It's a full-time job keeping my crops shipshape now harvest time is here
As more plants begin to crop in the kitchen garden it can become a full-time job just to harvest your veg at the peak of perfection! That said, we sometimes think ‘I’ll leave it a few more days as I don’t need it now’, but don’t, as you run the risk of your cauliflowers bolting or your peas going like bullets.
I’ve been growing a couple of heritage
It’s a good time to give fruiting plants a high potash feed every few weeks as the fruit begins to ripen, especially raspberries and berry plants, as this will improve the harvest by producing bigger berries, and more of them. However, if your raspberries are becoming yellow on the new growth or in between the varieties of pea from the Heritage Seed Library, with ‘Blue Prussian’ fast becoming a favourite, with its sweet and crisp taste that far surpasses more modern varieties (in my humble opinion). This short variety produces lovely white flowers and is rather productive from just 10 plants grown around a small support. I harvest the pods when they feel full (eating a handful on the way back to the kitchen!). It’s also time to harvest the spring-sown broad beans – these are best picked when you can feel the bean inside the pod and are great to freeze for later use, but I like to blanch them and add them to salads with a garlic dressing. As both peas and beans begin to finish cropping like to chop them off at ground
Ileaf veins, this can be a symptom of iron deficiency and you should use a foliar feed containing chelated iron, whereas if they’re yellowing on the older leaves this is a sign of magnesium deficiency and can be solved by spraying with a solution of 50g Epsom salts in one litre of water every two weeks for six weeks.
Checking over ta ies for blight and the bulbs become more visible and the skins start to go papery and brown. Choose a sunny day to lift and divide them, trim the roots and stalks and allow them to dry on the surface of the soil for a few hours. I then keep them in a breezy, dry place such as a greenhouse or lean-to until they’re dry and ready to store in net sacks until needed, or