Peter Seabrook: here are my best summer harvest varieties, says Peter
These varieties have really proven their worth, says Peter
WHILE the wet winter delayed outdoor sowings and then scorching summer temperatures checked growth this year, only to be saved by thunder storms of heavy rain, there has still been a much-increased homegrown harvest. People new to grow-your-own report bumper yields and quite a task distributing surpluses to neighbours and friends.
Tomatoes have always been popular, and high temperatures have suited them, as it has aubergines, courgettes, cucumbers, melons and the like. Two plants of Cucumber ‘Emilie’ F1 RHS AGM (DT Brown) in my polytunnel yielded up to eight fruits a day for weeks.
Three Melon ‘Alvaro’ F1 RHS AGM (Thompson & Morgan), raised on the windowsill and planted under polythene to spread out untrimmed and trained, cropped well. This Charentais-type cantaloupe melon can be ripened outside and certainly benefited from protection and higher temperatures.
Many readers have found good yields can be grown in small spaces
and my pallet-able units (raised beds made from recycled pallets) prove the points.
Cropped first with garden peas and broad beans, then re-sown on 28th June with dwarf French and runner beans, we were picking beans again in seven weeks.
Runner bean ’Millionaire’ (T&M) with its pale pink flowers, growing to just over a foot high, has proved a great success. It was necessary to push four short canes into the corners of the wooden box and run a strand of soft string around to save them flopping over with the weight of the beans. It is proving a pretty cropping ornamental to grow in containers.
Where it was possible to keep up with watering in the very high temperatures, courgettes have been remarkably productive. There is a tendency for developing courgettes to rot when the humidity and overnight dews are high; carefully removing the fading flower reduces this problem.
“Cucumber ‘Emilie’ yielded up to eight fruits a day”