Succession crops in the potager

potagerpreweedGinger and frozen fish. You know how it is when you realise you have lost your shopping list. The one you have systematically and carefully built up over weeks. And suddenly you realise the list is gone and you have to recreate it. Ugh.

I did a lot of necessary housework and filing searching for it today. And I have been wandering around the house trying to visualise the items. Coming up with gems like bananas and oranges. the easy ones. AA batteries and cling film the not so obvious. I completely forgot coconut milk which is a shame as a hot spicy curry is just the thing in this heat.  Oh, and aubergines / eggplant. I needed to buy eggplants.

Yes to my shame I have to admit that I have messed up my aubergine growing this year. potagerweeding

I usually buy grafted plants around the end of April to get them into the ground and cropping hard by peak house guest season in August. They are brilliant sliced thickly lengthways and grilled on a barbecue. Especially when you throw on some rosemary, thyme and sage plants seconds before to get the smoke really aromatic.

Somehow I forgot to do add them to my shopping list.

And now, of course, it’s too late I was reminded of my error, not only at the supermarket, but when I went round to visit a neighbour’s garden.

dwarf french beansThere in her permaculture potager, Colette had at least a dozen healthy plants, all madly fruiting. Sigh.

So instead of offering you a bare patch of ground where the aubergines should have gone, may I introduce to you my favourite vegetable garden ground cover – dwarf French beans.

I have finally got round to removing all the spent broad beans, coriander, failed peas (don’t ask, a disaster this year) and assorted lurking weeds in one sector of the vegetable bed.

I left the nasturtiums and the self sown sunflowers, and fennel (good for aromatic flower arranging) but everywhere there is a bare patch of mulched ground, I sow little dwarf French beans. geminating beans

In this heat and with my automatic watering system they germinated in a record three days. Now that’s what a I call a fast crop.

All I have to do is hope Bambi / Daisy doesn’t take a fancy to them before I can harvest.