We're well into the summer and we've been eating quite a bit from the garden, so I figure it is about time to think about how things have gone so far...
- Broccoli
- ...of the Italian sprouting type (calabrese)... We've had a few portions of this, and delicious it was, though after the first couple of heads I harvested, the others grew rather loose. I suspect this was due to a combination of being planted too close together and not being watered enough.
- Peas
- Delicious, but didn't sow enough.
- Broad beans
- These were great: better than anything you can buy, but were massively attacked by blackfly. Still, we had a few meals out of them and before scrapping the remains of the plants I froze the better part of a pound of beans for later.
- Perpetual spinach
- This stuff is great. You have a big pile of spinach-like stuff to eat, then a week or so later it has all grown back again. I'm growing a few more plants to take over when the original batch gets tired — apparently these babies will crop into the winter.
- Potatoes
- Not as fab as last year (and needing more watering — the story of my life this year) but still great and better than buying. And there are still some left to lift — many of which are planned as spud salad over the coming weekend.
- Carrots
- This year's crop hasn't been too good, partly because of lack of rain, but also because I sowed in soil that has loads of stones in, which is causing the carrots to come out all mandrake shaped. They taste nice, though.
- Shallots
- A decent crop of very tasty little fellas, which amounts to about 5 or 6 times the weight of the sets I planted. I'll try keeping a few bulbs over to replant for next year.
- Garlic
- Not quite as successful as the shallots, with only small bulbs being produced. Probably again due to not enough water. Still, it's more than we started with, and they didn't take much space in the corner of the garden.
- Rhubarb
- Enormous quantities available: this really is a "fire and forget" crop that keeps giving. We now have a freezer full of stewed rhubarb and a load of rhubarb chutney. I'm planning on splitting the crown before next season so I can try forcing a plant and getting a nice pink, early crop.
- Lettuce
- Used up the remainder of last year's selection pack, which has already produced a silly quantity of multicoloured leaves and there are a load more young plants coming along which should see us through the rest of the summer.
- Gooseberries
- Leaving the best 'til last... I harvested these yesterday, possibly leaving it a bit too late, but these were huge, sweet and succulent berries (good enough to eat raw), in enormous quantities on our one little bush. I've really got to get more fruit bushes — so little work for so much tasty fruit.
I need to consider companion planting more carefully next year. One of my big enemies in this garden is blackfly, so anything to discourage them would be good. I understand marigolds are good as they encourage predators, but this year most of my marigolds got dismembered — by pigeons, I think. However, there's another possibility: I understand garlic is a good deterrent for blackfly (with the added advantage that cats don't like it either, so they don't crap in its vicinity). Evidence from this year supports that: last year we had a sunflower which got badly infested, but this year we have a row of sunflowers right next to the garlic and not a single aphid visible on any of them, despite not being far from the suffering broad beans. It's hardly scientific proof, but it's good enough to encourage me to dot garlic around the veg patch next year.
There's loads more to cover as further crops arrive: cabbages, runner beans, courgettes, squashes, sweetcorn, and so on. Maybe there'll be a follow-up post.
