Post holiday blues and greens

It's a bad move to go on holiday for two weeks and leave your veg to their own devices. This blog has been neglected while I wrestle things back into good order.

The tomatoes put on a healthy growing spurt but one that led them to topple over drunkenly. It seems to matter how sturdy my staking at the start, the tomatoes always get unruly and badly behaved. On the plus side, the tomatoes themselves look pretty good, still green but then I rather like green tomato chutney which is just as well in summers like these.

The runner beans also lurched sideways towards the toppling tomatoes. The garden looked like it had suddenly developed a slope towards the road. I have rectified most of it with string and bamboo but my lesson is to make the staking even stronger next year.

On the plus side, I have a fantastic haul of garlic, probably enough to last the winter. It's now hanging up drying inside and it's wonderful to think this will be in our cooking long after it was in our garden. I also have chard, beetroot, and in pots some lovely Lemon Crystal spherical cucumbers.

It's not too late to sow. I have put in some new rocket and coriander, some chinese leaves and I desperately need to get my leek seedlings into the ground. Suddenly winter holidays look like a better idea for a gardener.

Free gifts

How often do you get a free gift? I mean really free - no strings, no small print, no catches? In the allotment I seem to be getting some really good ones. First, a fennel plant. This seed must have been in hiding since last year when my fennel, if I am honest, wasn’t all that good. I forgot to do the earthing up to keep the lower part white and the rain didn’t come at the right time so all the plants were a bit feeble. However this seed sat it out and came up early this year. When nothing else was visible in the plot this was growing away merrily. It was a free gift in two ways - a plant I hadn’t bargained for and an indication that next year the fennel can go in much earlier.

My other free gift is even more dramatic and truly free - i hadn’t even planted a seed like it. It’s a sunflower. I saw the seedling and realised what it was early on. I was curious so to see how it would turn out and in that happenstance way of nature it had come up pretty much centre in the front plot. Now it is over six foot tall and a variety that has really bold yellow petals and what looks like several flowers to follow. The stem is about an inch in diameter with leaves spread along and it’s really sturdy. I don’t know what variety it is but it certainly isn’t one i have ever planted. I shall aim to find out. In the meantime it’s an eye catching feature and I hope that eventually it will set seed and become bird food. Who said there was no such thing as a free lunch.

This week’s gardening log:

Lettuce - most of the first lot eaten. The "Arctic King" bolted in the heat - it’s really a late season variety but it was worth a try. Frisee coming along nicely and seemingly unappetising to the invasion of slugs and snails that has recently appeared.

Peas - at last. The rain has fattened a few. Not many yet but sweet.

Runners - first plants got munched by slugs but i have put in some more which were at a more robust stage and they seem to be ok - but a bit pale. Nutrient missing?

Garlic - pulled one just to see how they were getting on. A bit on the small side still but looking forward to seeing how that one tastes in advance of the rest.

Tomatoes - pinched out the first lot of side shoots. Must remember to keep doing this or they run out of control. But the plants look healthy.

Lettuce - planted a new row of "All Year Round". They were free seeds so lets see how they do!

Nursing times

I am worrying about courgettes. As my second favourite summer veg, I really want my own, just-outside-the-front-door crop. But the three plants I have put out so far are looking poorly. They have come out in yellow spots and the leaves look crumpled.

I have had trouble with these in the past. The year before last I had dozens of flowers but no fruit. Last year I think the plants succumbed to mosaic virus and looking at them this year, I am worried it's back.

Mosaic virus attacks a whole bunch of things but particularly courgettes, squashes and cucumbers. As I understand it, it gets in through those places where aph

ids have bitten or where there has been some other damage. Afte

r last year's outbreak I destroyed the plants and made sure I didn't plant this year's lot in the same place. However, loo

king at the evidence I think the news is not good.

So what to do? The virus doesn't kill the plant but makes it weak and it remains a threat to other uninfected plants. Since I have a pretty small patch to grow in I think remedial action is probably too late - my other plants probably already have it. I have decided to nurse this lot for the time being and see what happens.

However, I do have some more young plants not yet planted out including two sorts of cucumber, Burpless Tasty Green and Crystal Lemon and another variety of courgette, Firenze. These I'll plant up in pots in the back garden and hope they don't get sick away from the isolation ward.

This is the sort of thing that tries the patience of even the most enthusiastic gardener. Note to self: next year buy disease resistant varieties

The taste of summer starting

Now that we have reached the end of May we must be safe from frost. My first tomatoes are out along with courgettes and frisee salad. The mixed leaves I put in earlier are keeping us fed with salads along with rocket and coriander.

This month I've also had my free harvest of elderflowers from the tree in the back garden. My son and I made elderflowers cordial for the second year, modifying last year's recipe which we though too sweet and lemony. So this year we made a litre of sugary water and left 25 heads of flowers in it overnight along with two sliced lemons. In fact busy life intervened and they steeped for two nights but the cordial when diluted still tastes good. We don't bother with acetic acid which should prolong the drink's life. In our house it doesn't hang around long and is our taste of early summer.

Bean picking

Broad beans are an unloved vegetable. Try getting a child to eat one of those leathery grey things which taste bitter and take more chewing that anyone can bear from a bean. Certainly the ones in the supermarket are the size of a pound coin and and just as solid. But, grow them yourself and a whole new experience is at hand.

On Friday I picked my first batch of the season. I planted the seeds in

November and the plants came up pretty fast. Then, through the winter they made the veg patch at least look productive. I pinched out the tops once to encourage them to bush out. During the spring they have shot up a few feet and have now started producing pods. They didn't get greenfly which is sometimes the case. Somehow these older plants just don't

seem tasty to an aphid.

To be tasty for a human, the trick is not to let them get too big. Inside the pods I picked on Friday were maybe eight to ten beans but most of them were half the size

of the ones you might find in the shops. I blanched them quickly and ate them with mozarella, baby tomatoes and basil with a good dressing.

If the worst happens and you leave them too late - and even the

most thorough picker will miss the odd one - you can boil and peel the beans which is a bit more laborious but makes them much more tasty. Or, don't eat them at all - save them to plant next year.

Flowers for veg

No one really expects to be spending this much time watering in April, do they? This amazing weather has kept me out of an evening with the watering can. I've also been using every spare minute to get seeds into pots and into the ground. Those I ordered a few days ago arrived today and I wasted no time planting chillies, leeks, carrots and a new row of rocket.

While the leeks and chillies are in pots, the other seeds went straight into the garden. And, I have a new space for flowers. At the weekend, helped by husband and the full weight of a nearly-nine-year-old we managed to get out the roots of the privet hedge. The activity reminded me most of tooth extraction on a large scale; lots of digging around, waggling the stump and then pulling and twisting with all our might for the last heave.

Left behind was a decent space - about two foot wide running the width of the garden under the wall - but the soil was far from decent. Years of privet had reduced it to ghastly grey dust which even looked nutrition free. I dug in a bag of manure I've had hanging around a while but it's going to need a lot more than that. I daren't put veg in here. Who knows what accumulated stuff is in the soil and while the raised beds have new soil, this thin ground has been neglected.

Still, pondering what to do about this has sent me not unhappily back to the seed catalogues. What I need now is something to attract bees and bugs - the good ones that is. I'm starting with poached egg plant and a wild flower mix.