What’s growing in the kitchen garden

Time to catch up with the kitchen garden and what’s growing in the raised beds.

Firstly the four that are rotated each year.

The Roots Bed

Back in the autumn I planted up half of the root bed with onion sets. I’m growing red onions for the first time this year. I do love them roasted.

The other half of the bed has now been sown with the three varieties of beetroot we grow every year. Red Ace, Golden Globe and Choiggia.

The Brassica Bed

Two small Italian kale plants, sown last year and overwintered in the greenhouse have now gone in. With this warm weather they’ll soon be growing like mad and ready to pick in a few weeks.

Last September I planted the purple sprouting broccoli that I’d grown from seed.

It’s just started producing and we’ve had a couple of portions. We’ll be eating that for a while now.

In October I planted onion sets around the outside of the bed and they are now growing away well.

As I was planting the onions, there were a number of mangetout and one single sugarsnap that had seeded themselves. I moved the little sprouts to the bed they were going to be grown in this year.

The Bean Bed

The self seeded little plants have not only survived the winter, they are positively thriving. Already having the beautiful purple flowers on, as pretty as any sweet pea.

It seems a lot of plants are much more hardy than we give them credit for. Although it has been a particularly mild winter.

Last autumn, I sowed my usual broad beans ‘Crimson’. They look the best I’ve ever seen them at this time of year. I think we’ll be having an early harvest.

The bean bed was last year’s squash bed. I had a single coriander plant in with the courgettes and it went to seed. I meant to harvest the seeds but missed my chance and they scattered all over the bed. By October they had germinated all over the bed.

I left most of them to it, potting a few on.

They’ve happily survived the winter and now grown into a carpet of coriander. It’s now awaiting the chef to come and harvest, chop and freeze it. As we make a lot of Indian food, we can’t have too much coriander!

The Squash Bed

I transferred some of the coriander plants into here and they can stay and grow on.

This year we are only growing the traditional long dark courgettes, variety ‘

They are still in the greenhouse, ready for planting in May.

Last year we discovered cooking them in a pull down electric grill. Sliced into rings with a little olive oil they are delicious.

We take the grill outside with the extension lead as it’s much quicker and easier than barbecuing.

The permanent Raspberry Bed

The autumn fruiting raspberries are coming back to life and there’s a lot of them!

It is getting rather congested in there now and is in need of a sort out. It’s not a job we are not looking forward too, as they all need to come out.

They would be better in a longer, narrower bed, making picking easier, so there maybe some changes afoot.

The Permanent Asparagus Bed

This week marks our first meal with asparagus. Not a lot, but it is delicious!

We are currently having a debate though about a redesign in the raised bed area. It would actually involve getting rid of the asparagus.

Despite the fact that it is incredibly delicious, you can only pick it for six weeks. Taking up a whole raised bed, for such a small reward feels like a bit of a waste.

Besides I’ve never been happy with the straight path going right down the main part of the garden. I’d love to break it up a bit and my plan to rejigged it would involve a new flower bed.