The Kitchen Garden

Rosemary Martin

 

 

Vegetables  

This is the best of months for enjoying the fruits of your labours.

 

 

• Nip out the growing tips of broad beans to discourage blackfly and start to pick when the pods are just 2 to 3 inches long, when they can be cooked and eaten whole.
• Peas and mange tout need to be picked frequently when young, which will encourage the plants to produce more flowers and thereby prolonging the picking season.
• We use perpetual beet spinach and have been using the plants for a couple of weeks now, we just cut the leaves off with scissors and the plants continue to produce new leaves throughout the summer.
• Lettuce and spring cabbage are also cut off with a sharp knife and the stalk is left in the ground to produce another plant from the same root.
• Most salad crops and carrots can still be sown, but be sure to water well if the weather is dry (some hope!)
• Early potatoes are ready to be lifted this month when they have flowered and should be stored in paper or hessian sacks in a cool, dry place.
• The first of the runner beans can usually be picked towards the end of the month; again pick frequently when small to prolong the season.
• In the greenhouse our tomatoes now have five trusses set and we will take out the growing tip when we get to six, at which time we will commence feeding the plants with a liquid fertilizer twice a week.
• Cucumbers also need picking when young as this will encourage more flowers to form.
• We are growing courgettes this year which need a good mulch of manure or compost and again frequent cropping.
• In between enjoying the fruits of your labours, continue watering and hoeing to keep the weeds under control and be continually vigilant for pests, particularly snails and slugs if the month is damp.

 

Fruit

• The strawberries are now ripening faster than we can eat them (well nearly). We will pot up enough runners this year to renew the plot with all new plants, which we will plant out in a different part of the garden this autumn. Plant rotation is good practice even in the fruit garden where possible!
• The gooseberry bushes have produced a good crop, most of which has already be frozen for us to use over winter, but with a few set aside for a pie later this week!
  The bushes themselves have been pruned back to three leaves on all the new side shoots and any old wood has been cut out from the centre of the bushes to provide good ventilation, which protects against mildew.
• We are continuing to tie in the new canes on the blackberry and the loganberry plants, which will produce fruit next year. They are planted against a freestanding trellis to allow for very easy picking from both sides; when the old canes have fruited this year they will be cut down to ground level and composted.
• Our blueberries are looking good but we must net these against the birds, which can strip the whole bush over the space of a few hours when the fruits ripen.
• Our raspberries were good to us last year, particularly the autumn fruiting variety Autumn Bliss, which were cropping right into October. Our summer variety, Malling Admiral, will be fruiting for the first time this year from the beginning of July, and are looking like they will provide a bumper crop. Well, here`s hoping anyway! We have noticed some Yellow Rust on the new canes which we've sprayed with fungicide.