Pick of the crop

With the peak of summer here I hope your gardens are looking beautiful and full of life.

This is a good time to dig any garlic and shallots that you planted last year. On the planting side, good seedlings to get in the ground are cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and leeks, while for seeds, try beetroot, carrots, lettuce, peas and radish.

It’s an ongoing job, I know, but it’s important to hoe around vegetable crops, pull out any weeds and generally keep the growing beds tidy.

If you have tomatoes remember to remove the laterals and take off some leaves to allow light in to ripen the fruit.

If you have vacant ground that you want to use in the future, start by spreading out and digging in compost.

It’s important to put compost back into the soil so it can sustain healthy plants in the future.

Brassica crops like a side-dressing of nitrogen fertiliser every three to four weeks. Nitrogen is of course the ‘‘growth fuel’’ for plants but be careful not to overfeed high nitrogen fertiliser to plants like carrots as this will cause forking and miss-shaped carrots.

Fertilisers are labelled indicating the level of nitrogen [N], phosphorus [P] and potassium [K].

When choosing one remember that nitrogen promotes green growth, healthy soil and microbial activity.

Phosphorus promotes flower, fruit and seed production as well as vigorous roots and disease resistance.

Potassium is essential for building fruit and for the size and quality of the fruit.

One question I get quite often is what heirloom vegetables are.

Quite simply they are varieties that originated pre-1960 and are open pollinated strains selected for garden performance and flavour. Some examples are triamble pumpkin and money-maker tomatoes.

Photo: FILE Ripe for the picking: If you planted garlic and shallots at the correct time last year, then now is the time to harvest them.