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This week in your Kitchen Garden.

Any suggestions for salads to sow now? The grow table has been providing me brilliantly with leaves for a couple of months on a cut and come again basis, but it's all getting somewhat bitter now. I've never succeeded with salad leaves before (except rocket, and purslane once under cover) so am not well versed with varieties that do well when.
 
RubyToogood said:
Any suggestions for salads to sow now? The grow table has been providing me brilliantly with leaves for a couple of months on a cut and come again basis, but it's all getting somewhat bitter now. I've never succeeded with salad leaves before (except rocket, and purslane once under cover) so am not well versed with varieties that do well when.
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Radish, spring onions (get a bunching type so you can leave a few and they'll keep dividing themselves and go on for ages) lettuce, chicory, mizuna, peas for pea shoots, mustard greens if you like spicy salads (or they lose their kick when cooked), tatsoi a bit later in summer, chard or leaf beet to pick baby leaves for salads (and if a few get big quickly they'll provide some shade for the other salad leaves), nasturtiums will take over if you let them but again can provide a bit of shade for other stuff if you keep them in check, kale also for baby leaves, claytonia is called winter purslane but I have loads of volunteers thriving in a scorching polytunnel now...
 
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Just took this yesterday to show off all the stuff that's in our salad mixes at the moment. A few of these are bolting atm but they were sown a while ago if not last year, I'm resowing pretty much all of these either now or soon or have recently.

IMG_20230615_145137~2.jpg
 
Let me know if you'd like any seeds stuck in the post RubyToogood, I have some interesting stuff like chenopodium capitatum and some great little mini butterhead lettuces that you can successional sow right through summer if you give them some shade and keep them well watered and are just the right size for one meal or two small side salads.
 
iona said:
Let me know if you'd like any seeds stuck in the post RubyToogood, I have some interesting stuff like chenopodium capitatum and some great little mini butterhead lettuces that you can successional sow right through summer if you give them some shade and keep them well watered and are just the right size for one meal or two small side salads.
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Thanks... I've got quite a lot of odd packets of things I should probably use first though, mostly mixtures. Perhaps I should try and move the grow table to a shadier spot now - although it's pretty heavy full. That's the other problem, things are now bolting. What I probably should have done and didn't is successional sowing, rather than bunging everything in at once.

Fennel is another thing I've never succeeded with and am planning to try. At present I've got tiny Chantenay carrots just getting big enough to eat too. They are amazingly delicious. Pure essence of carrotiness. I could do with two of the grow tables really. They are a bit of a game changer.
 
RubyToogood said:
Thanks... I've got quite a lot of odd packets of things I should probably use first though, mostly mixtures. Perhaps I should try and move the grow table to a shadier spot now - although it's pretty heavy full. That's the other problem, things are now bolting. What I probably should have done and didn't is successional sowing, rather than bunging everything in at once.

Fennel is another thing I've never succeeded with and am planning to try. At present I've got tiny Chantenay carrots just getting big enough to eat too. They are amazingly delicious. Pure essence of carrotiness. I could do with two of the grow tables really. They are a bit of a game changer.
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A little bit of shade netting or similar while newly sown stuff is germinating and getting established and you don't have so much soil coverage to keep moisture in would help, if you were able to get hold of something to use for that rather than having to move the table... Stuff will carry on for ages after it's started bolting if you keep on picking it and don't let it finish setting seed, ime.
 
iona said:
A little bit of shade netting or similar while newly sown stuff is germinating and getting established and you don't have so much soil coverage to keep moisture in would help, if you were able to get hold of something to use for that rather than having to move the table... Stuff will carry on for ages after it's started bolting if you keep on picking it and don't let it finish setting seed, ime.
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It's the fact it's both bitter and bolting that makes me think I'll just yank the lot up and resow. There's lettuce (supposedly butterhead but I haven't been letting it head up), edible chrysanthemum and some other frilly thing that I'm no longer sure what it is but not lettuce in there, all bitter and bolting.
 
iona said:
A little bit of shade netting or similar while newly sown stuff is germinating and getting established and you don't have so much soil coverage to keep moisture in would help, if you were able to get hold of something to use for that rather than having to move the table... Stuff will carry on for ages after it's started bolting if you keep on picking it and don't let it finish setting seed, ime.
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Was just about to post similar.

Lettuce and some other leafy salad stuff needs to be cool to germinate. I will be sowing some soon, but plan to do it in modules and keep them indoors in as cool a place as I can find in my flat until they've germinated, and plant them out a few weeks later. If you do sow direct, it's really important to keep them moist and as cool as possible.

 
First signs of fruit from the patio pots - blackcurrants, Alpine strawberries and cultivated golden raspberries. Just been for a walk to check the wild variety bushes near us and everything’s fruiting nicely. A couple more weeks of this hot weather and summer wine making will be a possibility:

IMG_3322.jpeg
 
I've delayed sowing more salad so as to get some fennel and Chinese broccoli under way. Will start again when the carrots come out. Although there's not much danger of it being too hot for salad at the moment!

Meanwhile my freezer is filling up with blackcurrants. They seemed to take forever to ripen this year but are abundant. I mysteriously have two bushes despite only having planted one many years ago. I think it must have seeded rather than layered itself as #2 definitely has smaller currants.

Blackcurrants are great: they do well, need very little attention and are productive. A sprinkling on muesli, or porridge in winter, goes down well. Possibly we are in jam territory this year though.
 
There’s a yellow warning for wind over a fair bit of southern England and Wales tomorrow. Might be a good idea to tie in any toms you haven’t got around to yet.

IMG_0010.jpeg
 
Anyone else having trouble with their basil this year?
I grow mine indoors on the windowsill during summer and I just think it's not sunny enough and too damp for it - I've not been overwatering but the leaves haven't been doing well - as all my basil was doing brilliantly in June and then is all going horribly wrong now I can only think it is due to the damp and lack of sun.
 
Epona said:
Anyone else having trouble with their basil this year?
I grow mine indoors on the windowsill during summer and I just think it's not sunny enough and too damp for it - I've not been overwatering but the leaves haven't been doing well - as all my basil was doing brilliantly in June and then is all going horribly wrong now I can only think it is due to the damp and lack of sun.
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I'm growing basil in a large tub in my greenhouse, and after a slowish start it's doing well now.

Does your window face southish? If so it may not be getting enough sun.

The only other thing I can think of is that basil needs fairly rich soil to really do well, and if it's in a smallish pot on a windowsill it may have exhausted all the nutrients already.
 
andysays said:
I'm growing basil in a large tub in my greenhouse, and after a slowish start it's doing well now.

Does your window face southish? If so it may not be getting enough sun.

The only other thing I can think of is that basil needs fairly rich soil to really do well, and if it's in a smallish pot on a windowsill it may have exhausted all the nutrients already.
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No it's none of the above, both plants I've had this year were doing fine earlier in the year in the exact same place where I normally have basil doing really well from March to early October - but both plants this year got leaf spot really badly in the last month - I only water them from the saucer below the pot (same as I do every year) so I can only think it must be due to the really damp weather and high humidity/damp indoors as a result.
 
I really need to be doing some Thai basil once I get the basil train going again - I do love cooking Thai food and it's an essential ingredient!

My mint plant is doing fine btw. This basil issue is one I've never had before, they usually do well during summer then fail mid-autumn so I do just think it is due to the weather in terms of lack of sun and just being more damp indoors than previous years.
 
Epona said:
I really need to be doing some Thai basil once I get the basil train going again - I do love cooking Thai food and it's an essential ingredient!

My mint plant is doing fine btw. This basil issue is one I've never had before, they usually do well during summer then fail mid-autumn so I do just think it is due to the weather in terms of lack of sun and just being more damp indoors than previous years.
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Yes, I think it'll be lack of sunshine, particularly as it's indoors. Mine is all fine, 3 different varieties.
 
RubyToogood said:
Yes, I think it'll be lack of sunshine, particularly as it's indoors. Mine is all fine, 3 different varieties.
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Thanks, hopefully once this weather has passed I'll be able to get some going again!
I usually have very healthy basil and more than I know what to do with (ie. pruning plants back hard due to growth and freezing pesto! It tends to be my "I may not be able to grow a lot, but this does well" plant)
 
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