The gardening week (May - Week 5, 2024)
Struggling through
Not just gardening
Last week was a bit frantic as I tried to finish replanting the allotment before my eldest daughter and her family came up to St Annes and I drove down to collect them. She loves in a lovely area, just south of Oxford, with an incredible network of public footpaths and picture postcard villages.
I spent two days walking as a perk of my taxi duties and it was great to get away from gardening for a few days, much as I love it, a change of scenery is always welcome.
Unfortunately early this week the headache that I’d suffered with for 3 weeks after my head injury two months ago returned and stayed with me for the whole week. It’s a deep, dull, throbbing headache, quite unlike a migraine and quite unresponsive to my usual remedies. Anyway it’s meant that I’m only really functional in the mornings and by the afternoon I just want to sleep. I’m trying to potter around and do something useful, but it’s been a struggle. Hopefully it’s just part of the healing process. The doctors tell me it’s not unusual for headaches to last for a year after trauma! After writing that I will push it right to the back of my mind and hope for a much better result.
As I write this I’m in Caffe Nero, escaping the noisy house, where my builder friend is fitting new floors.
Gardening problems this week
Each week I will highlight any problems I’m having and last week I was feeling quite smug, not having any to report. This week …. not so good:
The February planted shallot sets are starting to go to seed. I’ve a mix of Red Sun and Golden Gourmet and both have a few flower shoots showing. The patch in the kitchen garden are the worst. This is the second year that I’ve had problems with bolting and it’s definitely not lack of rain! I’m not planting them next year, I will stick with shallots grown from seed.
I weeded by two carrot beds this week, the summer carrot bed has some losses to slugs and snails, maybe 15% in total, I can live with this, but I wish I’d noticed it earlier and resown.
While I was away collecting the kids four lovely calabrese flowered, they were at their peak when I left but I had no space in the fridge, so I took a risk and it didn’t pay off. The pigeons are loving them though and as a result they are leaving everything else alone!
I have three lettuce beds, which were meant to come ready in succession, the crazy weather means they all came at the same time! I’m harvesting some as full heads and some are being picked as individual leaves, some of which are going into compost, this will keep harvests going at least.
My Helda French beans failed to germinate, but I have runner and Cobra French beans too
My grafted tomatoes and cucumbers arrived from Dobies and they were terrible, 2 of the cucumbers were unusable and two of the tomatoes too, all having broken at the graft. The remainder were horrible sickly plants. My previous experience is that sickly grafted plants do eventually pull through and grow into great plants, but Dobies quality control is just appalling! I’m not going to bother with grafted planted in the future, it’s not worth the frustration. Fortunately I grew spares, just in case
The garlic has rust, but that’s not news, it does every year. I checked the bulb size this week (dig down and take a look) and they are swelling nicely though, so they will be fine
We’ve had some very high winds, much higher than forecast, it blew my tress in containers over, damaged the broad beans (even the ones tied to canes) and generally stressed out everything and everyone, but most of the plants will pull through
Because of the high winds I had to close up my cold frames onto their low vent settings, unfortunately these were the beds with fresh Strulch and fresh Strulch off gasses very badly. These beds had newly planted melons and a few got their leaves ‘burnt’ all but one pulled through. The Strulch FAQ mentions the need for ventilation, but I was rushing around and didn’t think this through. It’s also worth noting that it’s a good idea to avoid contact between fresh Strulch and young plant leaves, lettuce and beetroot are particularly sensitive, older leaves are fine.
Old new stuff
Here’s a few reminders of things that are already in the database/book, but that anyone who’s started to follow me recently might not know about.
Ever wondered how long different types of seeds take to germinate? I have fairly good records and while dates are fairly predictable by type, sometimes they surprise you! Anyway if you want to see my results, usually germinating everything except heat lovers at 18c and the heat lovers at 20c, you can find the full list here.
Pests of the month
Pests vary by location, so your pests and my pests will vary. This is what I’m dealing with though:
Flea beetle as I mentioned earlier flea beetle is about now and I’m noticing damage to turnip and some spinach leaves, but there’s plenty of food around now so I’m not too worried. You can prevent flea beetle with a very fine net or fleece, but I don’t use either because I like to see my crops and since I’m harvesting every week, pests always find a way in. Asian greens are most at risk, but I don’t grow them now, I’ve had Asian greens from September until May, it’s nice to have a break over summer. If you can’t cover your crops the next best option is to just plant out larger plants, ie pot them on and plant them 3-4 weeks later than you otherwise would.
Slugs and snails are still an issue, but less so now as I’ve cleared almost all of my winter/spring plantings and taken the slugs and snails out at the same time. Strulch helps and I’ve been using last years Strulch for the peppers and savings the new Strulch for the melons.
Carrot fly is out and about now, so all of my carrots are high up on my IBC tanks, or covered. I generally start with a temporary cover of Envirotect while the carrots are establishing and I’m thinning and weeding and looking out for slugs and snails, but once they are established I use a fine net, in a few weeks time. I’m also watering with the Fruit and Veg Protection nematode because carrots are too important a crop for me to risk failure.
Cabbage root fly arrives now and in previous years I’ve lost a lot of brassicas to it. I used to try collars, but they always blow away here, so now I use the Fruit and Veg Protection nematodes. I water the brassicas with it when they are in their pots and then every two weeks after planting. I don’t use a fine net over my brassicas because I almost always find that the net hides as many problems as it protects from, so I prefer to see problems early through butterfly net (on the allotment) and bird net (in the kitchen garden).
Cut worms are around for most of the year, but they are a particular challenge in spring and autumn, when there are lots of young plants around. I find they are a particular issue with no-dig gardening, because they are never brought to the surface for the birds to hunt. Fortunately the same Fruit and Veg Protection nematode kills cut worms.
There are a few types of leaf miner, but up north the worst offender is Beet Leaf Miner and so I usually cover my beetroot, otherwise they can make quite a mess of it. They go for chard and perpetual spinach too, which we have in the kitchen garden, but we don’t cover that, we just watch it every day and squash any grubs in the leaves as soon as possible.
For more on pests see my growing guides and this chapter of my eBook.
First harvests of 2024
If you have any first harvests earlier than mine, or in addition to mine, I’d love to hear about them, the varieties, timings and growing conditions, but only if you are in the UK! I can’t ‘compete’ with California and Texas, for example!
Last week we picked the first tomatoes, although we could have probably picked them a week earlier. I generally don’t start harvesting until we have enough fruits ready to meet all of our needs for the week.
As I mentioned last week I’ve already covered my heating costs for the greenhouse from the peas, potatoes and strawberry harvest, but now the courgettes and especially the cucumbers have put me into profit and of course I still have early peppers and tomatoes to come. Perhaps the highest value harvest has come from the cauliflowers, calabrese and cabbages that I kept frost free in the greenhouse through winter, they’ve really been a huge success.
Summer growing overview
As mentioned above, you can now browse my seasonal guides for each type of growing environment that you have, you can find those here.
Sowings for May
Here’s my new sowing guide for May, as always, significantly updated since the preview that I did last month. You can find my database for May here too.
Sowings for the week
Lots this week. The lettuce in a desperate attempt not to run out given my unpredictable lettuce beds this spring! Most important are the main batch of autumn flowering brassicas, which will be planted in the paths that we use for weeding the onion/shallot beds.
Here’s everything sown to date, in more detail.
Not germinated yet
Only this week’s sowings and the Helda beans, which failed.
Germinated this week
Nothing
Pricked out
Potted on this week
Greenhouse progress
I’ve rationalised the greenhouse, moving all of the tomato containers outside, the peppers are starting to colour up now, so it won’t be long now before modest harvests start. We’ve started picking tomatoes at last and the cucumbers are keeping us well supplied. The French beans are in full flower and we are in courgette abundance.
I will soon compost these courgette plants to make space for the late sown Sungold tomatoes, which should continue well into autumn.
I’ve switched the heater off now and I’m leaving the side vents open at night, although the doors are closed.
Polytunnel progress
The tomatoes are growing well, putting on an inch of growth every couple of days, the early tomatoes in tubs are fruiting well, but nothing like the greenhouse plants. The melons are growing well too. I’ve planted the grafted cucumbers, although one is in very bad condition. The early strawberries are running out of steam now, but they are throwing out runner, so I will probably root those for next year.
It’s so nice to have a bit more space in the tunnel and this year I’ve notionally decided that once the beetroot has been harvested I won’t be replanting the main bed - in front of the tomatoes - until August, I will probably just cover it with landscape fabric to reduce water loss.
Planted this week
last week was a mammoth planting week, but this week has still been busy.
Here’s everything planted this year so far.
Waiting to be planted out
Nothing, it feels good to be ahead of plan!! You can see all of the details here, note the links to growing guides have been added.
Sowing’s for next week
We are in June, so all focus switches to sowings for autumn, winter and spring now. Since I was a bit late sowing my first succession of PSB I might push the second succession back a week.
You can find all of the details for June here, make sure to look at the notes section, and the details of where I’m sowing and where I’m planting etc.
Growing guides for June
This link takes you to all of my monthly guides, where you can find a lot more than just my growing guides. I particularly like the list of videos produced in the relevant month in years gone by. Click here for June’s guides.
Because I’m always experimenting you might find me sowing a few things that are not on this list, but you can always look those up from the complete list of guides, which you can find here.
Downloadable resources
Last year I experimented with providing downloadable versions of my database, I’ve updated these below with the latest information. Please feel free to give me feedback on these.
For even more details and a more up to date list (I’m always tweaking things and fixing mistakes) check out my live data for June.
Start planning for July
Coming soon
Weekly Harvest
Here’s last week’s harvest.
Useful links!
Top level links
The website associated with this newsletter
My free eBook - Outgrow : The Art and Practice of Self-sufficiency
My complete gardening database real time access to everything!
My Amazon shop, which lists the gardening products I use, with comments
If you can afford it, you can buy me a cake or some seeds
The most useful lower level links
The reference info section of my eBook, lists what I actually sowed, planted, harvested each month, plus all of the tours and guide videos for that month
Monthly growing guides (what to sow, harvest fresh and eat from the store room each month)
Comprehensive growing guides to every type of veg that I grow
The section of my eBook that covers the basic tools and techniques of gardening (sowing, planting, pests, weeds etc)
The section of my eBook that covers the more advanced tools and techniques of gardening ( extending the season, successional plantings, spacing)
Using grow lights and alternatives to extend the season
Introduction to growing under cover with fleece, low tunnels, polytunnels etc
The chapter of my eBook that covers conservatory gardening
The chapter of my eBook that covers greenhouse gardening
The chapter of my eBook that covers polytunnel gardening
The chapter of my eBook that covers cold frames and low tunnel gardening
The chapter of my eBook that covers extending the season with fleece
The chapter of my eBook that covers outdoor gardening
A guide to my database, how to use it and how to take a copy of it
Useful database links
The types of veg that I grow, roughly ranked in my order of priority
The varieties of herbs, fruit and veg that I’m growing this year
Overview of all of the successions for year round gardening (I don’t grow/recommend all of them) main crops successions are the most reliable
What I’ve sowed so far this year
What I’ve planted to far this year
What I’ve harvested so far this year
First harvest dates for key successions
The pots and trays that I use with my comments and ratings
The nets and other covers that I use with my comments and ratings
Information on root depth for each type of veg
Information on germination temperature for each type of veg
Information on pesticide use for each type of fruit and veg
List of fruits and veggies that benefit from Mycorrhizal associations
How long seeds last for each type of veg
Which types of veg are heavy, medium and light feeders