Early June progress report - fruit and veg

Latest post from MARKSVEGPLOT – a blog about food and gardening in England”

June is upon us, but it still doesn’t seem like Summer! Our daytime temperatures are mostly in the mid teens (Celsius), and night-times ones are still mostly 8 or 9. This means that lots of plants are growing more slowly than I would wish. This post is intended to give you a picture of how things are going…

The purple Kohlrabi (“Modrava”) is just beginning to swell, but it’s a long way from maturity at present:

The Broad Bean flowers are fading now.

As they drop off, they reveal tiny pods forming. Hopefully there will be lots of these. If a flower is not pollinated it doesn’t produce a pod, but I have seen lots of bee activity amongst the Broad Bean plants, so I think they mostly will have been pollinated.

My first batch of Endives is looking OK, but nowhere near ready for transplanting yet.

These ones are “De Meaux”, already showing their crinkly leaf-form:

I have started cropping the Lettuce, and there is lots of it coming on.

The Cabbage and PSB seedlings are also looking OK, and not far off being ready for potting-on. I will be keeping them in separate pots until the Broad Bean bed becomes vacant and lets me plant them out ready for next year.

The potatoes are all looking healthy still, with no signs od blight or other diseases. This photo shows how I have got potatoes of different types maturing at different rates, with a view to having a harvest over a long period:

The first fruits on the Strawberry plants are forming now.

I have put a net over them now, because birds and squirrels will try to grab the berries even when they are under-ripe.

That net was difficult to get right too. It is made of extruded plastic, and it is quite stiff, so it is hard to get it to sit right. Over the year I have tried several different types of netting, and this type is probably my least favourite. It was bought as “Butterfly Protection Netting”, from Gardening Naturally. Its main advantage is that it is very light.

On the Pear tree I have counted a mere six tiny pearlets. Not a big harvest, even if they make it to maturity (which is far from certain!).

I think the soil where the pear tree is growing is just too dry and “free-draining” for fruit trees to do well. The tree is too big for me to move now, but if I do get another one I won’t plant it along the fence where the current one is.

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