It was such a slow spring for the vegetable plants that I started in the greenhouse this year, but harvest time has finally begun! There are now finally enough crops coming to make a good salad each day – and that will do for now.
The spring started off so very wet that in truth I didn’t venture out into the greenhouse as early or as often as I should have, which means that my plants didn’t get sown as early as they should have. It is so cosy in the greenhouse when it is raining, and I do love to spend time there particularly during summer showers with the rain pattering down above my head and running down the panes while I potter about in the dry and warm. But it wasn’t like that, and even the path to the greenhouse was flooded – not very appealing. Once the weather dried out it stayed cool, and really felt too cool for most seedlings to germinate. I know that for those that did sow at the right time, many of their seedlings grew so slowly that they were more vulnerable then ever to slugs and snails, of which there were a great many because of the wet weather. So I don’t feel too bad about that; I can let myself off the hook.
Although I did eventually sow lots of things I also made up for lost time by buying in small vegetable started plants from the garden centre, and that seems to have been a good move this year. By the time I planted them out the weather had warmed up a little – let’s face it there has been very little in the way of real heat, still, but it was enough that the plants were able to quickly put on growth, which is essential to them getting away from the reaches of this year’s massive population of rampaging molluscs.
And now they have grown some more, and have started to produce their crops. So, we have courgettes of course – I am picking them when small with their flowers still intact and eating them raw, with the flower torn up and tossed in salad dressing. I have also sown a new batch because I know how they flower and fruit their hearts out and then run out of steam. We have a handful of peas and mangetouts, which again are mostly just being eaten either straight off the plant or in a very quick salad. Lots of lettuce leaves are now coming – though they have started to succumb to the slugs so it may be time for a new sowing of those to see us into late summer and early autumn. The green beans are starting to come now and are the plants are big, so I think we will be seeing a lot of these. I particularly love them washed and tossed into a little butter, garlic, salt and a splash of water until they are just tender, as a side dish. I’ll be eating a lot of that, perhaps with some burrata and some chopped toasted nuts to make it more of a meal. We also have lots of kale which Im hoping will really come into its own in autumnal meals but I have been chopping it finely and eating it in coleslaw along with some of the new carrots grated in.
There is lots more still to come and more sowing to be done too, but finally we have reached the stage when the produce is at least equal to the amount of work we have to put in, and it’s a very delicious bit of the year to be in.