s better next year, as the gooseberries in particular tasted superb).

And finally, two positive notes to end on

The vegetable patch remains a definite visual success, and acts as a nice focal point to the garden.  When the veg are growing well it is definitely a happy place to be!

Happy veg equals happy people!

Garden focal point

And despite quite a few failures this year, the veg patch remains a financial success too — valuing the crop based on the price we would have paid at e.g. Tesco’s (for standard non-organic versions), the yield so far this year (veg growing year, so not including e.g. last year’s broccoli) has been over £200 with half the celeriac, and all of the parsnips and broccoli still to come…  Okay, so that wouldn’t exactly pay for my time but it is a nice bonus!

Yield 2010 -- click for larger version

As is traditional for new ground, in 2010 I used the new island bed (dug out of the lawn in autumn 2009) for growing potatoes.

Seed potatoes were purchased from JBA potatoes and were planted on March 26 in trenches with moderate amounts of Growmore dug into the bottom.

• 9x Red Duke of York (first early).  Yield of 10.7 kg.
• 5x Maris Bard (first early).  Yield of 4.3 kg.
• 5x Charlotte (second early).  Yield of 4.9 kg.
• 5x Edgecote Purple (second early).  Yield of 8.6 kg.
• 5x Romano (maincrop).  Yield of 8.5 kg.

Summary

Plants grew well and were healthy (after being set back by late frost in early May), but results were disappointing.  Yields were moderate, but all potatoes were badly scabbed (possibly caused by very dry summer and/or alkaline soil?), and eating was at best nothing spectacular.  The Red Duke of York billed as “the best of the best” were particularly poor.  The one exception were the Romano (maincrop), which mostly escaped the scab, are currently storing well (mid-December), and taste good if not exceptional — especially as jackets.

Having lots of potatoes to eat throughout the summer also became a bit of a burden as we realised that many of our favourite summer vegetable recipes were in fact salads, risottos, pasta etc!

If I grow potatoes again then given the lack of available space I will probably just grow a few salad potatoes — Anya were good the previous year — and possibly some maincrop.

Red Duke of York

Started harvesting at the end of June and kept going through till the end of September.  Average yield 1.2 kg.

Verdict: I had high hopes for these as the JBA website said, “With out doubt this is one of my favourite varieties that we sell and many major supermarkets and retailers are now stocking this potato as the best of the best in the potato world.”

Personally I found them mealy to the point of being unpleasant though — when boiled they kind of stuck to the inside of your mouth.  The best solution we found was to roast or cook them as Hasselbacks.

Maris Bard

Started harvesting at the end of June and kept going through till the end of September.  Average yield 0.86 kg.

Verdict: The best of the earlies in terms of flavour, but nothing spectacular.  Skins disintegrated on cooking making them unattractive when boiled (which to be fair was true of all the other earlies as well).

Charlotte

Started harvesting at the start of July and kept going through till the end of August.  Average yield 1 kg.

Verdict: Okay.

Edgecote Purple

Harvested from early August through till early October.  Average yield 1.72 kg.

Verdict: taste nothing special.  Bizarre to cook with: the first time we boiled them, and after three minutes they had completely disintegrated.  The second time we tried to bake them, and after 20 minutes they had exploded!   It appears they cook “very quickly”.   By the end of the summer we were having to give these away.

Romano

Harvested middle of September.  Average yield 1.7 kg.

The highlight of the potato harvest.  By some distance the most attractive of the potatoes we’ve grown in terms of appearance, a nice pink colour, and virtually completely escaping the scab which has blighted the rest of the crop.  They also taste good (making particularly good jackets) and lifted in October they have so far stored entirely trouble-free in hessian sacks in the garage.  The only one of this year’s crop which I would grow again.

Having previously found that spinach grew best early on in the season, in 2010 it was grown as a first crop to be followed by leeks and fennel later in the year.

Two varieties of spinach were grown: “Tetona F1 Hybrid” (Thompson and Morgan) and “Bordeaux” (Suttons).  In previous years I’ve found that spinach crops have suffered a lot from what I call “leaf miner”, so to combat this I tried growing most of the spinach under an Enviromesh cage (along with my carrots).  Of course, as with any good experiment some spinach was sacrificed outside of the cage as a control for comparison.

The following photo (taken on 31 May) shows a 1m row of spinach (at the back) sown on March 15 under the mesh: half and half each of the two different types.  It’s not terribly clear from the photo, but I’m disappointed by the Bordeaux — tall and lanky with small and sparse leaves.  In comparison the Tetona forms a much more compact plant with larger more densely packed leaves — overall I would say several times more productive than the Bordeaux.  Although the Bordeaux has some aesthetic appeal (the purple vein and a more dainty leaf shape) I won’t bother with it again.

It seems the net was also successful in protecting the spinach from whatever it is that devours the leaves.  None of the spinach under the net was affected, but the following photo shows a typical leaf on the spinach that was unprotected.  Whatever it is gets inside the leaf and tunnels between the outside layers.  Without protection, my experience is that a lot of the crop always seems to be lost in this way, and sorting out the good leaves from the manky ones makes the job of washing and cooking significantly less fun.  Using the mesh cage is a pain — taking it on and off makes harvesting rather less fun — but  it definitely does seem to be worthwhile.

In total I grew the equivalent of one 2.5m row of spinach.  This provided a steady supply of leaves on a cut and come again basis through May and June when I dug up the plants to make room for the next crop.  The amount produced was plenty for salad and a small amount of cooking, but in future I will plan to grow more: as soon as you start cooking spinach you find that a vast amount is required (500g for 4 people is a lot of small leaves!)

Recipes we’ve tried and enjoyed

• (A favourite) Ciabatta with Feta, pesto, spinach and cherry tomatoes (can’t remember where — you don’t really need a recipe though )
• Fried spinach balls (River cottage)
• Green risotto with pancetta (River cafe)
• Spinach and Feta tart (Helen says “some magazine”!)

Rain! Finally, as I sit here typing, it is raining! And not even just light rain — no, it’s the kind of rain that visibly runs down the street. After a mere 3.9 mm in the last month, and average daytime maximum temperatures of 27°C (peaking at 33.8°C) it’s not before time. My parents in the Highlands though somehow don’t take kindly to me complaining about a lack of rain…

Indeed, the last month has not been the best for the garden — a sequence of “other events” at Vine Cottage have had to take higher priority and the little time remaining has been pretty much entirely taken up with watering. Finding time to harvest, cook or even eat our produce has therefore been a challenge. And as for luxuries like weeding… Fortunately last weekend afforded me almost an entire day to blitz the jobs that needed doing.

Even so, there has still been plenty of (mostly good) news to share — it’s that time of year where I love the fact that you can have entire meals from the garden (which with garlic and shallots to throw into the mix is even more true this year than previously). I recognise though that this month’s post is a little “drier” than the clever and witty style that my readers are accustomed to (cough cough) — so give it a miss if you like, and just hop over to the new recipes page for some inspiration instead

Peas and Broad beans

This year has been something of a revelation where peas are concerned. My experience in previous years has been poor — you grow an entire row, it yields about enough peas for two portions of vegetables and they don’t even taste much better than frozen ones. This year though I tried some different varieties, and planted 1m of “Waverex” and 1m of “Progress No.9″, and they’ve been wonderful. Between them they yielded 3.4 kg of peas (in their pods), and the peas have been delicious — sweet enough to eat raw straight off the plant, and apparently very attractive to small children Growing to at least 3ft high, my row of Waverex accounted for well over half of the total yield, and tasted the best as well — I expect to find a row of these across the end of one of my beds every year in future!

And what’s more, it turns out that I do like broad beans! With roasts, in salads, as houmous and as a chilled soup — every way they’ve been great. And how can you not love seeing them nestled in their furry pods? Check out the new recipes page for our favourites. My 2m row produced 7 kg in their pods (roughly 2.5 kg podded), and I suspect the yield should have been quite a bit higher — I reckon only about 20% of the flowers turned into beans this year (possibly a lack of water at a critical time?)

Shallots, Onions and garlic

The garlic (I reckon the equivalent of 40 conventional supermarket bulbs) has all been harvested, and minus a few tasty bulbs that have already been eaten is now hanging in the shed. The shallots (”Echalote Grise”) are also up: a square metre plot has yielded 110 bulbs (3.75 kg), the first batch are now hanging in a net bag in the shed and the remainder are continuing to dry sheltered beneath the eaves of the house.

Finally the red onions are now swelling nicely thanks to regular watering!

Squashes

Having exhausted the yellow courgette seeds that I’ve been using for many years, this year I’m growing a more conventional green courgette (”zucchini”) and it is doing what courgettes do: producing courgettes pretty much daily.  Again, check out the recipes page for some of the best so far this year, with a special mention going to Carluccio’s “courgette pasta with spinach balls”.

More excitingly, I’m having my first go at growing summer squash (”Sunburst F1″), and winter squash (”Uchiki Kuri”).  The summer squash seem to taste basically the same as courgettes, but are an attractive yellow Patty Pan type.  The first fruit to form on the winter squash started to rot and dropped off at about the size of a golf ball (possibly a pollination problem?), but the next seem to be fine, and are now beginning to look quite impressive.  Hopefully the hot summer will go on long enough for them to fully form and ripen.

Elsewhere …

The tomatoes having looked on the verge of death when first planted out are now generally looking good and the first fruits are ripening nicely — the lack of rain has obviously had some benefits.  The Gooseberries whilst few in number were probably the best I’ve ever eaten (”Hinomaki Red” and “Yellow”) — let’s just hope we get rather more than a dozen of each in the second year!  And I’ve also started sowing follow-on crops of fennel and more spinach in place of the now harvested early carrots, spinach and shallots.

Finally the less good news

Sadly not all goes well …

One of the new rhubarb plants was diseased and has been binned.  I e-mailed a photo to www.brandycarrnurseries.co.uk where it came from, and they said “Oh dear — that doesn’t look good.  Dig it up, throw it away and we will send you a new one.”  Good service, but doesn’t change the fact that it’s now going to be another year before I can start picking from that plant.  Meanwhile the other plant (”Stockbridge Arrow”) seems to be doing its best to make up for it — romping away and swamping everything within a 4 foot radius including the back of my new herbaceous border …

The potatoes are also disappointing.  Yielding only about 500 g per plant, I suspect they’re barely covering the cost of the seed potatoes.  They’ve also been badly “scabbed” .  Personally I remain suspicious of the fact that the seed potatoes were infected before we even started –despite the fact that www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk assured me at the time that this was nothing to worry about.  Taste has also been disappointing: the Maris Bards tasted pretty good, but the Red Duke of Yorks (described by the website as “the best of the best in the potato world”) to my taste border on being unpleasant boiled, and not much better roasted.  Fingers crossed for the Edgecote Purple and Romano yet to come.

Finally, summer has arrived and the veg patch is once again becoming productive with an abundance of spinach, lettuce and mixed salad leaves. We also finished up the remainder of the late purple sprouting broccoli early this month, finally freeing up the space for baby fennel, more beetroot and even more lettuce (I’ve got my eyes on a lettuce, broad bean and chorizo soup which serves four and uses three whole lettuces — if it’s any good we will get through them pretty quickly!)

I’ve also lifted the first of my garlic — the Early Wights — which look great (I’ve never grown garlic before). Unfortunately I took my eye off the ball a little with these and forgot that the Early Wights (being early) should have been harvested before now. I thought I was supposed to be waiting for the tops to start browning which they haven’t really, but a little rummaging in the soil showed that the bulbs have started to split apart and the individual cloves have started shooting. Never mind — it probably just means that they won’t keep very well so I just need to find some good garlic recipes now (dough balls and garlic butter sounds like a good starting place)! To be on the safe side, I also lifted a few of the Mediterranean garlic. Now I just need to sort through the mountains of conflicting advice about how to dry garlic for storage — I’ve plumped for leaving them out in the sun during the day and bringing them in at night (night-time temperatures are currently dropping below 10°, and I’m told that temperature fluctuations can cause the garlic to start growing again). If anyone knows what I should actually be doing, please let me know!

Elsewhere the strawberry season has started (as would the currant season have done had the birds not beaten me to it), the peas are coming on nicely and we will make a start on the broad beans and new potatoes in the next few days. Still looking forward to trying to find a way of preparing broad beans that means that I actually like them — all recipe suggestions appreciated as usual We are also eating up the baby carrots to make way for the main fennel crop to go in next week. It won’t take long — the carrot germination was poor so there aren’t many and they are also pretty small. Never mind, you can’t beat lifting your own carrots, and it’s nice for Sam to be able to pull his own for tea. Of the two varieties of carrot we grew (”Little fingers” and “Nantes”) “Little fingers” wins in the taste tests — in my extremely humble opinion

The broad bean plants have reached the 6ft predicted, and the purple tinged flowers make them quite eye-catching. A week ago when these photos were taken, they were really too small still but they are coming on rapidly and I confidently predict an imminent glut…

If you’re interested, I’ve also added some new pages on the site.

* Spinach discusses the merits of the two different varieties of spinach I grew this year, and also the outcome of my experiment to see if Enviromesh would prevent the issues I’ve had in the past with leaf miner. It’s also got references to some of our favourite recipes.
* The plot gives a little bit of additional self explanatory background info.

Later in the year, I will probably add pages dedicated to our favourite veg recipes, the results of the 2010 “is it possible to make Mat like broad beans?” challenge and comparisons of the different types of parsnips, peas, gooseberries and currants I’ve grown (in the latter case if the birds actually let me get any!)

See you again soon!

As we enter our second summer, and with lots of new additions to the Vine Cottage garden, I thought perhaps it was time to start a blog… So what’s been going on?

The main vegetable patch

With the veg patch not completed last year until mid April, it was really too late for onions and garlic, so these are new on the menu this year. In the left-hand bed I’ve got three different types of garlic growing: Early Wight, Picardy Wight and Mediterranean. They were all planted last autumn, and are now well established. Meanwhile in the middle bed, I’ve got Shallots (grown from sets) and Onion “Red Baron” grown from seed. Also making a first appearance this year are leeks, where this month I have sown both Blue Solaise and Musselburgh to provide a crop through the winter months which were largely barren last year.

Moving away from onion related subjects, you can also see broad beans “Masterpiece Longpod” growing strongly along the back. Supposedly they’re going to reach something like 6ft which I certainly wouldn’t rule out the way they are growing at the moment. I only have two concerns with these: I don’t like broad beans (I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that growing my own will bring me round and secondly that the flowers have recently started dropping mostly without leaving any beans growing in their place. We shall see.

In the Enviromesh cage I’m growing a couple of varieties of carrots (the mesh providing protection from carrot fly). They’ve been very slow getting going though (the cold weather?) and germination has generally been poor. Hopefully they will get going soon, as they’re supposed to be a first crop followed in July by fennel.

Looking closer at the right-hand bed, we are finally enjoying the last of last year’s crop. Lesson: “late purple sprouting broccoli” really is late! I had expected this to be well finished by now, and to have carrots and beetroot growing in its place. Ho-hum. This year I will be growing “non-late” purple sprouting broccoli … That said, the broccoli is excellent. In the past we’ve eaten it as a normal vegetable, but this year it’s getting VIP treatment and being eaten like asparagus: as a starter served simply with butter and grated Parmesan. This year I’ve sown “red arrow” and “White Star”. And to the left of this bed, we’ve got next year’s parsnips coming up — three varieties this year: “Gladiator”, “Tender and True” and “Countess F1″. Fingers crossed they will be as good as gladiator was last year.

Strawberries. Last year I planted five plants of Calypso strawberries (perpetual fruiting) which were superb producing an extremely tasty crop non-stop well into the autumn. I tried to follow the advice of taking the fruit off them in the first year to encourage them to establish, but they were producing so much that in the end I gave up and enjoyed it instead. I also took five runners off them, so this year the patch has doubled in size, which I reckon is going to provide Helen and I with worthwhile portions of strawberries every couple of days.

Other fruit. This autumn also saw the addition of red currants, white currants and gooseberries (two different varieties of each all being trained as double cordons around the back and side of the vegetable patch — see top picture above), and Rasberry “Autumn Bliss” along the back and down the right-hand side. All are growing well with a healthy if small crop of fruit already developing nicely on the currants and gooseberries. My only concern is that a couple of the cordons seem to be growing lots of side shoots and no leader — I’m hoping this can be rectified simply by choosing one of the side shoots to establish as a new leader when they are next pruned in June.

Finally, that brings us to the potatoes. This central island bed is entirely new this year. The plan had been to grow potatoes in it the first year, and then in subsequent years to turn it over to grasses and perennials. The veg growing thing is a bit addictive though so the jury is still out on what it will be used for longer term. Potatoes are now growing healthily again after a bit of a setback due to the late frost earlier this month. Five varieties: Charlotte, Red Duke of York, Maris Bard, Edgecotte Purple and Romano. I will let you know the results of the taste tests later in the year …

As you can see from the wigwam, I’m also making an attempt to grow Runner beans, Borlotti beans and French beans in this new bed, but I’m not too hopeful — the soil is pretty poor and I didn’t have much in the way of organic matter to add prior to planting.

Oops — I lied! How could I forget the rhubarb Also new this year are two rhubarb plants: Stockbridge Arrow and Brandy Carr Scarlet. Both growing very well, and obviously loving their new location behind the (also new) herbaceous border. But how disappointed was my wife when having been watching them grow with anticipation she asked how long it would be before we could start pulling them and found that the answer was “next year” … Whether or not I will actually have the self-control to follow the advice of not pulling any stalks in the first year remains to be seen!