Winter vegetables are growing well in our patch despite the fact they don’t receive full day sunshine.
Podding pea ‘Early Massey’ is already flowering on its trellis. This dwarf pea grows to 60cm, and is ready to pick 12 weeks from sowing.
Early Massey pea (Fothergills)
For fresh spring peas it’s good to sow them now. Early Massey produces well filled pods, sweet and tender.
Kohlrabi belongs to the cabbage (Brassica) family. Easy to grow, watch out for the caterpillars of white cabbage moth; they can devour one plant a night.
We like to eat it raw as it’s crunchy and spicy, great as a slaw or grated into a salad, tossed with oil and salt. Kohl Rabi ‘Purple Vienna’ seed from
Mr Fothergill can be sown now.
Kohl Rabi ‘Purple Vienna’
Rhubarb crowns are available now in all good garden centres. Winter is the time to plant both rhubarb and asparagus. Give them a permanent spot and you
will have them for years!
Plant rhubarb now.
Fennel is growing well. We like to pick and eat them young. We find that the ideal point at which to harvest fennel is at around 80 days from sowing, when
the bulbs are roughly the size of a cricket ball. You can harvest earlier or later than this, of course, but bear in mind that the larger fennel bulbs
get, the tougher they become. For salads, young, crisp fennel is the way to go.
Read more about Fennel here …
Get ready for summer veg
It’s good to be ready for summer vegetables which I will be planting as soon as the weather is warm enough. I am building a series of three tee-pees.
Each will be planted in turn with one tomato, one bean and one cucumber. The first will be planted in late August, the second late October and
the third will be planted late December. We are planning to sow seed of tasty oxheart tomatoes and raise them on a heated propagation tray to give
them an early start. But more of all that later.
Each tee-pee will be planted in turn with one tomato, one bean and one cucumber.