Stephanie's Garden Blog

With autumn not far away now it will soon be the time to pick the bountiful harvest of fruit that you have protected and nourished through the summer months. The question is, 'what do you do with all the excess apples?'

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be harvesting our blackcurrants in the fruit cage. This is such a low maintenance crop, with the bushes needing very little attention through the year.

Caterpillars develop from eggs laid by Moths and Butterflies. There are many different species and many that produce caterpillars damaging to plants. Some of the most damaging for brassica plants are the cabbage white caterpillars; the large cabbage white (Pieris brassicae) and the small cabbage white (Pieris rapae).

In a recent blog post by the Hip Horticulturist they discussed 5 ways to cheer up a garden shed this summer and talked about how our wooden raised beds can transform the look of any garden.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our leeks. It's a little later than we would normally like to plant them, but they always follow our new potatoes into the ground and these are a little late being harvested due to the cold spring. The leeks are good size plants though, so should have plenty of time to get to a good size before the winter.

The weather has at last warmed up and our crops now need more care and attention to keep them productive. We like to use fish, blood and bone every six weeks on our leafy crops such as brassicas, spinach and chard, and seaweed feed on flowering crops such as courgettes and beans.

This week In the Kitchen Garden we will be planting out the remaining tender vegetables currently taking shelter in our cold frame. Courgettes and squash will be planted out into the last remaining places in the garden. The garden will then be full with only small spaces for salads to be squeezed in.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our sweetcorn. The plants have spent the past couple of week in our cold frame waiting for the temperatures to warm up and hardening off. They are now big enough to survive outside. We will be covering them with cloches just in case a cold night threatens. These will be removed in a few weeks time.

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.