Vine Cottage Vegetable growing in Fulbourn (Cambridge) 

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!