Tuesday 21 June 2016

The longest day

Last Saturday we had the first courgette off this year's plants. A Verde d'Italia. That plant is growing another one now, but none of the other zucca/zuccetta/zucchini are setting fruit yet. Quite a few male flowers around though.

On Sunday I sowed the biennial flowers in three inch square pots or modules. 10 of each - foxgloves (white, apricot and excelsior), hesperis (white and purple), sweet william (nigricans),  honesty and 5 daucus carota. They are outside this year.
The vipers bugloss sowed April 2015 is huge now and covered in flower spikes. The bees love it.

And today was the solstice. It rained heavily and some of my potted tomatoes were beaten down and needed staking. I planted three deeply into the large bed where I had just taken up the elephant garlics. They were not so good this year. They didn't send up scapes, are now yellowing and collapsing, so I lifted them. They are all "rounds". I will probably save them to plant again in the autumn.

Friday 10 June 2016

More leeks

I lifted one of my bunches of leeks from the bed on Wednesday and separated them. I planted two large pots with four leeks each and put some more into the plastic bed where there was space alongside the beans. This should give me some idea of the different ways I can grow them. They were Lyon Prizetaker. The King Richards I sowed some time ago in another pot are growing very slowly - but they have plenty of time!

Wednesday 8 June 2016

First potatoes

I opened up one pot of my Pentland Javelins yesterday. 4 potatoes of fair size for earlies - about 6 ounces. That's after 130 days but it has been unusually cold most of this time. I'll wait at least two weeks before trying another pot. The tops are still growing well. Perhaps I should wait till they start to yellow.

The Sarpo Miras are beginning to flower! That's after just 66 days. Should I take the flowers off before they set seeds? The RHS website states that it makes little difference to crop but nobody says it makes things worse so i'll do it! (But I didn't!)