The Joys of June - Walnut Kitchen Garden

I’ve finally come down off cloud nine after my brief appearance on Gardeners World at the beginning of the month. I think I’m now at the end of all the teasing about wanting my autograph!

What strange weather we’ve been having. No wonder us Brits never stop talking about it!

The coldest rainiest May followed by a super hot dry June – until now…..

The flower borders are loving this hot spell especially the roses, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen looking so good

As for the veg garden’s all over the place, some things doing well – like the rhubarb. All that rain followed by this warm sunshine means I can hardly keep up with it. We do love it for breakfast though with granola and yogurt.

I’ve always boasted about never starting my runner & french beans off indoors. I’ve always popped the beans directly into the ground, the Mayday bank holiday weekend. Easy as you like! Not this year! It was so freezing (literally) cold and wet, I didn’t get them in until the middle of May, and my first ever disaster, they didn’t germinate. Can’t say that I blame them! Anyway I sowed them again at the beginning of June and now they’re off. I’m sure they will catch up and still give a good crop as ever.

The only thing that made me feel better is my niece, that has super green fingers. She always starts hers off in pots, and hers didn’t germinate either.

Some of my beetroot is bolting due to the extreme dryness, but should be ok now that it’s finally decided to rain. Up until yesterday we’ve only had rain one night, but it sounds like the south has unusually had a lot more than us.

The strawberries were looking rather promising, we had a few harvests with our breakfast. That is before the baby blackbird discovered his liking for them. As he was so tame, following me around the garden like I was his adopted mum. I hadn’t the heart to cover them and stop him. So back to the rhubarb for us!

Our autumn fruiting raspberries seem rather confused. There are tiny berries on them already. Hopefully my baby blackbird will have moved on by the time they ripen.

Sadly our asparagus season has come to an end now. As soon as we start picking it, I set six weeks on my phone calendar to remind me to stop and let it go to seed. It hasn’t been as good this year, which again I think is probably the dry weather whilst it’s been growing.

I always grow two purple sprouting broccoli plants, some years that’s not enough and others I have to make soup there’s so much! This year, one has bolted and one has come back to life with the rains of May and is now giving us a late crop.

We’ve been enjoying the broad beans for a couple of weeks now. It is quite time consuming podding them, but with the beautiful warm evenings we have been sitting outside doing it whilst the rest of dinner is cooking. I do love the flowers on this ‘Crimson’ variety and so do the bees.

The greenhouse is filling up now with the tomato plants growing like mad. There are lots of tomatoes already, I don’t think it will be long before they start to turn.

The cucumbers and gherkins have baby fruit on of about an inch long.

I’ve been growing Pak Choi for salad for a number of weeks now. I keep sowing it and then potting it on to form bigger plants.

The chillies are very behind as they were another casualty of unreliable germination this year. Luckily we still have jars of chilli sauce from last year, so hopefully they will last until this years late harvest.