Stephanie's Garden Blog

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be pruning our espalier apple trees. Summer is the ideal time to carry out this annual job and our apple trees have put on an enormous amount of growth this year. They are definitely ready for a haircut!

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out some winter broccoli in to new vegetable cages. We have two identical cages put up side by side. One is covered with white insect mesh and the other in covered with new black insect mesh. We are running a trial to see if the plants grow differently according to the colour of the mesh.

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.

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.