Vine Cottage Vegetable growing in Fulbourn (Cambridge) 

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.