Keeping track of the garden

We dug up the early potatoes last week. These are Arran Pilot which has cropped well. We also dug up the Charlotte potatoes, great taste, definitely one to grow again and a single line of Ratte which we had from Emma and Ian and which produced a heavy crop, though with perhaps not the most interesting taste.


I lifted the garlic a month or so ago. Goodish crop of Cristo, fine crop of Arno, nothing much from Marco. The red onions produced a very disappointing crop but the white onions are spectacular, big onions, very little damage of any kind. They are drying on the slatted bench in the wooden greenhouse. Need to check the variety and consider growing again.

The peas are still cropping well and the beans are reaching for the sky. There is a lot of blossom on the green and runner beans although not much to be seen amongst the riot of leaf of the borlotti and the Trail of Tears. The broad beans have stopped now. I think it is worth having a go at an autumn sowing to try to elongate the cropping season. My second sowing in late spring produced beans which were only a week or two behind the early spring sown ones.In the cutting garden the echinacea has established much better this year. I love it and will look for some other varieties to have another row. All the cosmos is self sown bar a couple of plants which came up from my greenhouse sowing. I think the seed was not fresh enough but if they self seed as well again next year they will become something which the garden is never without. I loved the white cosmos at Bodnant. I will try growing quite a lot from seed next year as they are an ideal plant to put in front of chopped down oriental poppies.The fennel is lovely again. I will sow some more from the kitchen garden one when it sets seed. Three plants from last year's sowing are in the side garden and are beginning to bulk up. They are a lovely plant. Perhaps I should look for a bronze one too.

The sweetpeas are better than ever. These are the sweetest smelling. I am particularly pleased that I grew these myself from seed. They include some Sarah Raven seeds given to me by Zoe which I think are these deep coloured ones.They all have lovely long stems and are ideal as cut flowers - just what the cutting garden is supposed to be doing!A rather bleached out picture of some of the new bed in the side garden. The euphorbias really earn their keep as do the erysimum bowles mauve. The clary which I grew from seed has also been a good and tough addition. The white foxgloves have been a lovely flower but really suffered from the wind tunnel effect at the side of the house.