Up a Cotswold Garden Path: The edible garden

During the lockdown, I’ve been able to spend more time than usual working on the garden, especially given how good (mostly) the weather has been. June, admittedly, has been more disappointing than May – some chilly nights (and days), wind, and some heavy rain (which has refilled the pond – so much for my getting to grips with the iris) – but there has still been plenty of gardening going on. You might not think so, given the sorry state of most of the borders and the list of jobs still not done, but one area where I have been more successful has been in the veg plot.

Lettuce 'Merveille de quatre saisons'

'Fat Lazy Blonde' (top) and 'Delicato'

An even bigger 'Fat Lazy Blonde'!

The garlic and shallots have been lifted and laid on their bed to dry off (rain permitting); they’re small, presumably because of the dry spring, but should give enough to keep me going until next summer (I still have bulbs of both in store from last year, now going rather soft). There is plenty of salad stuff, including some excellent lettuces – ‘Little Gem’, the dark red oak-leaf ‘Delicato’, the wonderful ‘Merveille de Quatre Saisons’ and the splendidly named ‘Fat Lazy Blonde’ (‘Grosse Blonde Paresseuse’, so-called because of its size, light colour and resistance to bolting); but also rocket, oriental mustard, land cress and leaf beet. Various brassicas are coming along, especially now that I’ve put up netting and fleece to deter the pigeons from pecking at the leaves, and there are a few beetroot and some small turnips, whose leaves have also provided some stir-fry greens. I’ve been growing the broccoli ‘Cima di Rapa’, which is also a stir-fry greens plant, though it seems prone to running to seed; perhaps it’s one of those plants that does better if sown later in the year. I am inclined to sow things as soon as the dates on the packet allow, thinking that I need to get ahead since this garden is on the cold side, but some seeds are better left until summer or even early autumn, to prevent them from bolting.

Another reason for not sowing too early is that tender crops, if started early in spring, can be ready for planting out, or moving into the greenhouse, when the weather is still too cold for them. Two of my courgette plants – ‘Defender’, a new variety for me – were real whoppers well before I could risk them outdoors. They, plus one 'Cocozelle v. Tripolis' that I enjoyed last year, and one winter squash, are now out in one of the ‘no-dig’ mulched beds, but to be honest they haven’t put on much growth since going out there, and I could have left them until a little later; the first two baby courgettes are now reaching cutting size. The tomatoes, too, were 18 inches (45cm) tall by the time their first flowers showed colour (the point at which they have to be potted on into larger pots, which means greenhouse-time for them – and the temperatures in there were still rather low at nights for them). It doesn’t seem to have harmed them too much; all are growing vigorously, and the cherry tomato 'Cherrola' has already produced a few tasty little toms. The aubergines seem to have managed the low temperatures all right; this year I’m growing trusty old ‘Bonica’ but also a small-fruited variety called ‘Slim Jim’, which has lovely dark leaves. The advice on aubergines is not to allow more than 6 fruits to ripen on any one plant, which in the past has left me thinking ‘if only’ (I’ve never got more than one usable fruit on any plant, and small ones at that); this year I experimented by pinching out the tops when they were small, and lo and behold, this year I have multiple fruits coming on most of the plants, one on each shoot. The two red pepper plants have several fruits coming on them; they were indoors until a few days ago, but they needed to be put in much bigger pots and that meant a move to the greenhouse, where it’s now warm enough for them. The chillies are still indoors and will probably stay there; they should also go in bigger pots, but they’re doing fine as they are, and there are only so many chillies I can cope with!

The runner and French beans were sown in situ this year, and that seems to have worked well, though it will be a while before anything edible is ready from them. The broad beans have been a mixed bag. I usually sow the autumn-sowing variety ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ in October, and ‘Imperial Green Longpod’ in early spring; but last autumn I had few seeds of the former left and none of the latter, and thought I would try something different. I noticed organic ‘Aquadulce’ seeds available, and bought those, only to discover that they were ‘Aquadulce’ but not ‘Claudia’ and were for late winter sowing; in fact they haven’t done particularly well, so I may just discard the remaining seeds and revert to good old ‘Claudia’. My first sowing of the remaining ‘Claudia’ seeds, last autumn, wasn’t successful, but I managed to get the last of the seeds to germinate later on and am leaving the pods on those plants to save seed from them. For spring sowing I bought a variety called ‘Luz di Otono’ which can also be sown in summer for autumn cropping; I was a little unsure given its rather Iberian name and our less-than-Iberian temperatures, but the spring-sown ones have done quite well and I’ll be interested to see what happens with the autumn crop. When the beans are finished, their bed will become home to the leeks; I had to re-sow these as some interlopers, birds or beasts, disturbed the first seedbed, but fortunately I had seed left, and germinated that successfully in a length of guttering in the greenhouse.

The wildlife also finds our garden a plentiful source of food. The blackbirds have been busy in the gooseberry bushes (we’ve frozen some for ourselves, and the red gooseberry bush has been covered in fleece to protect it from the birds, as has the blackcurrant bush). The pigeons have been at the brassicas and I’ve tried to protect some of them as best I can; they also took a lot of the plum buds, leaving us with a smaller crop than usual, and have been spotted trying to take raspberries. I noticed the other day that some of the mint, in pots by the back door, was looking a little ragged; today I spotted the culprit, a rather cheeky sparrow, flying off when I came by. We provide enough food for the sparrows and pigeons on the patio and in the feeders, so I don’t feel too bad about shooing them off the plants! The food on the patio has also attracted some four-legged visitors, including a large rat which hasn’t been seen since I chased it off, the occasional vole and a rather sweet little wood mouse who has appeared a few times at dusk. And the birdlife also attracts predators in search of food; yesterday a sparrowhawk was strolling nonchalantly on the lawn (empty-taloned, fortunately).

The flowers in the garden also provide food, in the form of nectar for butterflies; last week during the warm weather (now turned cold and windy) there were three small tortoiseshells feasting on the erysimum and sweet Williams, a large white, a holly blue and a speckled wood. And there are plenty of bees of various sorts enjoying the blossoms (and the weeds; they seem to like the little yellow flowers of the creeping potentilla that I’ve been trying to dig out of the lawn). For us, the flowers are more a feast for the eyes than for the stomach; the sweet Williams have been lovely (seen here in full bloom), the roses and sweet peas are gorgeous as always, and the peony has provided wonderful cut flowers, here with the dark red antirrhinums, which conveniently turn a purplish-pink in the vase, complementing the peony splendidly and making a very long-lasting vaseful.