Feburary In The Garden

After perusing the seed catalogues, I have purchased my seeds.

Having a small plot at the bottom of the garden in which to grow my vegetables, I have to think carefully about what to grow, the main criteria being, is it a vegetable we love to eat. Although we love to eat potatoes, they do take up a lot of room and are inexpensive to buy, so I am not growing those this year. I have opted instead for sweet potatoes slips. I haven’t grown sweet potatoes before, so it’s quite exciting and instead of growing them in the ground, I am going to grow them in large pots.

I have gone for the same tomatoes, I grew last year, Legend and Ferline. Both super sweet and blight resistant. Last year was an excellent year for tomatoes with plenty of sunshine and we made lots of passata, which was wonderful with pasta.

I absolutely love courgettes made into little fritters but as the plants are rather large for my little plot, I am trying, for the first time climbing courgettes, which you grow in pots, on the patio.

Perfect if you don’t have the space for a separate vegetable plot.

Carrots, peas and climbing French peas, make up the staple vegetables and I am trying swiss chard for the first time. It is supposed to taste like spinach, and has the most amazing colours, so should look pretty in the veg bed.

Lastly my favourite vegetable of all, butternut squash. They are a bit unruly but I forgive them for that, as they are so delicious.

Whilst ordering my seeds, I bought a couple of currant bushes, a red and a blackcurrant. I love soft fruit and it is always so expensive in the shops to buy. There is nothing like going down the garden and picking it ripe off the bush.

Last weekend, the sowing began and I sowed some chillies in the heated propagator. Not as many as last year but enough and extra in case some don’t germinate.

My garlic is going well but unfortunately not my purple sprouting broccoli, which has succumbed to rot. Last year I grew far to many plants, so this season I have only grown three and now I am down to two, I will really have to savour the taste of the broccoli and not let any go to waste.

My broad beans are now peeping up through the soil and as it starts for warm up, they will soon be romping away.

I received some good news at the beginning of February. The National Garden Scheme have used some of my garden photography in their 2011 Yellow Book. It is a great honour to have my photographs used by this fantastic charity and I am happy to support them. I won’t find out which photographs they have used until I attend the press launch in London at the end of March. You can pre-order the book by going onto their website.

I will be continuing my support this year so if you know of any NGS gardens in Dorset you think I should photograph, do let me know and in this case, size doesn’t matter!

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use.

The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention.

If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here