My Garden

The recent rain and warm weather has really brought everything on, and plants that were gasping in the heat a week ago are now looking green and perky.   At last we are able to plant out our tender veg - so this week courgettes, French and runner beans, sweetcorn and squashes, which have been hardening off in the shade tunnel for the last week, can go out into the kitchen garden.  The courgettes, squash and pumpkin plants can suffer on our windy site - a few twiggy sticks put around them to form a sort of tripod helps to stop the plants from blowing about in the wind. 

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One of the things Yorkshire is famed for is rhubarb growing, and the 'Rhubarb Triangle' - an area between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield - has recently been recreated in miniature at Harlow Carr.   English rhubarb production has been centred on West Yorkshire since the late 19^th century and the scaled-down version is in celebration of our local culinary heritage.  The new bed (near the kitchen garden) contains over 40 varieties, including 'Grandad's Favourite', 'Cawood Delight', 'Muriel' and Yorkshire-bred 'Paragon'

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Bags of Potential

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Its so easy to be lulled into a false sense of summer after a few weeks of warm, sunny weather - we nearly brought out our courgettes and tomatoes from the nursery to the net tunnel on Monday, but fortunately checked the weather on the web first.   They would certainly not have liked 2 nights of frost, one down to -3C!    Even with 2 layers of fleece covering them, the emerging potatoes have suffered some damage, where the fleece was resting on the leaves.    

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