My veggies are loving the rain but the herbaceous plants and roses are looking quite bedraggled. I always think it’s better to pick the flowers for indoor use than let them turn to mush in the borders so at least we’ve had some lovely colour and scents indoors this week. Adding a few stems of mint to an arrangement adds a lovely fresh smell too. The herb bed is looking like a jungle so I have also been cutting them by the handful to stop them going to seed and getting straggly. Lemon balm and mint make great tea and thyme and rosemary are great when added en mass to roasted veg (out of the garden of course) and BBQ’s. I’m still foraging too and have been using young dandelion leaves and wood sorrel in salads. I’m trying to find time to make elderflower cordial and champagne but it seems that the rain has spoilt a lot of the flowers.
I have sown more carrots in the raised bed that had the early potatoes in. I hate to see any unused space in the veggie patch and there’s plenty of time in these good growing conditions for the carrots to come. Carrot fly is also less of a threat later on in the season. The second sowing of peas is coming on well (for pea shoots) and I’m ridiculously smug about my amazing crop of mange tout, with the feeling of success tasting almost as sweet as the pods themselves.
I’m still not sure what my tomatoes have in store. I removed most of the leaves as advised by an American website which said most people in the UK grow tomato leaves rather than tomatoes (as I did last year) and suggested by removing most of the leaves then the energy goes into producing tomatoes. I think my plants are still a little embarrassed by their nudity and are thinking twice about producing anything.
From Lynne Allbutt's Green Scene Column in the Western Mail (Media Wales)
