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Mid-summer – Full Borders and lots to Harvest
One of the things I love about mid-summer are the flower borders full to bursting! They’re simply packed out and filled with colour. But even more importantly, it’s the most productive time in the kitchen garden. The food side of the garden is by far the most time consuming, it doesn’t stop with just growing your own food. At this time of year it’s a constant job picking the fruit and veg, then more importantly preserving the excesses that you can’t eat straight away. The Greenhouse In the greenhouse the gherkins have been going mad for a few weeks now. The best way to preserve these is to pickle them.…
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The Madness of May!
May is the month when the garden seems to explode. Not only do new flowers appear everyday, but more appear during the day! When I go and open the greenhouse every morning, I have a mooch around. By the time I’m out there at lunchtime, more flowers have opened. The growing rate at this time of year is incredible! I keep toying with putting a time-lapse camera on the tomato plants. They seem to grow from hour to hour! The Edible Garden Crops we are already eating Breakfast has been zinged up now with the start of the rhubarb harvest. We simply stew it in it’s own juices, then eat…
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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…
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Greenhouse – Take two
Garden transformation Part 10 – The Greenhouses We’d both longed for a greenhouse for years, we considered building a bespoke one to fit our tiny veg patch, but by then we’d pretty much decided to move. We moved in summer 2013 and set about turning our new garden into a kitchen garden. April 2014 – Greenhouse number one In spring 2014, we ordered our very first greenhouse. This was our joint birthday present that year, and put it together with great excitement. We had planned for the food growing area to be close to the house, so we would be able to clearly see the greenhouse. With this in mind we…
