My Garden

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 Spent the early part of the week repairing damage from Sunday's gales and heavy rain - propping up the broad beans, tying escaping peas back in, staking battered cut flowers.  Last week's blog about plant supports turned out to be uncannily appropriate... 

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Planting out  French beans on the 3x3 plot today in a fairly strong wind on our open site brought home forcibly the need for good, strong supporting frames for climbing veg to grow over.    The beans - a type of borlotti bean to supply beautiful red-splashed pods for eating as well as beans for drying - will grow up hazel poles with brash (branchy material from birch and beech mostly) from the woodland here at Harlow Carr.   Hazel pole bean tunnels have peas and runner beans rambling over them. 

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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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These are exciting times here at Harlow Carr with all the flooding over the last 2 weeks, and much time being spent mending paths washed away by the torrential showers.  Thankfully, a desperate team effort managed to avert the potential disaster of a flood in Bettys cake shop!   Our kitchen garden and 3x3m plot are luckily at the top of a hill, and apart from the paths have come off very well.  Add to the list of advantages of raised beds that floodwater runs around them on the bark paths!

The 3x3m plot is looking really good just now, as all the tender plants such as French beans, courgettes and squashes have all been planted.  For the beans, borlottis will provide both fresh pods as well as beans for drying later in the season - a climbing variety makes full advantage of the space available and adds height to the plot.  Courgette' Venus' was the variety grown for the programme - it produced 17 fruits last year, and is perfect for the small area, maintaining a compact bush shape, so we've grown it again

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One of my favourite vegetables, I can never plant enough leeks so they had to be included in the 3x3 plot!  They're a good choice for a small space, and look very ornamental.  Ours were sown back in February in a 9cm pot, and are now ready to plant out - not quite ‘pencil thickness' (as all the books say) but sturdy plants like thin spring onions.   Made the planting holes with the end of a rake (forgot to bring the dibber), and emptied out the leeks, shaking the soil off the roots.  Interestingly the books all have different takes on cutting the roots down inlength, varying between to 2.5cm or not at all.  Basically, it makes putting the leeks into the planting holes easier, plus you don't want the roots twisted round at the base of the plant, so I cut mine down to 3-4cm.  If the leeks are taller than around 20cm, cut some of the leaf off too.   The variety is Varna, a dual purpose leek (as many are)  that can be broadcast sown & then thinned to grow as a baby leek, or grown on to a larger size to harvest in autumn or early winter.

The weather is very hot and sunny at the moment, despite the prediction of heavy rain (we wish!). The plan was to put out the tomatoes, basil and courgettes last week, but a forecast of lashing wind, hailstones and temperatures of 4 degrees put us off!  It is proving to be a very confusing early summer - for the honeybees too, as they are swarming like mad!  So next week, all the tender stuff will go out - they have been in the cold frames for several days now so should be Ok. 

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