Entries Tagged 'Vegetables' ↓

Potatoes take a little bit of work to grow in your garden but are worth it for the taste. If you have a small garden, then it is hardly worth growing maincrop varieties since they are so cheap to buy and they do take up a lot of room. There are really only four processes which you need to go through to grow garden potatoes successfully and once you know these, it becomes easy.

Garden Peas are almost every child’s favourite vegetable, with good reason. Together with sweet corn they are among the sweetest tasting of all vegetables, and when grown in your garden they taste even sweeter. I always eat my first pod of peas uncooked, just to savour the flavour.

Crop rotation is a very useful and old method of growing vegetables to give the maximum use of nutrients in your soil and to prevent the build up of pests and diseases.

I use a three year scheme (pretty general) and this is how it works. First, all vegetables and divided into groups. The first group consists of Potatoes, carrots, beetroot, persnips, onions, leeks, garlic, tomatoes, courgettes, marrows, pumpkins, celery, Florence Fennel, aubergines, peppers, cucumbers, melons, celeriac, salsify and scorzonia. You can also include Hamberg parsley in this if you do not grow it among your herbs. With this bed you start by double digging incorporating manure in the upper and lower levels plus two handfuls of blood, fish and bonemeal. Then grow as many of this group in this patch  as you want.

Sweet Peppers and Chillis are fun to grow. I use them both for cooking and for decoration. They are easy to grow and very rewarding. I find them very useful in cooking also. I use my Capsicums (sweet peppers) both raw in salads and also cooked in all manners of ways and dishes. They are not particularly hot but add a certain piquancy to dishes. For heat you need chilli peppers. Both types are decorative and can be kept in pots in the house as decoration and used as wished.You can also freeze peppers and chillis for use when wanted.

French Beans, in my opinion, are one of the most delicious of the beans. There used to be only one type, that are now called bush beans or dwarf beans, but now you can also grow them as climbing plants.

Climbing plants make considerable sense, particularly for people short of space. Growing upwards means you get a larger harvest for a smaller ground space. However, they are later to crop than the shorter varieties.

Broad beans have significantly better textures if you pick them young. If you leave them too long they tend to end up a bit like cardboard when cooked. You do not necessarily lose quantity in the harvest by picking early, since the plant will continue to crop after you have picked them. Because they are an early harvest, once you have finished with them, you can clear the site and still have time to grow another late crop of a different vegetable.

When choosing lettuce, you really are spoilt for choice. I like the texture and taste of Cos type lettuce so I always grow a row or two of them. I start them off  by sowing a pinch of seed in a 3 inch pot and when they are large enough to handle, I transplant into rows which are 6 ins apart, leaving 3ins between plants. This means that when they become a bit crowded, I pick alternative plants for salads. Lettuce seed will not germinate if the temperature is too high so you can only do this in the spring. If you want to sow more lettuce in the summer, you must do so outside. Alternately, sow loads in the spring and do not prick them out. Leaving them crowded will stop them growing and you can then plant them out when you want them. You must be careful, though, that they do not become ‘leggy’ because they are fighting for light.

The snow continues to fall and whilst it is very pretty, it does create some immediate problems. I have a plastic covered tunnel which I use as a cold greenhouse. I keep some pot plants such as fuschia in it overwinter. These do not mind being cold or even occasioinally getting frozen, but they don’t like to be wet during cold weather. So they live in the tunnel during winter and are kept totally dry.

Apart from harvesting some brassicas (Brussel Sprouts are  supposed to taste better after they have been frosted) there is very little you can do currently out of doors.