Category Archives: this month in the garden

The September veg garden

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

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Harvesting this month: French beans, courgettes, patty pan summer squash, sweetcorn, potatoes (the last of the second earlies to eat, plus maincrops to store), apples and raspberries, plus cucumbers and tomatoes from the greenhouse, and baby-leaf salads from pots outside the back door.

Sowing this month: Autumn-sown (Japanese) onions and lots of salads, for outside (under cloches) and in pots to refill the greenhouse borders once the toms are out, including winter lettuce, mizuna, mibuna, American land cress, corn salad, chard, beetroot (for leaves), turnips (for leaves), spring onions, and round-rooted carrots.

This month I will be:

  • Clearing summer brassicas
  • Planting autumn-sown onion sets
  • Mulching empty beds
  • Saving seeds
  • Taking cuttings of herbs and borderline-tender plants like salvias and pelargoniums
  • Planting herbs and perennial vegetables
  • Cooking apples (and tomatoes) to freeze for winter

New perennial crops for this year

Perennial vegetables are so much more sustainable than annual as you don’t have to continually disturb the soil (so no carbon release) and they require much less input in the way of resources compared to raising seeds and using lots of water, warmth, feed and compost.

There aren’t many of them, though, and some are very unfamiliar. So one of my projects this season has been to start a perennial vegetable garden. No soil disturbance, a fraction of the inputs (feed, water, fertiliser, compost) of annual vegetables, and you lock up more carbon with permanent planting too. And a fraction of the effort of regular vegetable gardening. But the trick is to find perennial vegetables you actually want to eat: here’s what I’ve started with.

Daubenton’s (perennial) kale is growing well: it’s under a little tent of mesh to keep the butterflies off but I’ll remove that once they go away at the end of the season.

The skirret was a total failure: sowed direct in May as instructed, absolutely no seedlings. No idea if the slugs got them or if it was too dry or if they just didn’t fancy it this year. It may have been the seeds themselves so will order from a different supplier next year just in case. And I will be sowing them into pots where I can keep an eye on them.

Salsify were more successful: several good leafy rosettes now from direct sowing in May. I am leaving them to establish for a year or two before I try to pull a few roots.

American ground nut (Apios americana): I planted these odd little tubers (they are actually beans but are more like small, floury potatoes to eat) at the foot of canes by the low wall. Not all survived, but enough did for me to think this will be an interesting taste test next year!

Chinese artichokes: Easy as anything to grow – they’re related to deadnettle. I’ve got them in an old sink in the back garden: I will wait until they die back before harvesting some of the knobbly roots to try (probably next month: watch this space).

And a new addition: Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis). It’s not the most spectacular plant, being a clump of fuzzy-felt leaves and not much else. But it is bone hardy and a useful spicy salad ingredient. And when I say spicy, I mean spicy: I had a little taste and like most things Turkish it’s ten times stronger than anything you’ve ever tasted before. I am not sure if I like it yet, but I will persevere.

New mentoring service

Well actually it’s not entirely new: I’ve been mentoring several students recently and have found it works so well I am offering it more widely.

The idea is that you have me “on tap” for advice and help about organic and sustainable methods of food growing, over email (no complicated technology to master!) and when you need it. Arrange an hour whenever it suits you and I can answer questions, give you loads of ideas and inspiration, guide you in starting up a new veg garden or help you develop an existing one. It’s entirely up to you what we talk about and it’s completely tailored to you and your garden. Book a one-off session, or a regular time each week. It’s up to you!

A lovely comment from one regular student recently: “I’m SO glad you’re there!”

For more details contact me at sally(dot)nex(at)btinternet(dot)com.

This year’s tomatoes: the verdict

I haven’t a lot of room in the garden to grow dozens of different types of tomatoes but I do like to try one or two new ones each year (there are about 7,500 varieties to choose from so there’s always one you haven’t grown before)

It has not been a vintage year. I’ve had lots of tomatoes: but only one of the three I grew came up to scratch.

Ailsa Craig Good old Ailsa. What would we do without her? There are relatively few straightforward medium-sized salad toms around nowadays – we all seem to be growing fancy cherries, black tomatoes and beefsteaks instead. But sometimes all you need is a straightforward slicing tom and this one is fantastic: reliable, prolific and great flavour too.

Coeur de Bue To be honest this is my own fault as I was being a cheapskate. I grew Coeur de Boeuf a year or two ago and loved it: all the flavour and size of a beefsteak without the difficulty (or low yields). This one came as a freebie and I thought, Bue? Boeuf? Not much in it… how wrong can you be. Insipid taste, pinkish red (so hard to tell when it’s ripe) and a sort of dry texture: a pale shadow of the original. Won’t be growing again.

Reisentomate Another freebie I should have turned down. It’s an interesting idea: a tomato that grows in segments, so you can pick off a segment at a time to eat rather than having the whole tomato. But beyond the novelty value, you’ve got to ask yourself….. why? Flavour insipid, texture dry, fruits small. Just no.

Mouse attack!

Mice got into the greenhouse and ate my low-hanging tomatoes…
… and then they nobbled my newly-emerged beetroot seedlings. The giveaway that this is not slug damage is that nipped-off leaf: a slug would have eaten them down to the ground.

I have been battling the mice. You may think this would be something of an unequal fight, being as I’m several gazillion times their size but they are obviously far cleverer than me.

It started with them taking munchies out of my low-hanging tomatoes: I have never had this happen before in all my 25+ years of growing veg but it was definitely mice as they climbed on top of one fruit and left a lot of poo as a calling card. Yum #not.

Now they’re after my beetroot seedlings. I sowed them direct and they came up within days. Yet along came my whiskery friends and… no more beetroot seedlings.

I do have a feral cat but she is getting old nowadays and spends most of her time on the boiler. I am also starting to think a cat brings too much in the way of collateral damage: don’t mind the baby rabbits so much, but the robins are heartbreaking. So Sooty is to be my last cat and I will have to think of other ways to keep the little blighters off my food in future.

I could trap them, but I always prefer a live and let live policy so for now I am trying an alternative approach. Come back next month for news of its success (or not).

This month in the garden…

19 Sunday Feb 2017

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snowdrops

Signs of hope are everywhere

Well. Hasn’t it got busy around here lately.

There I was, listening morosely to the tumbleweed (well, gales and splattering rain) and wondering if the winter would ever end. And then all of a sudden spring sprung. The frosts retreated, the snowdrops came out, and everyone emerged blinking in the watery February sunlight.

And all that sulking indoors has left a ton of stuff to do in the garden, so I’m already behind before I’ve even begun. And now that we can all agree it’s spring, there are garden articles to write and book proposals to hone and student assignments to mark and garden holidays to plan… Welcome to a new year!

Here’s what’s on my to-do list right now – all to cram into the remaining fortnight before it gets even more crazy in March. Wish me luck…

Hitching up the propagator: I think I actually love my Vitopod. It’s not often I say this about a bit of kit, but this has really transformed the way I can garden. It’s eye-wateringly expensive, but believe me: it’s worth it. The moment it comes out of storage each spring is the moment my year begins. 

Sowing tomatoes: See above. This wouldn’t be possible, this early, without a heated propagator – and a good one at that. I set mine to 20°C, and then once the seedlings are up switch the thermostat down to about 12°C to grow them on. Frost? What frost?

Sowing the earliest root crops: I like to get an early crop of the hardy stuff going as soon as I can (cue: heated propagator again. Sorry). It’s too cold to sow yet, even in an unheated greenhouse; my rule of thumb is 7-10°C day and night before I’ll risk it. But once the toms are finished, turnips, beetroot and kohlrabi go in at 12°C and germinate like a dream.

Planting Jerusalem artichokes: There’s planting to be done outside, too; this year I picked up some of the not-quite-as-knobbly Jerusalem artichoke, ‘Fuseau’, along with the seed potatoes. They’re tall, and have flashy golden sunflowers in summer, so they’re going straight into the ground in the exotic edibles garden. Just hope I can keep them in bounds, that’s all – I have tried (and failed) to curb their enthusiasm before…

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Lovely fat Jermor shallots waiting to go in the ground

Planting shallots: Shallots go in earlier than onions, so mine are in the ground this month. As always, I’ve gone for a French variety, ‘Jermor’ – though I’d have preferred ‘Hative de Niort’, fiendishly expensive but the largest, most reliable and – most importantly – tastiest shallot you’ll ever grow.

Experimenting with new stuff: This year it’s Welsh onions – I never have any luck with spring onions, so I thought these perennial bunching onions might prove a useful substitute. Also Carlin peas, aka parched peas, thanks to a kind gift from skilled kitchen gardener and Charles Dowding‘s other half, Steph Hafferty. And tiger nuts, if I can keep them warm enough. All of which more at a later date.

Cutting hazel stems: You’ll find me swinging monkey-like among the thickets of hazel that line the back of our garden this month: they’re perched precariously on the side of the bank but produce some lovely long, straight stems. Cut at around 2″ diameter, just before the buds break, they supply all my beanpole and peastick needs.

Potting up dahlia tubers: What’s a dyed-in-the-wool veggie type like me doing growing something as fancy as dahlias, you ask? Well, dahlias are edible too, so they earn their place in my kitchen garden. Plus they’re dead pretty. I pot mine up in 2ltr pots this month to save them from the slugging they’d otherwise get in the open garden.

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Ripe with promise: the potato crop chitting on my windowsill. Not strictly necessary, but I do like to get them out of their bags while they’re waiting to be planted.

Forcing new potatoes: The one time I bother with growing potatoes in sacks – otherwise an exercise in retrieving the minimum harvest possible from the maximum outlay – is in early spring, when I force a couple of sacks’ worth of new potatoes just for the smug value of eating them weeks before anyone else can.

Mulching & feeding fruit: The fruit garden gets a lot of attention this month: I’ve just about finished all the pruning, but right behind the secateurs are the spade and wheelbarrow. A good scattering of slow-release fertiliser – I’m a fan of pelleted poultry manure or Vitax Q4, but this year I have Carbon Gold to try too – topped off with a thick layer of mulch sets the whole fruit garden up for the rest of the year.

This month in the garden…

07 Saturday Jan 2017

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I left my overwintering broad beans and sweet peas outside this winter and they’re doing much better, far less leggy than usual – so as I suspected, it pays to grow them hard.

I have definitely been having a bit of a slump in the garden just recently. This occasionally happens, even to obsessive gardening types like me: you just sort of get out of the habit, somehow.

It’s usually in the dog end of the year that I lose heart. December is a prime month. By the time I’m home from work it’s getting dark anyway; the mornings are cold and dank and there are grumpy teenagers to boot out of bed. More often than not it’s raining, the ground is soggy and all the jobs that need doing at this time of year are easily put off till later.

January, though, is a different matter. I’m not sure why, as the weather is still foul – worse, if anything, than December. Maybe it’s just the symbolic beginning of a new year. And the turning of the solstice has a lot to do with it: it’s as though the extra few minutes on the end of every day tinge the ends of my fingers a deeper shade of green as the month wears on.

So I begin to steal half an hour after work, or just after the kids have left for school, to catch up on all that is left undone and stir into life the embers of another season. Here’s what I’ll be up to this month:

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Still plenty to pick: this is my ‘Dwarf Green Curled’ kale, and there’s sprouts, leeks, kohlrabi, cabbages and purple sprouting broccoli too.

Climbing apple trees: Not for fun (though it actually is, quite a lot) but to snip back last year’s growth and encourage as much fruit as I can. I only have one apple tree at the moment, my beloved Devonshire Quarrenden, and it’s a very early one so must be guzzled straight off the tree. Which is why I shall also be…

Planting new trees: I am planning three new apples for the top strip, where my orchard is sputtering into existence at last after several livestock-related setbacks. I’m after a cooker, Warner’s King – in tribute to a legendary apple tree which grew in my mum’s garden once – plus James Grieve, my all-time favourite storing apple, and Egremont’s Russet just because I adore russet apples.

Pruning blackcurrants: And autumn-fruiting raspberries: the fruit garden is in for a stern talking-to this month as it got well out of hand towards the back half of last year and became more impenetrable thicket than chi-chi fruit potager.

Sowing onions: An experiment this year, as I feel like having a go at some really good red onions, the kinds with pink flesh rather than just the red skins. Carmen sounds like a good one; or perhaps Red Brunswick. I haven’t yet found a good red onion from sets, so I’m thinking seed is the way to go.

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Freshly-turned compost, covered with cardboard to keep weeds out and moisture in: this will be ready to use come March.

Turning the compost: A great job for a frosty day, as you invariably end up in t-shirt sleeves and glowing pinkly: not only good for the circulation but also very cheering as it makes you feel like the weather’s much warmer than it actually is. I turn my bins about every four months, using the compost as mulch at six months old: the next batch will be ready just in time for the March feed’n’mulch routine.

Mending greenhouse glass: The football club next door has been using my greenhouse as a goalpost again and I have two or three panes to replace. I am determined to get this done now, in the quiet stillness of January, rather than leaving it till I’m filling up the greenhouse in May and everything moves into panic mode.

Building new beds: The very last corner of my veg garden is proving stubbornly difficult to get around to finishing. I’m at that pesky 90% done, 90% left to do stage: all it needs is three boards fixing into place and I’m there. This will be the month I manage it. I hope.

Raking up leaves: The otherwise robust and rudely healthy quince tree in the chicken run developed a nasty case of blight last year and I didn’t get a single quince off it. So this year I’m paying particular attention to raking up the leaves after they’ve fallen, to try to scoop up at least some of the overwintering spores in the hope that they won’t come back again next year.

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Garlic seedlings ready to go out: but how will they cope with the rust this year?

Planting garlic: I have had my little garlic cloves growing away in a module tray since I sowed them in November, and now they’re bursting out of the drainage holes in the bottom so I think they can go into the ground. These are the cloves I saved from the plants that held out for longest against garlic rust last year: with luck, they’ll have a smidgen more resistance this season and I might have half a chance of actually eating some.

Planning, planning, planning: The great veg garden plan for 2017 is well under way. I am religious about using the colder months of the year to plan in detail what I’m going to do next season. It’s a good way of keeping yourself optimistic through the dead days of December; and it also saves a lot of trouble next year, too, as you know what to sow and how much of it. It is the gardening equivalent of a hot chocolate by the fire while leafing through a holiday catalogue. You just know things can only get better from here.

This month in the garden…

05 Saturday Nov 2016

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Just-planted garlic

…it is getting cold. Seriously, properly cold.

Actually I can’t remember being cold before Christmas before (well, a bit chilly, perhaps, but not cold of the three layers and double socks kind just yet).

We have, I think, become a bit soft in recent years what with all this global warming malarkey. Things may be a little extreme in this respect at my end of the country, around 20 miles from the south coast and never the coldest of places generally.

But since the epic winter of 2010 (when we had about 10 winters’ worth of snow, hoarfrost and ice for a memorable three or four months from November to February) we’ve been lucky to get a frost at all. Last year the lowest temperature I recorded was around 1°C, in February; the previous year we dipped to an adventurous -2°C for one night only. It was hardly the second ice age.

Anyway, all this is by way of saying that this month in the garden I have had to get my skates on (not quite literally but you never know) in a way I have not been accustomed to doing, and do all those getting-ready-for-winter things I’ve previously been putting off till about January. So here’s what I’ll be up to…

Planting garlic I have had a bit of a garlic crisis this year: every last plant succumbed to rust. I am therefore launching an experiment: I’m replanting the bulbs from the garlic which survived the longest, in an attempt to select a strain that copes better with the (now endemic) garlic rust in my garden. I will report back with results.

Collecting leaves There are so many leaves. So, so many leaves. I watched them rain down the other day like a golden snowstorm. And so to work with my trusty rake and wheelbarrow to fill as many leafmould bins as I can before they all run out.

Putting the veg garden to bed The endless task continues: clear crops, cart off to compost heap, weed, mulch, cover, repeat. I am still only halfway down the veg garden and I’ve already run out of soil improver.

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Spring cabbage still going strong after around ten straight months of harvesting

Picking spring cabbage Yes, you read that right: spring cabbage. I planted it last August (that’s August 2015) and it has been going strong ever since, mainly through my laziness in not getting around to pulling it out, so it just sprouts again. A happy accidental discovery: I shall be doing this again…

Clearing the greenhouse The cucumbers are spent; the green peppers picked. Time to strip out the last of the summer crops and get the greenhouse ready for its winter role. I have only one this year, as we’re having to move the other: I am bereft.

Lining said greenhouse with bubblewrap insulation You save around 25% on the average heating bill by insulating your greenhouse, so they say. I know it keeps things much cosier, and often means I don’t have to turn on the heater at all.

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Winter lettuces, ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ spring onions, American land cress and a couple of rows of corn salad and radish seedlings tucked up safely in their plumbing pipe cloche

Planting winter salads under cloches Since I am deprived of my winter salads greenhouse this year I am resorting to planting out my greenery under cloches instead (or rather, one massive cloche made of blue plumbing pipe and clear polythene).

Wrapping bananas The Musa basjoo in the back garden has been going great guns this year, so the plan is to wrap it in the time-honoured way (chop leaves off, wrap in straw and hessian or fleece, big bubblewrap hat) and leave it outside for the first time.

Digging up pelargoniums My scented-leaf pelargonium collection is expanding all the time: I do need to bring it in for winter, though. This year they’ve been in containers on the front steps, making this particular job much easier.

Planting tulips Ah yes: there is some joy to be had this month. This year’s order includes ‘Ballerina’, ‘Jan Reus’, ‘Purple Prince’, ‘Violet Beauty’ and ‘White Triumphator’. I am looking forward to spring very much.

This month in the garden…

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

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Almost dry… onions on a rack in the greenhouse

It’s about this time of year I start to resist writing anything about seasons, mists or mellow fruitfulness for fear of falling prey to the ultimate garden writing cliche. But there’s no denying that John Keats caught autumn firmly in his poetical fingers with this one: we haven’t got vines running round our thatch-eaves (we’ve been told not to grow stuff against the house as it causes damp on the inside) and the squirrels nick all the hazel shells long before they plump, but basically that’s autumn, right there.

What Keats failed to mention was the frantic gardener racing around like a thing possessed underneath the moss’d cottage trees desperately trying to get everything done (and catch up on all the stuff she didn’t manage in the ever-hectic school summer holidays) before it all gets too cold, wet and depressing to want to be outside any more. Here are just some of the things I’ve got on my jam-packed to-do list this month:

Drying off the onions: In my greenhouse, right now, turning a lovely coppery shade of brown. They take around two weeks of regular turning before they’re cooked and ready to plait.

Sowing sweet peas: My sweet peas were an abject failure last year, so I’m trying a different method this year. I’m reverting to the old-fashioned method of six seeds to a 10cm pot, planted out as a clump – and I won’t pinch out till spring.

Clearing spent crops: It’s that time of year when you have to admit things are definitely, undeniably Over. So it’s with a little sadness that I’ll be cutting the beans off their poles and carting them off to the compost heap. Sniff.

Mulching, mulching, mulching: Another relentless tick of the clock: each veg bed gets a thick coating of compost or soil improver from the local green waste people the moment it’s cleared, then I cover with black plastic. End of the year: full stop.

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Did you ever see such a shade of red? ‘Firetongue’ borlotti beans ready for drying

Drying borlotti beans: Gorgeous brilliant red ‘Firetongue’ climbing borlottis are my comfort and joy right now: every time I see them on the poles I think how beautiful they look. But they’re now ready to hoick out of the ground and dry under cover.

Sowing overwintering broad beans: Aquadulce Claudia are the only ones for me: they may be ungainly, but they’re prolific and rock-solid reliable. It’ll be my only crop – overwintering broad beans avoid all the pests and diseases that afflict spring sowings.

Putting in my bulb order: It’s the gardening equivalent of a trolley dash: you have till the end of this month to go mad on daffodils, species tulips (my latest obsession), posh tulips and reticulate irises. Happy sigh.

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‘Oy, you! Turn red!’ There. That should do it.

Speaking sternly to my tomatoes: They have another four weeks to ripen, then that’s it, so I’ll be reading them the riot act this month (and praying for some late sunshine). Failing that, there’s always green tomato chutney.

Clearing greenhouse borders: In the other greenhouse the cucumbers are sighing to a yellowish end, and the peppers are picked. Let’s not mention the aubergine. Not sure what to do with the cucamelons which have awkwardly decided now is the time to start pumping out the fruit. They’re in rude health and not going anywhere.

Planting winter salads: In the coldframe are dozens of winter salad plants: this season I have mizuna, American land cress, pak choi and ‘Winter Density’ lettuce, all destined for the emptying greenhouse borders, or a cloche outdoors. Time to plant.

This month in the garden…

02 Friday Sep 2016

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Onions about to come out of the ground and be turned into fetching kitchen ornaments

Onions about to come out of the ground and be turned into fetching kitchen ornaments

Here’s a thing. I like September. August is either sweaty or disappointingly rainy (the former, this year); and there’s not much going on in the garden. September, on the other hand, is usually balmy and gentle, with just enough rain; the veg garden is pumping out produce and there’s a new energy about my gardening what with the start of the autumn – and so the end of one gardening season and the beginning of another. So here’s where you’ll find me this month:

Picking beans: and how. I think I may have slightly overdone it this year. Six wigwams, three French (Blue Lake, Cobra and a heritage variety with pink seeds) and three runner (Moonlight, Lingua di Fuoco and a rather badly misjudged variety of bog-standard stringy). I am picking Every. Single. Day.

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More beans…

Removing caterpillars: there is – again – a plague. Great rows of them on the nasturtiums I so thoughtfully supplied as decoy plants: well all I can say is that they eat the nasturtiums, then move on cheerfully to my kale, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. So that’s one companion planting idea that doesn’t work, then.

Planting onions: specifically, autumn-sown, Japanese or overwintering onions (you’ll find them under all three names). There used to be a very limited selection of these but I’m gratified to see that’s now changing. I look forward to sampling a few new varieties this year.

Drying onions: and as the next crop goes in, the previous crop comes out. My maincrops have done pretty well this year and have died back nicely – time to hoick them out of the ground and plait them prettily to hang in the kitchen.

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Now these I will never tire of. Pick and pop in the freezer straight away and they come out as good as the day you picked them.

Picking raspberries: see beans. I am not meant to be able to grow raspberries in my chalky soil, but my rampant ‘Autumn Bliss’ have clearly failed to read the rule book. They look a little yellow around the gills in places, but it hasn’t affected the harvest one jot.

Pinching out tomato sideshoots: I think they get a bit annoyed at the constant pinching out earlier in the year and start redoubling their efforts, sending up stems straight from the base of the plant. It feels mean – but I want toms, not green growth.

Weeding: it ain’t over till the fat lady sings, you know. And she seems to have lost her voice just at the moment. I am fighting a losing battle that only cold weather will end.

Processing apples: I can’t help feeling slightly resentful at this time of year that I spend more time in the kitchen than in the garden. But so be it: the apple crop is particularly good this season so I’m making stewed apples, juice and crumbles.

Summer pruning cherries: It’s a bit past summer but actually this is the very best time to summer-prune fans and espaliers as they don’t have as much time to grow sappy new frost-prone growth. Just don’t leave it too close to October. My fans have got away a bit, but I’m hoping to wrestle them back into order.

Hedges: We have half a mile of wild Somerset hedgerow around our garden, loaded with brambles, hawthorn, blackthorn and just about anything else with a prickle. ‘Nuff said. I try to do it just once a year: more often and I think I’d just move.

 

This month in the garden…

04 Saturday Jun 2016

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Lupins coming along nicely in the cutting garden…

It is June! Not very flaming, so far, but very busy. Here’s what I’ll be up to:

Making comfrey tea: the first harvest from my comfrey patch is in and stuffed unceremoniously into a bucket. Six weeks and a lot of whiffiness later I’ll have potassium-rich home made fertiliser.

Tying up peas: Why is it that just when you think you’ve tied in the last pea plant another tendril makes a bid for freedom? I am getting very good at tying knots…

LOTS of strimming

DITTO weeding

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Mmm…. comfrey tea stewing away (the bricks you can see just under the surface were above water yesterday)

Planting up the greenhouses: cucumbers and cucamelons in, tomatoes still waiting for the shelving-and-propagator setup to be dismantled

Shunting young plants out into the garden just as fast as I can get them out there – this time of the year we’re down to minimal hardening off (and occasionally none at all)

Fretting about my quince tree: it has developed worrying signs of quince leaf blight. It looks just like tomato or potato blight in that lots of brown blotches start spreading across the leaves. There is no defence bar picking off affected leaves – and that means nearly every leaf on the tree. And it’s a big tree.

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Peas – here Oregon Sugar Pod – making a break for the border again. Now where’s my string…

Harvesting asparagus: one of the best crops of the year. The spears are still largely spindly – the plants are in their third year – but I’m now getting some promisingly fat ones, too.

Planting up the brassica beds: slightly belatedly, as the calabrese have been fretting at their pots for weeks, but everything is now ready to go out under insect-proof mesh (I have already spotted at least two cabbage whites on the wing).

Netting the gooseberries: an enterprising blackbird found its way under the bushes last year and snaffled every last berry, but this year I’m a step ahead. I don’t think I’ve ever had to net gooseberries before – far too prickly for birds to bother with – but it’s my guess that growing them as cordons as I do might make them easier to pick for other enterprising creatures as well as me…

In the garden this month…

05 Friday Jun 2015

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June! Doncha love it?

It’s probably my all-time favourite month of the year, with the possible exception of September. And March. And probably May. Oh look, most months in the garden are pretty good but this one is exceptional.

The weather is (at last) warm enough to put out the tender stuff; yet there’s still enough dampness in the soil and growing conditions are all but perfect. On the downside, the weeds have started growing – with a vengeance.

So here’s what I’ll be doing this month in the garden:

  • planting out courgettes, and squash: they’ve been languishing too long in the greenhouse and desperately need to stretch out their roots

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  • weeding: once-a-week hoeing plus beheading the bindweed
  • sowing the next batch of salad: I sow mixed salad, lettuces and coriander most months for an endless supply
  • weeding

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  • tying things in: peas, tomatoes, French beans and sweet peas are all getting out of control as I haven’t been keeping up with their stupendous rate of growth
  • did I mention the weeding?
  • netting the strawberries: they’re now at small-green-berry stage and the mice and birds will be eyeing them up as greedily as I am

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  • closing the gaps in the insect-proof mesh that’s supposed to be protecting my brassicas. Cabbage whites are on the wing already: I’ve spotted at least two.
  • uh… yep, more weeding
  • planting out the scented-leaf geraniums: now thoroughly hardened off and ready to fill my herb garden with scent and colour.