Carol Klein has her seed catalogues at the ready to plan her best-ever veg harvests
I'm making time to plan my best-ever veg harvests next year
It’s time to assess how we did with our vegetables this year and, most importantly, time to make a comprehensive plan for next year. A calendar helps; if you can see you should have sown something last week, you’re much more likely to get on and sow it or plant it than if you just have a vague guilty feeling that never manifests itself into action. During the last year we’ve had some successes but also several failures, mainly because of lack of planning and time.
Although we’ve managed a reasonable crop of potatoes, there are now just a few remnants from those we stored. We grew them all in tree tubs, mainly because they take up too much room in the open ground. Nothing though, beats turning over earth and finding buried treasure, the smooth, white tubers of ‘Charlotte’ or the selfexplanatory ‘Red Duke of York’. We’ll grow more next year but get an order in early to make sure we get the varieties we like.
Our tomatoes have had little fuss. We grew only two varieties this year, ‘Sungold’ and ‘Gardener's Delight’, and neither had much cosseting. Seed was sown in late March, plants were pricked out in April and eventually potted into 10 litre pots which were stood on the greenhouse shelving with a tall bamboo in each. Dean, who has been working here one day a week, tied them in. The leftovers grew on in the tunnel, sprawling around just as tomatoes would in their natural home on riverbanks in Peru. They’ve produced masses of flavoursome fruit. With some veg, if you have a glut and they’re not ones that lend themselves to freezing or preserving, they’re just wasted. One of the most difficult considerations when growing vegetables is to get timing and quantities right.
Two vegetables we’ve grown too much of are Brussels sprouts and parsnips. Both are planted in our big troughs. They’re deep and full of good soil so plants are bound to do well in them but perhaps I wasn’t expecting them to do quite as well as they have.
Earlier, I sowed several brassicas – purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage, sprouts and kale. Seedlings were pricked out, I even got as far as giving many of them their own individual pots, but I didn’t plant any of them. Fortunately, our eldest daughter, Annie, decided to plant the sprouts and cabbages and they’ve grown beautifully. Sadly, they weren’t protected from the ravages of cabbage whites. They went for the sprout tops but were eventually picked off. The sprouts themselves are in fine fettle though. Although the courgettes have been brilliant, we missed the boat with some of our squashes; such a shame when they’d made such beautiful plants in 2 litre pots. They’re such fastgrowing plants that any check to their growth, including delay about planting out, is bound to result in a poorer crop.
Swiss chard has been good. The leaves are so good for you, we can’t really grow too much. And beetroot always does well here – provided we sow regularly in modules, one seed cluster per compartment before planting out.
Seed catalogues and calendar at the ready, now all I have to do is follow my own advice!
'We grew only two varieties, 'Sungold' and 'Gardener's Delight' and neither had much cosseting'