It’s true, for the Kitchen Garden never rests and it’s been producing well. As we steadily build towards peak spring harvest, there are some sights that are only to be captured at this time of year. Like the cauliflower leaves pegged together to keep sunlight at bay (which would otherwise discolour their snow-white heads)….
And the neat row of coloured chard marching down the centre of the pea tunnel (when the peas are over the chard will stand out in the open for a command performance through summer).
Early peas are coming in thick and fast, like purple podded Dutch (who’s seed I’ve been saving each season for around 25 years), sugar snaps and my favourite shelling pea, the Telephone: it contains such sweet morsels that unfortunately, they rarely make it to the kitchen (OK, so I’m a pea-glutton!).
Elsewhere there are neat rows of leeks, the garlic is growing on well, lettuces are plentiful, the broad beans are in flower and the companion plants are a billowing sea of flowers, just in time to attract the bees to emerging fruit tree blossom. And though the brassicas are on their way out, branches of orange and lemon are heavily laden with fruit, and plump bulbs of fennel are sublime. All of which contributed to delicious lunches for end of winter workshops…..
Like Anthia Koullouros’s Herbal Garden Workshop. See next post!