Gardening Blog
Allotment Diary
June 22: a long hot summer?
Terry Walton admires the earthy riches of flaming June
June continues to bring almost perfect gardening weather, a little rain, some warm sunshine and a smile to the face all good allotmenteers. The longest day may have just passed but summer is still well and truly with us. We have a great deal to look forward to, or so the forecasters say. This is going to be a summer to rival 2006, which is what my piece of seaweed tells me!
Not only are the plants enjoying these perfect growing conditions but the weeds are positively relishing in every moment. But look around you, not just at the plot, and you must as a gardener admire those hedgerows and verges of the road. There are those bright yellow displays as masses of buttercups and dandelions fill every inch with their predominance of flowers. There are the yellowed eyed daisies making a lake of white as their flowers carpeted the banks and dips alongside the busy traffic. This is indeed a bold display with nature at its best and you for a second would not call them weeds. Well you would if they inhabited your vegetable patch.
So what is a weed? A weed to an experienced gardener is simply a plant in the wrong place. This could be a brightly flowering plant in a border but is not there by design and ruins your aesthetic plan. To me the most annoying weed is the potato. When you plant up last year's potato patch with some small growing vegetables this monster pushes its way to the surface and pushes these new arrivals out of the way. It defies all attempts to remove this little old tuber and half your rows of seedlings are soon disturbed. You dig what seem feet deep and it is still there and finally when you find it, it is no bigger than a marble. This little potato has survived several diggings, all winter in the soil and yet still grows. It causes mayhem and havoc, so that is a real weed.
Crops are maturing well and can better survive the heat. So bring it on. A late evening drink of cool water is all they need to return them to the upright position when the droop in the heat of the day. This is no different to the needs of the busy gardener except a pint of cool beer maybe more acceptable than the water.
The end of June is a good time to experiment with a few new crops. All of your basic crops are in and are growing well so the needs of the kitchen will be satisfied. As you harvest broad beans and early potatoes pieces of rich ground become available so let's not waste them and leave them idle. There are a range of vegetables that will fit this bill and give you some new pleasurable taste to your meals. Corn salad or better known as lamb's lettuce, chicory, Florence fennel and pak choi are very suitable for these empty spaces. These are all vegetables that need to grow unchecked by wild variations in temperature and are most adapted to these summer months. Sown too early and they will readily bolt, go to seed, and be useless. Sow them now they will grow to maturity ready to supply those autumn treats.
There are also readily available in catalogues and garden centres these days are the quick maturing, baby vegetables such as carrots and beetroot that are ready 10 to 12 weeks after sowing. Pop a few short rows of these in and they again will give you those extra vegetables as autumn approaches.
So the garden is even more productive and will perform that little bit extra if you look after your soil. Keep it fertile and the rewards are great!
My Life On A Hillside Allotment
Terry Walton is a regular contributor to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 and has written a book called, My Life on a Hillside Allotment, published by Bantam Press. The book is available from Amazon
Useful links
- Terry Walton's weekly allotment diary
- How to grow your own tomatoes
- Grow your own strawberries
- How to attract useful insects to your garden
- Goodbye to the cuckoo
- Wildlife watch: the pheasant chick
- Visit our gardening channel
- Chat to other gardeners at Saga Zone
- Food and drink: readers' recipes, seasonal favourites and more
