Can you believe how quickly spring is racing along? I swear, gardening turns us all into time travelers. Well, it’s another busy month and boy, have I got some treats for you, including planting some summer garden favorites, harvesting the very first salad of the season, and I will be tending to my beans. What are we waiting for? Come on!
Planting Potatoes
Would you look at these beauties! Nothing says summer is coming like the fresh lush foliage or haulms of potatoes. Now I’m growing two types this year: these are my early season or first earlies, and then over there I’ve got my late season or main crops. These early season potatoes are determinate, which just means they produce their potatoes more in a single layer. To stop them from turning green and the potatoes kind of coming to the surface (which can make them a bit poisonous), we need to mulch to keep the soil covered just in case they do work their way to the top.
Now, I’m using grass clippings, and I’ve got plenty of those at this time of year, but you could also just top up with a little more compost, for example. This stuff’s a little bit wet, but it’s a breezy day, so it’ll soon dry out and do its business. I want to spread it in fairly thin layers, though, every now and then so that it’s not a good hidey hole for slugs.
My main crop potatoes are what we call indeterminate, which means they’ll form their tubers at a greater depth and they’ll just produce more generally. To help that along, I’m going to do what’s called hilling or earthing up of my potatoes, and that just means drawing up the soil around the stems to create more volume for those potatoes to grow into. I’m doing this now, and I’ll probably do it maybe one more time in a couple of weeks once the foliage has got a bit taller. That looks pretty pleasing, doesn’t it? Lovely clean ridges there. These are off to a really strong start; I’m pleased with that.
I planted fava beans or broad beans last month, and well, they’re really settling in nicely. They’ll grow and support each other as they do that, but the ones at the edge are likely to flop over, which could snap the stems or drag the pods at ground level into the mud, which could then attract slugs and they could get nibbled or rot away or something. So we now need to add some supports, and to do that I’ve just got shorter canes like these. I’m going to put one in each corner and then one at the side as well.
There we are, they’re all in, and now the next job is to put some string line along horizontally. I’m setting the first one about a foot or 30cm up from the ground level. Tie it onto the corner post and then let’s just kind of weave it around like this so it’s nicely taut and in place, and there we have it. The second row is about another foot or 30cm above the first. I’m not going to win any prizes for neatness, but it’s got the job done. All I need to do now is just tuck in stems as they come out of the string lines to keep them inside, and that simple act will keep them growing straight up and make picking a lot easier too.
One more tip with your fava or broad beans is to pinch out the very tips, the top growing points once the beans are in full flower. What this will do is give black bean aphids fewer places to land and, as an added bonus, you can eat those pinched-out tops. They’re great in salads or lightly steamed, a bit like spinach.
Pest Control
Late spring into early summer is a time when many pests appear for the first time, such as these rose aphids here on my rose. Now, roses are often a canary in the mine, some of the first plants to get pests. As well as aphids of many different types, there are whiteflies, flea beetles, rosemary beetles, asparagus beetles, sawflies, you name it. Check your plants often for signs of any pest attacks and act quickly if you spot any problems. You can handpick off pest caterpillars or squash aphids like I’m doing here or blast them off with a strong jet of water. Keep plants generally well-watered so they grow strong and can better resist an attack. Be as thorough as you can, but if you miss a few, well, don’t worry too much. It’s good for the insect-eating birds, and they’re really out in form today, tweeting all around me – one of the joys of being in the garden at this time of year.
Row covers of fleece or insect mesh are your friend. Use them to cover up susceptible plants like carrots to protect them from carrot fly, or radishes, like these here, to keep the flea beetles off.
Digging Up Crops
With summer looming, it’s time to pull out or dig up the last of the overwintered crops such as sprouting broccoli and Brussels sprouts. We need the space to get in some new crops that we’ll start harvesting in a few more weeks’ time. These are my rather mangled-looking overwintered broccoli plants, and these are going to come out now to make room for some zucchini or courgette as well as some nasturtiums that will spread out from under them to add a welcome blast of cheer.
Don’t forget you can use the Garden Planner to plan your space and effectively rotate your crops so you’re getting the most from each spot and not growing the same things in the same patch of ground year after year; very handy for that.
A lot of these overwintered crops, once they’ve been in the ground for many months, have these really gnarly, thick stems that will take a little while to rot down, but you can help things along by just stabbing at them or cutting them up into smaller pieces before you add them to your compost heap. Look at this one! Tell you what, it kind of smells rather good, a bit like a nice tasty slaw.
There’s nothing, literally nothing off-base at all with purchasing in all set fittings or plants like these. For warm season crops, similar to tomatoes or peppers, this can be a genuine lifeline since it implies you can grow a more prominent assortment and just either get them in from the nearby nursery place or nursery or get them conveyed by post.There’s nothing, literally nothing off-base at all with purchasing in all set fittings or plants like these. For warm season crops, similar to tomatoes or peppers, this can be a genuine lifeline since it implies you can grow a more prominent assortment and just either get them in from the nearby nursery place or nursery or get them conveyed by post. At the point when you take conveyance of them, they will frequently be a piece dry and mutilated. They will soon be in good shape, so don’t worry. If the root balls are extremely dry, soak them in water in a bucket before either planting them in their final positions or, in the case of a warm-season plant like a chili pepper, growing them in a pot until they have recovered and it is warmer outside. Remove any pests you find by checking for them as well. You will find that these frequently disfigured looking plants before long recuperate and liven up inside a couple of days, all set.
A great option for mail-order plants are eggplants or aubergines. In a cool-season climate, it’s too late to sow them now, but these plants here, which I sowed towards the end of winter, are about the size you’d expect them to be now if you were to order them online. These guys love it really, really warm, so I think sometimes getting a head start by mail order isn’t a bad idea, especially if you don’t have all the kit like a heat mat or grow lights. Once you get them, I’m just going to pot them on to keep them growing nice and healthily, and I’m just using a normal all-purpose potting mix. These guys are going to get the absolute sunniest spot in the greenhouse here so that I can hopefully get myself a good crop, and then once they start to flower, maybe in another month and a half’s time, I will start feeding them with a liquid tomato feed that is high in potassium to encourage more flowers and fruits.
I’ve always struggled a bit with eggplants or aubergines, but I’m kind of optimistic this year because we’ve got good strong plants already and plenty of the summer still to come. I may need to support them as well with a little bit of bamboo cane just to keep them upright and hopefully protected from flopping over under the weight of all those glorious fruits. I found that grafted plants work really well; they give a lot more vigor to your plants, and for finicky customers like these eggplants or aubergines, they can really help.
Straw Bales
Allow me to cast my mind back to a few summers ago when I used straw bales to grow my tomatoes and other plants in this corner of the greenhouse. This year, I’m just going to grow them straight into the beds, but straw bales offer a number of advantages if you can get hold of them. Bales act like raised beds by raising up plants closer to waist level, which means less bending and a convenient height for tending your crops. They’re arguably easier to manage because their sizable volume acts like a sponge, soaking up and holding on to moisture for longer, which means we can get away with watering a lot less often than if you were growing the same crops in containers. Bales can be picked up fairly cheaply and they are easy to prepare or condition ready for planting. But do get on and do this quickly because time is running out since they need that time to condition before you plant.
Planting Tender Plants
I’ve already planted my greenhouse tomatoes and cucumbers, but now things are warming up really rather nicely. It’s time for my tender plants to come outside. These guys have been hardening off or acclimatizing to
the great outdoors for about a week now, and this is a really important step, giving them a gentle introduction to the outside world. And now, I’m going to plant some of these tomatoes as well as some basil into these grow bags. This year, I’m trialing these purpose-made grow bags. They’re double the thickness of regular grow bags, so hopefully they’ll retain water better and lead to less drying out. Well, we’ll see.
I’ve marked out where I’m going to make my holes; you can grow two to three plants per grow bag. I’m growing two to give them plenty of room. I’ve also decided to plant these chili peppers, and I’ve got another grow bag to put in these two eggplants or aubergines. Well, that’s the grow bags all done and dusted. What I’ll do now is just give them a good watering in and then make sure they don’t dry out. I’m going to try and water these guys once or twice a week with a liquid tomato feed or a high-potash feed to encourage plenty of flowers and fruits.
Sowing
Salads are the perfect fast crop that can be squeezed in here, there, and everywhere. Here, the plants are now growing on really strongly, so I’m making a concerted effort to sow little and often to give a steady supply over the weeks to come. Now that the soil is warm, sowing directly outside works well. I’m going to pop some lettuces along the front of this bed here.
You can use the seed packet to create a shallow furrow for the seeds. Watering the bottom of the furrow before you sow ensures the seeds have good contact with the soil. Well, there we have it, beautifully spaced out, just enough space to give the lettuces enough room to grow. Gently cover them up and label them so you know what you sowed. So, this time of year, you can be sowing directly into the ground. You could be sowing beets, carrots, and radishes too, as well as sowing beans and sweet corn.
