We’re now into late May so the polytunnel is beginning to get planted up. Up until now, its been providing us with lettuces and swiss chard but the swiss chard is coming to an end so now the summer vegetables get added.
I’ve decided to follow through with similar planting to last year, Dwarf French Beans (of various sorts), Climbing French Beans (ditto), courgettes, cucumber and other things that I’ve yet to decide. Most of the French Beans are from my own saved seeds and this seems to be a successful way of building a large selection of different sorts. My idea is to grow a small number (say five or ten plants) of each of a larger number of varieties. This means that they crop over a longer time and have different colours and shapes without having to buy lots of seeds each year.
The plants on the bench at the far end of the tunnel are my tomatoes which are still waiting to be put into their final pots from where the determinate (bush) varieties will go back onto the bench and the Indeterminate (cordon) varieties will go into the greenhouses.
I’m not growing as many different varieties of tomato this year, partly through laziness and partly because we are reducing the number of freezers that we have so there isn’t as much space for tomatoes to be stored over the winter. Many of the varieties have come from seed swaps but some are my own seeds saved from previous years.
The cucumbers and courgettes are nearest to the doorway (and so don’t show on the picture at the moment) because the end nearest to the camera is the sunniest part of the polytunnel.
As last year, my plan is to keep a record of the harvest and upload it to MYHarvest. Its interesting that their records for last year show that courgettes were the second most common vegetable to be grown on allotments and back gardens (after potatoes). I suppose it shows how easy they are to grow.
Anyway, off to pick a few strawberries to have with lunch. We won’t get many strawberries this year as we’ve only just established the strawberry bed but, when mixed with strawberries bought from the supermarket, they make a nice burst of additional flavour.
Keep gardening and let us know how you’re doing.