Easy like Sunday morning

We got down to the patch around 8:00 am this morning to get some work in before the heat of the day.

Heather staked the Galina tomatoes, then gave them a good feed and water. She then picked all of the remaining broad beans before cutting back all of the plants to ground level, leaving the roots to put some nitrogen back into the soil.


I pulled out all of the remaining garlic, Solent Wight. This was badly affected by rust (see below), but fortunately the rust doesn't affect the bulbs and we had an excellent harvest.... unfortunately the rust is likely to affect the onions and leeks we are growing nearby.

Next to get pulled were our shallots, Griselle. In quantity, the harvest was very good, but many of the bulbs were too small for the kitchen.

Having removed all the weeds from the area where the shallots and garlic had been growing, I applied a dressing of poultry manure and scattered some handfuls of growmore. This feed was hoed-in, two shallow trenches were created and given a good watering. In these trenches Heather first sowed broad beans (Aquadulce) and then peas (Kelvedon Wonder) which should provide us with crops up until the first frosts.

We had three Chrysanthemum plants which were planted between the fruit bushes to give us cut flowers later in the Summer. The varieties are Misty Cream, Allouise Orange and Regal Mist Red.

The fennel has been coming along nicely, but we are worried that it will bolt. So we lifted a couple of bulbs to see how it had been developing. They were a bit on the small size, but will taste fantastic when cooked with chicken for dinner tonight. On the advice of Gardeners' World, Heather sowed another row of fennel (Romanesco) which should produce good bulbs later in the Summer with a much lower risk of bolting.

To round off a very long morning we prepared another small row alongside the potatoes and Heather then sowed one more row of beetroot (Moneta)... and we should get another row sown before the end of the Summer.

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