My Butternut Squash plant has been putting on a spurt these last couple of days. It seems like it’s growing about 5 or 6cm a day! I have planted it just next to my sweetcorn (spaced out in a square) so that once the Squash gets big and rambling (as it certainly will) I can train the plant around the bases of the sweetcorn plants. Sweetcorn like to have their roots in shade apparently so this, two-thirds of the Three Sisters approach, will hopefully work well. I didn’t go for the full Three Sisters (Sweetcorn, Squash & Climbing Beans) because I just thought that the beans growing up the sweetcorn would look too messy. In a very Monica-esqe kind of way, I like my plot to be neat and tidy. Heck! I even decide which lettuce to pick based on how it will effect the overall look.
I’ve let a few Radishes go to seed this year. The flower stems are very tall with pretty little white flowers at the top. The flowers disappear quite quickly to be replaced by a small pod which gets larger over time. The slugs seem to like eating the pods so I have tied them up like a bunch of flowers to lift them off the ground. This seems to have worked. I’ve had great success this year with Peas that I saved from last year and also Runner Beans. Both germinated fine and we have eaten lots of sweet and juicy peas for free!
As I did a quick tour of the garden to check on the latest slug damage I noticed that the cucumber plant is flowering and has produced tiny fruit! Yey - could this be the break in the clouds I’ve been looking for? Maybe - although I did also notice that in 2005 I was actually harvesting fully-grown cucumbers on this very day. Well here’s hoping that this little fella has enough time to ripen before the weather starts to get colder.
Can you believe that it’s still raining? Why won’t it stop? What have I done wrong? I promised to be good, didn’t anyone hear me? I’m not one to complain but this relentless rain is killing me (and many of my plants). This photo is typical of what is going on at mtp right now - not much. Every time I gather my tools and make a dash for the door, the heavens open and before you know it I’m sat on the sofa again cursing the rain clouds. My radish are inedible due to slug damage, my corn has been flattened by the downpour and my seed bed is awash with floating seedlings. I guess I’m lucky that my house isn’t under 2 feet of water, eh? In desperation I bought Sarah Raven’s new book in order to while away the hours!
I’m always intrigued by the different kinds of tags people use for their plants. I took this photo of a plant tag while at the Lost Gardens of Heligan. I like the way that they have written the word Strawberry and filled in the corners of the letters to make them look like Serif fonts. It’s also painted in white, I’m guessing to stop it rotting in the ground, but this also enables them to re-use the tag for something else by just re-painting it. Time and effort has gone into creating this tag - I like that. I use smaller wooden tags in my kitchen garden (I might paint mine now!) and small wooden coffee stirrers (thanks Starbucks!) in the seedbed when things are much smaller, as you can see in the photo below. I’d be interested to know what you all use to name your veg.
It’s blackcurrant time! Yey. One of my favourite times of the year. At mtp we have two blackcurrant bushes that I inherited from the previous owners. I’ve no idea what variety they are or indeed in the first year any clue how to prune them. But last year I picked up a natty pruning tip from one of my neighbours (more on that later) and it’s worked a treat.
But what to make with all those blackcurrants? Of course I’m making some more Cassis as we did last year, but that takes months to mature - we needed to eat some of those plump, dark, berries now - heck, even the leaves smell good enough to eat! As it was a hot day we decided on some Blackcurrant Juice.
Firstly, you’ll need a basket full of blackcurrants. The trick with the pruning is to harvest the whole branch instead of each individual berry. This is good for two reasons: first you you can pick off the berries in the comfort of your own garden, secondly you are effectively pruning the bush as you go since Blackcurrants fruit on new wood and so the branches you have taken would be pruned anyway.
Blackcurrant Juice
- 5 or 6 branches of blackcurrants
- 100g of sugar - more if you like it sweet
- 1 pint of water
- 3 or 4 cloves
Method
- Firstly wash and rinse the blackcurrants.
- Then put them in a pan with a little water and the cloves
- cook on a high heat until the berries start to break down. Squash the berries against the side of the pan a little.
- Next add the rest of the water to the pan and cook for around 15 mins
- Strain the juice making sure to squash the berries against the side of the sieve to get all the juice out
- Pour into a jug and chill in the fridge
- To serve make sure to add ice to each glass for a super-chilled blackcurrant juice experience.
Hooray! At least one of the plants I sowed in my cutting garden is flowering. The flowers really are a very bright orange. All I need now is a lime-green sitting room to put them in, eek!
The new kitchen garden is starting to take shape. It’s not quite finished yet (rain stopped play) but you can see that I’ve managed to put in quite a few Lettuce, a row of Tomatoes, and over on the right some Broccoli, Kale and a small Strawberry bed. There are around nine Sweetcorn plants huddling behind the Lettuce and my Pumpkin is still cowering in the mini-greenhouse until the weather improves. The patch wasn’t too over-grown but I am having some problems with shallow soil and lots and lots of stones to be shifted. Also, there is a shocking problem with slugs - despite the fact that I have two frogs and a toad living in the garden (come on guys, requesting back up!). More updates soon when I tackle the Herb and cutting garden!
