Vegetables in a cool climate

This month last year, thanks to a memory prompt from social media, I note that we were taking out our broad beans and sowing kale.   At present, the beans, though now succumbing to a form of 'rust' are still going and sending out fresh shoots from the base.  I'm going to leave these a little longer and see if we get a worthwhile second harvest.  Then I'll be in search of the next autumn-sown vegetables to fill these beds.

Our raspberries, netted against our bold blackbirds, are continuing to do well in their second year, and they also are beginning to flower on what should be next year's canes.  Our blueberries (in pots) are faintly purple - nets will be required in the next fortnight.

Our tomatoes are slow.  My husband has moved them into the open outside the greenhouse and tells me he can see them changing into a different shade of green.  The greenhouse is now home to a butternut squash grown from saved seed.  It is producing male flowers but as yet no female flowers are opening.  Fortunately our winter squash, positioned under our bay window, are now beginning to yield courgette sized fruits and this week I used them in an Indian-inspired soup with lentils and the broad beans.  

Things up here take their time; I am slowly adjusting to growing vegetables in a cool climate.

Keeping an eye on salad

About a year ago we purchased what I have named a 'crib' but the manufacturers label as a Veg-Table.  It does indeed look like a small manger, raised up to about waist height with the dimensions of a largish square coffee table.  One of the ideas that sold it to me, for a quite considerable sum, is that the depth of soil will help to grow larger veg.

With this in mind, we lined it as per the instructions, filled it with shop compost and sowed lettuce 'Arctic King' in the hope of overwintering salad.  We left it outside on the back patio at one end of the greenhouse, in the sun, and waited.

Alas, Arctic King failed to thrive.  It was time for a rethink.  First of all, wrong soil.  It seemed not to contain enough nutrients for the winter period and beyond.  So my long-suffering husband emptied it all out, and proceeded with his 'patent mix' of horse manure and partly broken down leaves added to the existing shop compost and turned by hand.  Then it was time to man-handle a very bulky wooden structure across the lawn and on to the smaller patio next to the raspberry bushes where, as I have noted, there is summer sun from noon onwards.

I sowed four rows - rocket, mixed salad leaves, beetroot and carrot and am glad to say that they have all germinated, although not growing at quite the speed I would hope.  I say this, because I go out and look at them every day.  The weather has been colder than usual for the season, but here is my future salad, not at the rear of the garden where I could forget it, and not in a raised bed hidden behind the broad beans where snails play havoc.   I am keeping an eye on it.