Mixed supper
Quite a mixed bag tonight. I appear to have grown Britain’s biggest beetroots to go with the exhibition cauliflowers. I may have to make that weird summer salad the Greeks like so much – you know, the one that’s a mixture of cooked and raw veg, purple because of the fresh beetroot. Rather nice.
This is turning into an extraordinary year in the vegetable garden. From a very inauspicious start, I’m getting bumper crops in almost all departments.
The ghastly weather helps, of course. Rain sucks, but it makes fierce vegetables.
I keep telling myself that the rain will help the veggies too…plus I have a good excuse to relax a little inside!!
Wish I had your cauliflower luck…any tips??
Oh and thanks for pointing out the slow loading page…it’s all sorted now!
July 17th, 2011 at 9:39 pm
Hi Tanya
Tips for cauliflowers:
* Rich, rich soil – alkaline, not acid
* Net, net, net!
* Water, and lots of it. Cauliflowers fail if they go dry for more than a day or two
* Nitrochalk – rocket fuel for brassicas
July 18th, 2011 at 7:58 am
You’re so right about the weather perspective, Kevin. Growing vegetables makes one love summer rain – well, at least up to a point.
Squash are not as easy to grow as they should be. Fertilisation tends to be a problem nowadays, I find (not enough bees to do the job reliably any more). You may find you have to hand pollinate the flowers to ensure the squashes on the female stems actually grow.
July 18th, 2011 at 10:09 am
I wish I had anything coming off the plots this summer. The weather her has been hovering just below 40C for a week. We are not supposed to get this hot. That is supposed to be the trade off for spending months at -30C!
The heat has been so bad I haven’t wanted to set foot in the garden. Thankfully we’ve been getting rain thus far and so the only thing I’ll have to contend with once I finally decide to brave the heat will be a choking snarl of weeds. Hopefully.
July 18th, 2011 at 3:19 pm