Veg Bed Special



I thought I'd do a veg bed special because it's the only part of the garden I seem to be doing anything to at the moment. And as I've just planted out the last thing that's been in a pot waiting for the last frost date for this area to pass (mid-May), I thought I'd run through what I've got going on in the bed.

The last thing to be planted was the courgette. That's planted in amongst 9 sweetcorn plants that are only about 10-20cm tall at the moment. I've grown corn before and it does seem to take a while to get going, but when they do they shoot up. Mind you, they do need a lot of heat and it's been cloudy for the last week or so here, so maybe that's holding them back a bit. They are planted in a 3 x 3 block so the wind pollinates the flowers whichever way it blows. If they were in a row you'd be lucky to get the wind blowing in the exact direction that would send the pollen down the whole row. Also, as sweetcorn are so tall and thin, and they are quite shallow rooted, I can grow a courgette underneath. It should spread out in the area under the corn. One plant is plenty for how many courgettes we want. If the plant is kept well watered and fed it produces loads of courgettes.

My Crimson Flowered Broad Beans have been brilliant. They are still flowering well, and I think that's been about a month now. I didn't realise potentially how many pods you get per plant. I was thinking with only 9 plants that I'd only get a miniscule crop, maybe a couple of meals worth. But if all those flowers turn to pods it could be a very good harvest. I've seen lots of bees around them, so hopefully all the flowers are getting pollinated ready to turn into pods. I'll have to look in a couple of weeks and see if there are any pods forming. First time growing broad beans, so every stage is new to me.

I've got two types of mangetout growing in the small bed behind the main one, under the fence. The taller plants are Golden Sweet which is supposed to get to 7 feet tall and have golden yellow pods. I spotted the first covers on it today and they are quite golden in colour, although the actual flower is supposed to be purple to match my crimson/purple theme in the bed this year. The other type of mangetout I'm growing is Dwarf Sweet Green. This one only grows to about 2 and a half feet, but it has loads of pods per plant. I've got about 8 plants of each so that should give me loads of mangetout to freeze as well as eat fresh. Mangetout freezes fairly well, but you lose a bit of the crunch though so it's best to eat fresh where possible.

The carrots and spring onions are coming on. The spring onions were suffering a bit with the lack of rain. The tops of some were going a bit brown, but I think I watered them in time because they seem ok now. I'm not going to thin the carrots, even though they are planted a bit close together in some parts of the row. I've read that as soon as you break the leaves of carrots you are inviting carrot root flies in. And I think I've read that they can smell carrots from half a mile away. They come and lay their eggs on the base of the plant and the young burrow down into the soil and into your carrots. Yuk. So, I'm going to wait for them to grow to be baby carrots and start picking them then. (I've just added a brilliant garden ornament in my Folksy Josara shop if you love carrots..)

Looking forward to the first strawberry of the season, until.............

.... I turned it over and found that something had already had that pleasure. Even though I've got my strawberry plants in a long trough, raised up on a step, I think it's too close to my plastic blowaway greenhouse. I think there may be some rogue snails living underneath there that have had a midnight snack on my first strawberry. Bloomin' cheek.



Anyway, I think that's covered the veg bed. I haven't taken pics of my tomato hanging baskets, but they've all got flowers on the plants so hopefully they'll produce some tomatoes. The blueberries and raspberries have flowered and have the beginnings of their fruit showing now. The potatoes in bags have got tons of foliage. I think I have to wait until they have flowered and the foliage is dying off before I can see if there are any spuds. I'll show all this in a future updates. I will also update the progess of the veg bed through the summer. When, hopefully, we will start getting some crops.