In the garden this year

Someone asked me recently, about a month ago, what we were growing this year. I logged the question with intentions of writing a post as soon I had taken some pictures, which I promptly did. Take some pictures that is.

So here you go, some pictures of the veg gardens this year, albeit from around 4 weeks ago, with a brief listing of what we are growing.

The bean triangle, not to be mistaken for the Bermuda triangle, although it is true to say that many things were lost to weeds over time.

Green beans, yellow beans, purple beans all dwarf varieties (for freezing and eating fresh) Climbing Borlotti beans in the foreground growing on hazel tepees (our beans for drying). And then filling in the gaps we have purple spouting broccoli, Brussel sprouts, green and purple kale, paprika, a couple of varieties of chillies, sunflowers, garlic, shallots and a permanent bed of 5 asparagus plants that we grew from seed about 4 years ago. Oh, I almost forgot, there is also a variety of French pumpkin in there.

Moving onto the green house, which is new for me, we have had great success with cucumbers, aubergine, cape gooseberries,  melons, and luffas. Not to mention all the salad that we had early season. I will plan better next year, but I can see the greenhouse working well into the autumn and possibly early winter for more salad crops.

My pride and joy is always the tomato and pepper patch, about 100 plants of each, sadly struck down by blight not long after this picture, but with some aggressive pruning to cut out the disease we are still able to harvest a basket or two every day.

Running down the side of these are a few rows of celeriac, basil, spring onions, more peppers and some lavender from seed.

Past the permanent and ever expanding raspberry patch we have an area for gherkins, then courgettes, carrots, turnip, root parsley, parsnips, beetroot and to the left calendula which Gosia uses as decoration for her soaps.

It is at this point that I realise that I never took a picture of the thousand plus onions that I planted, or the leeks, or the butternut squash. all in the third patch that we work. I should also mention that we have twenty rows (80 meter) of maincrop potatoes, an acre of peas (as a cover crop) but still harvestable, 5 rows of Styrian pumpkins and a mixture of Hokkaido and other pumpkins scattered about the place.

Sometimes I wonder why we do it

Looking back only this last month we have pickled gherkins, made jars of ratatouille and started on our planned hundred plus jars of passata. And the second freezer is now in service full of peas and beans.  So if we go back into lockdown we have plenty to keep us going