We won’t allow the wet spring to dampen our enthusiasm for edibles
THIS WEEK AT GLEBE COTTAGE
The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden... plus her diary for the week!
Much of my time is spent growing flowers, most of them herbaceous perennials, mostly from seed, but my other love is growing food.
Very many of us who grow veg have had trouble this year persuading seed to germinate. First it was wet, then it was cold, then it was very wet, then it was very, very wet! We’ve all seen the news with farmers having to resow fields, crops being extremely late and needless to say, exactly the same has happened in gardens. After all, the earth is the earth whether it is field or garden.
We always try to sow successionally, and though the road to hell is paved with good intentions, sometimes it works! This year we’ve had no choice. We sow many of our vegetables under cover, some in seed trays but most in modules because so much of what we grow does well that way, particularly with bigger seeds such as beetroot and chard.
Once they’ve germinated and made some growth they can be potted on into half litre pots, or in some cases planted straight out in the garden. Both these two veg are totally hardy and several salad crops can be grown in this way too. Lettuce, rocket and several Oriental greens do well like this although, because they all have fine seed, we always sow them in half-trays and prick them out either into modules or straight into pots. The only problem is that sometimes it’s tempting to sow too many seeds and we end up with a glut! This can be very wasteful, although in the case of the lettuce ‘Little Gem’, we eat it in salad but it cooks beautifully, too.
Legumes – peas and beans – are also best started under cover, especially in a wet and cold year like this, although now they can be sown directly into the ground. We’ve just sown two long rows in preparation for our grandchildren visiting in the summer, when peas will be picked and popped every day!
We’ve grown three varieties of tomatoes this year. One is ‘Sungold’an eater. ‘Roma’ is an Italian plum tomato, ideal for cooking, and the third is a tumbling variety, suitable for containers or hanging baskets. All were slow growing this year but a spell of hot weather has catapulted them into growth. When they grow, they really go for it and in a few weeks’ time there’ll be no room for anything else in the greenhouse. By that time each will have its own huge pot, a stout bamboo cane and a length of string from the pot to the roof struts. By July we should have tomatoes galore. I never grow tomatoes outside because of the prevalence of blight in recent years.
Potatoes are in the same family as tomatoes and the disease is easily passed on from
