June Arrives

The spinach I sowed back in December is starting to flower, so I'm harvesting the crop, such as it is. Although I have harvested some of it earlier, and to be fair, my planting was small - about a five foot row - I dont really count this as a success. For a start, it was slow in germinating, then it was slow in taking off, and when it finally did start growing, its been attacked (like the chard) with something that paints tiny clusters of eggs, 4 or 5 clusters to a leaf. Whether these hatched into the leaf miners that later appeared or not, I dont know, but they certainly made washing the leaves more troublesome. I guess its just a mind-thing, the eggs are so small that theyre hardly going to affect the cooked product. Again, I have to be fair and note that the peas overshadowed the spinach for a month or two, but that to me just indicates that the peas were a far better crop. I'll try spinach again sometime, but for now I'll just say that it wasnt a star performer in my garden. Overall, I harvested about 2 or 3 supermarket bags of the stuff - and I have left the stumps in case it wants to try throwing out another few leaves.

By way of contrast, in the same bed I grew peas, got about 3 or 4 harvests, and then replaced them with lettuce seedlings which are now approaching maturity. The lettuce are needing more watering lately, as the temperatures are rising, despite growing in the shade for most of the day. Its a mixture of red leaves - red cos, red oakleaf, lolla rossa and others ("Lettuce Mesclun Valentine" from Botanical Interests), and is doing quite well.

The Garlic, also in the same bed, appears to be doing well, and will hopefully be ready to harvest within a month - the bulbs are already starting to swell. The plan, such as it is, is to use this as a carrot/leek bed later in the season. I already have the leeks sown now for about a month; they are a few inches high, and look like thin grass. They are sown thickly, so I can then dig them up and plant them out in the summer-shaded bed. They can then grow in the winter when the leaves have fallen and the shade has gone.

The winter-made compost is how ready for use, so I'm crumbling it into a bucket and using it as mulch. Hopefully the worms will dig it in, helping the soil for next year. One of my next projects is to buy more wire mesh to build a bigger bin. It would also help in turning the compost to have two bins, rather than one.

Yesterday, I hand-pollinated the first female Zucchini flower. I can see a few more getting ready to open, so within a week or two the Zucchini harvest should start in earnest.

Over the last few weeks, I have been planting out the runner beans ("Wisley Magic" from Thompson and Morgan), and theyre starting to climb already - just. I dont have as many plants out as I had envisioned, maybe 15, so I planted a few more seeds in pots to follow. Runner beans should provide a much bigger crop than the Kentucky pole beans did last year, but of course they dont have the same taste (poorer, in my opinion). I'm considering planting a few Kentucky seeds in and among the other crops and leaving them to their own devices. Finally on my agenda, I sowed some more sweet corn in pots to fill the gaps, and they need to be planted out. Suddenly, there dont seem to be so many gaps.