The blossom has been stunning in the last month and the prospect of maturing fruit in months to come is very exciting. We have baby gooseberries, blackcurrants and our first tiny green tomato. The raspberries are shooting and we’re feasting on our enormous rhubarb crop.
A Baby Gooseberry
Black currants forming
My first tomato this year
The tender plants sown from seed in my conservatory are desperate to move to their final home, my borlotti beans have tendrils getting on for 2 feet high and the runner beans are not far behind. The courgettes have multiple leaves and are developing flower buds, they will all have to wait a little bit longer, we had a frost only two nights ago, which would potentially wipe the whole lot out. I have planted out two courgettes under cloches as I can’t wait to start harvesting one of my favourite summer vegetables.
Courgettes, protected from possible frost under cloches
I’m cutting the odd mizuna leaf for salads, a crop well worth growing, far more flavour than lettuce but not as peppery as rocket. It can be grown virtually all year round under glass and is a cut and come again crop.
Mizuna, a cut and come again salad crop well worth growing
We’ve started to harvest our first batch of radish and they are delicious. I served one to the husband who took some persuading to taste. The last time I grew radish, he claims it ‘nearly blew his head off’. I must confess it was incredibly hot and unpleasant. Lesson learnt, this year I have sown ‘Radish, French Breakfast’ with crisp flesh and mild flavour, they will definitely become a veg patch regular.
The radishes
Annual weed seedlings just keep coming up in the new raised beds, I take them out with a hoe as much as I can. In areas where there are delicate seedlings popping up it is very tricky, the weeds are best pulled out by hand. I keep telling myself that as long as the weeds don’t set seed themselves, there will be far fewer next year.
Annual weeds, in amongst my onion seedlings (can be spotted if you look carefully)
I have taken a new approach with my shallot seeds. Usually I sow shallots indoors in February and then transplant them individually into the veg patch, a laborious task, by the time I’m half way through the seedlings I’m chucking the rest on the compost heap. I saw a tip in a seed catalogue this winter which suggested sowing a few shallot seeds into modules which are planted out as a whole. It says the shallots will develop making space for each other. So far so good, fingers crossed the theory works and the shallots can make sufficient space to grow.
Shallots
For those who read my posting two weeks ago about sowing sweet pea seeds, I’m pleased to say their fresh green shoots are up, roll on the beautifully scented flowers.
Sweet Pea shoots
Radish ready for picking
Broad Bean Aquadulce Claudia, I sow them in October for an early Spring crop, usually very successful unless we have an unusually cold winter
Artichokes, they look so beautiful I can’t bare to cut them yet.
Ranunculus Aviv Orange, Zing! I can’t keep my eyes off them, an amazing cut flower.
Autumn sown Sweet Peas, the summer floral scent is a refreshing change from the more intense and heady daffodil aroma I’ve got used to in the last few months
Flowers from the cutting border. It was only when up loading this picture that I realised how ridiculous the tulips look, they’ve now been reduced in size and popped back into the arrangement below! I’m far from a natural florist!
