Kitchen Garden 150515This week In Stephanie’s Kitchen Garden we are continuing to feed and water the crops.  We’re off to the Chelsea Flower Show for a few days, so will need to leave our plants in good shape for our absence.  They will all be well watered and the blinds will be drawn down on the greenhouse to prevent any sunshine we might get from drying the crops out too quickly.  Thankfully, our tomato success kits are excellent at keeping our tomatoes provided with plentiful water around the clock.

Scorching sunshine is not the worst of our problems in the Kitchen Garden at present, more the cold nights that are causing concern.  Normally by this time of the year frosts are a distant memory in our part of East Anglia, but this isn’t the case this year.  Last week we were going to plant out our beans, but we had a couple of frosts threatened so decided to hold it off.  The plants are still comfortably nestled in the cold frame and we hope to get them out this week.  The weather forecast is not inspiring confidence however.  We will be sowing a further batch of them in the greenhouse in case the current plants suffer from their long wait.

 This week will be all about watering, feeding and weeding.  Our seedlings in the greenhouse will need potting on, ready for planting out later in the month.  Our potatoes are growing rapidly and will need earthing up.

This week we will be harvesting more lovely asparagus and rhubarb, as well as the occasional strawberry from the early varieties which have just started to ripen.  Our spinach and chard are beautifully lush and green so we will be picking the leaves as often as we can.