Vegging out - April

Easter weekend confessions

It’s not all sweetness and light in the veg garden, I must confess. I don’t talk to my plants, and can be dismissive of plants that don’t do well. Take last year’s row of first-time parsnips, hardly any germinated and only one struggled to grow at all. Ignored all through the winter, I spotted its leaves this weekend, thought it was probably woody, but pulled it up to find it was a good size. “OK, perhaps we’ll try it for lunch”. We did and it was delicious! So parsnips are definitely worth growing and from now on I will look after them better.

There is worse - the murder of the asparagus bed! Over the years this has got less productive probably due to it being in a very shady spot. So last year, mercilessly, I decided to kill it off under layers of cardboard. After several months, a few spears managed to find their way out and I repented, thinking “What am I doing, even a few asparagus spears are better than none!” The cardboard came off and this year the asparagus is making a valiant effort to revive, though anything coming through is very thin and spindly (see the tiny harvest above), but delicious. Sorry asparagus!

Week one - more mishaps, but a happy find

Last month I was agonising about what to do with leggy seedlings - whether burying the stems when repotting would cause the curcubits to rot off. Well, it seems that with the cucumbers it will - all but one have since collapsed. It could be the deep planting or my home made compost, which is no doubt full of all sorts of pathogens.

Then there is the confusion over which seedlings are which. Too lazy to write out labels for every plant pot when I sowed the seeds, I hit on the idea of colour-coding. Cucumbers one colour, with different varieties of squash and courgettes each having their own colour. A wooden toothpick coloured with felt tip pen in each pot seemed foolproof and into the propagator they went. The steamy warmth in there, perhaps aided by whatever is in my homemade compost, has caused all the tooth picks to go mouldy and faded a lot of the colours. It is amazing how similar squash and courgette plants look if you aren’t sure which is which - another brilliant idea bites the dust!

However, it hasn’t all been doom and gloom because I have discovered Gro-Sure Visiroot which are root trainer substitutes. I like root trainers very much because of the long root run and the compactness of the modules which saves space in the propagator and in the greenhouse. Sadly, my old root trainers modules are flimsy and falling apart now and I need replacement cells to fit into the frame and cover. This new discovery is proving a perfect substitute, slightly more robust and clear so it’s easy to see what is happening with the roots. So more cucumbers and courgettes have been sown, as well as dwarf and climbing French beans and sweet corn Swift. Planted out the Chinese veg.

Week two - perennials rule

In line with my plan to have more perennials in the veg garden I’ve acquired another Globe Artichoke and some more strawberries. All of the fruit bushes are either flowering or full of buds and both the little apple tree and the morello cherry are blooming too. Even the comfrey is coming up nicely, not that it is heading for the plate - it goes into the compost heap to add nutrients, and might even be made into liquid feed if I can stand the smell - it really stinks!

Meanwhile, among the rows of seedlings sowed at the end of last month only the radish are showing - I think the rows of parsnip and beetroot might have been disturbed by a cat - the perils of sowing direct and even the Chinese veg seem to be struggling. Oh dear!

Week three - preparing for holiday

Even though, in general, it has been wet this month I have started to water some of the vegetables outside now. That, together with watering in the greenhouse, has been about the sum total of my gardening at the beginning of the week, because a holiday is booked and I’m heading for the Scilly Isles on the 19th.

With a last minute tidy up and potting on of things in the greenhouse, everything has been left to my somewhat gardening-phobic husband to take care of while I head off via Great Western Railway and the Scillonian ferry with my brother.

Week four - the Scilly Isles

Of course we visit Tresco Abbey Gardens for its subtropical planting and wonderful location - it is everything we expected and more. However, I didn’t expect to find any vegetables, but tucked away in a corner we have. Everything is larger than life including their plant labels, made out of roofing slates, and there is compost making on an industrial scale.

Meanwhile, on every island, we are intrigued to find masses of an allium, new to me, the three cornered leek. It is literally growing everywhere - road sides, gardens, fields, in stone walls. It has a mild onion flavour and a very pretty white flower. I’ve been tempted to bring a few bulbs home, but it is clearly uber-invasive so I think better of it.