Cropping

I’ve been rushing to get these in before the rain.   We have only had one day of rain since January, and there was plenty forecast.   So I stopped work on the strawberry bed and decided to cram as much as I could in before this much longed for wet.

In went the broad beans and peas. I have gone for mostly mangetout varieties here in the lower vegetable bed.   I have found in the past few years that the effort involved in shelling peas to get a decent amount for a meal far outweighs the result. So much nicer to just have mangetout and not bother with tahsome shelling.   And you always end up eating the pods raw because you can’t abide waste. And then getting a sore jaw from all the fibrous chewing.

So in this bed are plenty of Carouby de Maussanne.   And an extra row of broad beans because the depth of the soil here is not enough to take a stake of wood and the pea support.   I really must work on this one year.   There’s a huge bedrock just below the surface.

And in the front quadrant I have reserved the space for root vegetables, and sunflowers to fun it up.   In here went parsnips and carrots and something else I have completely forgotten. I could walk out and check on the label I have hammered in at the end of the row.   But as I am in London for a week, it makes it a bit of a walk.

Goodness these pictures are relentlessly brown. Here’s a picture of one of my anenomes which I planted in the autumn. Gorgeous colour and they are coming out all along the edge of the chestnut paths here in the potager.   I was going to take a longer picture so you could see them all in a row.   But the weeds around them are not very fetching, and I do like a tidy plot.

But no time to weed. Rain is coming. Hurrah.