What a few days! Most of the Kitchen Garden underwent a complete overhaul during Easter….from gentle pruning to ripping out – making way for the season ahead. On this ‘cusp of season’, we went from rampant summer bliss to something unattractive & dishevelled almost overnight. Consequently, I spent several days doing things that were not on my Easter list! But I feel all the better for tackling the tasks. Most of the tomatoes went, while we’re still enjoying some of the best of the season yet – particularly a crop of meaty Ox-Hearts which are always late developers here.
I pulled out all the beans and look forward to the opportunity (hopefully very soon!) to sort the Purple Kings from the Rattlesnakes, before their beautiful markings fade, making them indistinguishable from each other. These two bean varieties grow best for us here and I save their seed from year to year.
Another task was sifting through all the seed heads I’ve collected this past month or so. I had a lovely time (after tackling the overgrowth in the beds under the apple tunnel), tossing in seed with gay abandon – when you’ve collected your own, there’s little need for restraint! Now I await, (with fingers crossed!), a carpet of fennel, coriander, red elk and poppy seedlings – if even only a few of them take, we should enjoy a wonderful mid-winter display.
But in the meantime, you can see the evening’s haul includes white ginger for the dressing table, while the kitchen receives a bounty of late tomatoes, zucchini, aubergine, coriander, thyme and parsley. Glenmore dinners are taking on an autumnal tone…