Winter Garden

My garden is full of wonderful winter vegetables with the chicory, radicchio, and endive heading up well, and the colour of the radicchio is amazing although the background colour is still green not white. I planted seed in mid-March and planted out when the seedlings were about 15cm tall. I will try blanching it with an inverted bucket to exclude light for a few days and let you know how that goes.

My cabbage relatives are doing well and I kept the white butterflies out in autumn with bird netting, but with the cold weather, they have ceased their activity and now the beneficial birds can access the garden, although the European blackbirds are annoying and almost as bad as chickens. I have Brussel sprouts, white kohl rabi, cauliflower sicilia violetto, romanesco, and di jesi and cabbage cour di bue grosso growing well and the romanesco have small, pale green heads with the characteristic spirals. Also planted seed in mid March and planted out when about 20cm.

I direct planted fennel montibianco in mid March and they are going really well. I have eaten a number so far in one of my favourite dishes, fish and fennel stew. Still plenty to pick and I look forward to fennel salads and oven roasted fennel. I planted broad beans early April and they are now about 1.8m tall and flowering with small pods developing. They have had some challenges during growing and I must investigate what the issue might be. My peas, podding, sugar snap and snow, are growing strongly, flowering and producing pods. They suffered some bird damage as the tender shoots were just too tempting, so I have put netting over them and they are charging ahead.

The time for thinking about spring/summer planting is here, and I will put up another blog with the planting details and photos of my garden last year.

Grow for Flavour