My Tiny Plot

I just had to share this photo with you. We’re calling it Strawberry Peak - like Henman Hill only slightly more berry-like. And you can’t get better than home-grown Strawberries with cream on Wimbledon week, can you? Come on Nadal!

Remember to snap off onion flowers as they appear. If you let the plants flower they will become woody and unusable. Try to remember which ones started to bolt and use these first as they won’t keep well if you try to store them.

Whoa! Look at the size of them! I don’t think I’ve ever managed to grow strawberries this big. I can only put it down to the sizable amount of wood ash that I dumped on them in early spring. Whatever I did - it worked. Obviously I have more than two! I’m thinking about grilling them in some Pimms and serving them with vanilla ice-cream. What do you think?

We went on an impromptu picnic by the canal today so before we left I ran out and picked a few things for the basket including my newly bulbed up Radish. These went into my tuna salad sandwiches along with Little Gem and some Chives. We also had some Mange Tout with Humous and New Potato salad. Plus a couple of beers obviously!

One week you have nothing to harvest and the next you have a row of potatoes and a basketful of peas! The question is, what should one do with such ingredients? Make New Potato and Pea Frittata of course. I can’t pretend this is my own recipe - I found it in this month’s Delicious magazine - but it is perfect for making use of your harvest right now. Right down to the sprig of mint!

New Potato & Pea Frittata

Ingredients

• 10 new potatoes
• half an onion or a few shallots
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 courgettes
• 6 eggs
• 12 pods of peas
• Stilton or other blue cheese
• 1 sprig of fresh mint

You’ll also need a sturdy frying pan

Method

1. Chop the onions and garlic and fry for a few minutes
2. Add the chopped courgette to the pan and fry for a few minutes until golden
3. Boil the potatoes and slice when cool
4. Pop the peas into a bowl and add the 6 eggs. Beat.
5. Add the courgette and onion mixture, and the sliced potatoes to the egg mixture. Season.
6. Crumble some of the blue cheese in and mix
7. Put some olive oil into the frying pan and pour in the mixture. Let it cook for a few minutes. Once the mixture is set add some more cheese to the top and place the pan under a hot grill
8. Cook until golden. Serve with a crisp, homegrown salad.

It’s getting warmer and everything seems to be putting a spurt on. Time to fill in those final gaps in time for high-season and full production. Among others you should be harvesting the first lettuces, new potatoes and the first Peas.

1. Plant out curcubits (Pumpkins, Courgettes, Squash, Gherkins etc)
2. Plant out Sweetcorn
3. Start feeding Tomatoes with high potash feed once the first truss of flowers has set
4. Snap off Onion flowers if they appear
5. Pinch out the growing tips of Broadbeans once the pods start to form to discourage blackfly
6. Sow more Lettuce, Radish, Spring onion, Salad leaves and Coriander
7. Water Peas and Potatoes
8. Stake cutting flowers that will need support (such as Gladioli)
9. Tie in Runner Beans as they grow
10. Sow Fennel in situ

If you have any more suggestions for June jobs, add them to the list.

As we’re away this weekend, and I noticed that a few of my lettuces were about to be past their best, I picked them and took them around to my neighbour’s house. They were delighted with them and thanked me profusely - which felt nice. But, saying goodbye to my lettuces was more difficult than I thought. Which got me thinking - which veg would I happily give away and which would I fight tooth and nail to hold on to? There are clear distinctions between the ‘yeah, take one if you like’ kind of veg and the ‘touch that and I’ll have your hand off’ type. Here’s my take on the situation.

The, ‘Here you go, I have plenty’ type:

• Courgettes
• Runner Beans
• Radish
• French Beans
• Potatoes (not earlies)
• Rhubarb
• Chard

The, ‘Because I’m going away and they’ll spoil otherwise,’ type:

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Rocket
• Salad Leaves

The, ‘You’d have to pry it out of my dying hands,’ type.

• Sweetcorn
• Peas
• Strawberries
• Raspberries
• New potatoes
• Tomatoes
• Apples
• Peaches
• New Carrots
• Pumpkins
• Cucumbers
• Onions
• Shallots

Notice that the final list is the longest. Does that make me a bad person? Anyone feeling more generous than me right now?

Ack! Some of my Radish came up blind (didn’t bulb up properly). It’s my own fault - I forgot to thin the row so they ended up overcrowded, which Radishes hate. It makes sense. They don’t have enough room to grow sideways so they grow up instead. So, make sure to thin your Radish to at least 2-3 cm apart, and keep them watered. They are easy to grow but that doesn’t mean you can sow them and forget about them like I did. Otherwise all you get is a nice row of lush green leaves, but no Radishes!

The New Zealand Spinach has started to go to seed so it’s time to dig it up and clear the ground for another crop. We got quite a large harvest from the last plants though and I made a great Ricotta and Spinach cannelloni with it.

Spinach is a great cool-weather crop but it hates dry weather and will bolt (run to seed) very easily once the weather starts to warm up. It’s not really worth sowing any more NZ Spinach until the weather starts to cool down again in late August / early September. So I’ll have to rely on my Spinach Beet plants to keep the mtp kitchen supplied with greens.

Once the pods have started to appear on your peas it’s time to start watering in earnest. A good drenching each day will help the peas swell inside the pods and produce, fat, juicy, super-sweet peas. Remember to pick them just before you want to use them or eat them fresh from the plant. But either way get ready for a taste explosion!