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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: peas

This month in the garden…

04 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, kitchen garden, my garden, this month in the garden

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asparagus, brassicas, comfrey tea, cucamelons, gooseberries, peas, quince blight, quinces, this month in the garden

IMG_3690

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…

Pick of the month: June

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by sallynex in container growing, kitchen garden

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gluts, mangetout peas, Oregon Sugar Pod, peas, preserving crops

Pea ‘Oregon Sugar Pod’

To quote a well-known advert for a certain shop which used to sell clothing but now seems to be a supermarket for posh people:

[cue 1970s lounge lizard soundtrack and sultry voiceover of the sort I can only manage when I’m still bleary and half asleep]

This is not just a pea. This is a mangetout pea.

I never used to bother growing mangetouts. They didn’t appeal to my ever-practical nature: you can’t freeze them, you see, or make them into pickles, or do anything really except eat them as fresh and crisp as possible. What use is that come the apocalypse?

Then a couple of years ago I was given a packet of the sumptuously-coloured ‘Shiraz’, a purple mangetout so beautiful it’s a shame to pick it. The flowers are even more lovely, like a bicoloured sweet pea in mauve and cerise.

I thought that was good: but then this year, not being organised enough to get hold of some more ‘Shiraz’, I grabbed a packet of the standard green mangetout.

Oh. My. Goodness. [read more…]

End of month view: June

01 Friday Jul 2011

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse

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Tags

blight, end of month view, hedges, mixed hedges, peas, sweet potatoes, trials, vegetables

It’s been a month of making progress, if slow: the mad rush of spring has calmed and I’m just planting out the last of my young plants (looking a bit the worse for wear, I have to say: this drought-ridden spring hasn’t been kind to plants in pots).

But for now I can enjoy the garden burgeoning into colour, everything growing at the rate of knots, and my earlier work coming – sometimes – good.

It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that the veg garden is seeing most of the action: so that’s where I’m concentrating for my end-of-month stocktake this time.

There have been a few surprises as I’m trialling one or two veg varieties this year: first up is an amazing pea, due to make its debut in the Thompson & Morgan catalogue next year I believe. If you’re not yet convinced that veg can be as beautiful as ornamentals, take a look at this:

The all-important taste test, of course, has yet to come: at the moment the pods are rather a muddy purple tinged green, not unattractive but not exactly wow-value either. We’ll see: just love those flowers though.

Another splash of colour is the double row of marigolds I sowed on both sides of my onion bed:

I’m so doing this again: it makes me smile every time I see it. It’s supposed to deter onion fly too: they get confused by the strong scent of the calendula. Well – there aren’t any onion flies as far as I can see: so it seems to be working so far.

The spuds haven’t been so lucky.

I’ve never had early blight on the new potatoes before. It’s making my heart sink for my so-far hale and hearty maincrops. I should know, of course, that in damp and rainy Somerset the chances of escaping fungal disease of any kind are pretty close to zero: but such an early arrival has come as something of a surprise. The spuds themselves don’t seem affected: these are ‘Foremost’, nice enough, but rather bland for my taste.

And finally: a visit to the engine room.

Packed with growbags this year: there are over 20 in there, at last count. It’s not how I usually do it – I’m a big fan of growing in soil in the greenhouse borders as a rule, as plants look after themselves so much better. But this is the greenhouse I inherited (rather than the one I brought back from the allotment: that’s still being planted up with cucumbers, melons and sweet peppers). So it’s on a hard standing, and I didn’t have much choice.

Fortunately I was after some experiments to do for t’other blog, so I’ve got all sorts of things going on in here: product reviews, trying out different supports, you name it. Oh, and those baskets in the back are my sweet potatoes: all of them T65 this year after they won my undying support by producing my best crop last season.

Elsewhere, the whole garden is getting decidedly woolly around the edges, and I am, frankly, dreading July: it’s hedge-cutting month, and strim-the-undergrowth month, so I’m looking down the wrong end of a lot of hours strapped to either strimmer or hedge-trimmer. I have half a mile of hedge here: this is no small undertaking. Here’s what we’re looking at: the back slope gives some idea of the jungle-like undergrowth:


…and here’s a typical hedge.

Luckily they’re not all quite that tall, but since they’re all hazel-dominated mixed hedges they’re pretty much this overgrown. Wish me luck.

Thanks as always to Helen at The Patient Gardener for hosting the EOMV!

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