8 minute read
Lucy Chamberlain’s Fruit and Veg
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Create a feast for the senses: complement veg like courgettes with floral colour from tagetes for beneficial pest deterrents that are also highly decorative
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Hardy chrysanthemums add colour alongside candelabra-style ‘Nero di Toscana’ kale
Summer bedding will be right at home with brassicas like leafy ‘January King’ cabbage
Focus on... Potager gardening
Fancy bringing a bit more creativity into your crop making? Lucy Chamberlain explains how to combine fruit, vegetables and herbs with ornamental plants
E’VE got medieval French monasteries and chateaux owners to thank for the
Wpotager concept – a creative and artistic design of fruit and vegetable garden that’s as easy on the eye as it is productive. I’ve always had a soft spot for them – to me, edible plots can be just as beautiful as ornamental gardens. So how would you go about creating your own?
Add florals, shrubs and herbs Tap into your imagination, because anything goes when it comes to potager plants. Fruit, vegetables and herbs should supply the backbone, but because cut flowers and foliage are also key components, many ornamental plants can be chosen. Viburnums, peonies, irises, lilies, aquilegias – as long as it can go in a vase, anything goes.
Creative pruning and training of your fruit crops is also encouraged. Fantrained cherries, figs and redcurrants, stepover apples, espalier pears – with a little bit of secateur confidence, your
For an authentic potager style, your ornamental and kitchen garden fusion can be as eclectic and busy as you like edibles can become living pieces of artwork! Low, clipped box hedges are often used to add classic formal style to potager plots, yet there are plenty of other suitable plants (box can be pricey, as well as pest and disease-prone).
Hyssop, chives, oregano, sage, common thyme, rosemary, santolina, lavender – upright herbs such as these add a splash of colour with flowers and/or non-green foliage. If you’d still prefer a tightly clipped look, the low-growing, Lonicera nitida is an excellent choice.
Wildlife-friendly gardening As well as offering a beautiful, productive outdoor space, potagers have other benefits. The cut flowers often attract beneficial wildlife, and the diverse mixed plantings confuse pests. Growing a range of plants gives manageable harvests, rather than gluts, providing a succession of produce throughout the season. So, why not experiment with this style of edible plot?
Try these easy potager ideas ■ Galvanised: Watering cans, tubs and containers crafted from this steely blue zinc coating can add a vintage feel to your plot. ■ Bricks: Laid flat as a path or upended as bed edging, crumbly red bricks dappled with moss, lichen and algae are gorgeous. ■ Flowers: Add bursts of cut flowers like gladioli and alstroemerias to your beds, in rows or as single dot-plants. ■ Terracotta: Ditch the plastic and pot up herbs, chillies and salads into terracotta containers. They look beautiful when grouped together. ■ Pretty labels: Whether it’s slate, copper, wood or pebbles, get creative with your fruit and vegetable labelling for a stylish, romantic look. ■ Garden art: Add a cheeky cherub peeking out from under the rhubarb, or a full-blown bust of yourself guarding the garden gate!
Galvanised metal and terracotta can enhance your plot
Mix sweet peas and runner beans for companion-planting benefits
Lucy’s choice Try these potager supports
Bird scarer: An old potato and1 some feathers can be quickly fashioned into an effective bird scarer. Hang the whole lot from a flexible long pole or upcycled fishing rod, and it’s complete. Dreamcatcher: With a ball of
2garden twine, some sturdy canes or sticks and a good dollop of time on your hands, you can weave a dreamcatcher-style support for climbing beans or squashes. Woven peasticks: Defining plot
3boundaries, edging beds, surrounding lofty crops – a carefully woven (hazel or) peastick ‘fence’ adds a real cottage-garden feel to the plot. Any twiggy prunings work well.
5 quick jobs
Protect brassicas from cabbage white butterflies. Ensure netting is hole-free and that leaves don’t touch the edge of your net cage. 2
Melons growing under frames and in greenhouses will be flowering this month. When blooms appear, hand-pollinate to ensure fruit set. 3
Quick-maturing crops such as baby beets, baby turnips and radishes swell in a flash during June. Regularly pick over your drills before they get too large.
4
Now is a great time to propagate summer strawberries, especially if stock is becoming old. Peg down runners, ready to lift in autumn. 5 If sowing directly outside, make a deep drill then thoroughly soak the base a couple of times to give seeds ample moisture reserves.
Top tip
A r c h i v e T I Add grey water to the base of fruit trees and shrubby plants like this blueberry GREY water – what’s that? Well, it’s the term applied to household water that comes from your kitchen or bathroom tap, along with any water from plumbed-in appliances like washing machines and dishwashers.
You can use some of this on your garden in times of drought and water restrictions – and it could just save your fruit and vegetable plot from disaster should any hosepipe bans be enforced.
Dishwasher salts and stronger washing machine cleaning agents are harmful to plants, so focus instead on collecting water from kitchen sinks, baths, showers, dehumidifiers and tumble driers.
Use collected grey water within 24 hours (bacteria can build up otherwise). Avoid using it directly on edibles eaten raw (like salads), but feel free to add it to the base of fruit trees and bushes. Finally, rotate its use with rainwater to avoid a build up of fats and detergents.
Time to sow spring onions
THOSE of you who love this tiny allium will be well ahead of the game, but it’s not too late to start sowings of salad onions, bunching onions or scallions now.
Many varieties are available, from stalwart bulbing type ‘White Lisbon’ to purple-skinned ‘Apache’ and modern hybrids such as ‘Katana’ . My favourite is ‘Ishikura’ , which doesn’t create bulbs, giving a long harvest window (it eventually forms baby ‘leeks’).
Sow directly where the plants are to crop, creating a shallow drill and watering seeds in well. Keep the soil or pot moist in dry spells; germination can be slow, so be patient. The hair-like seedlings look fragile at first, but soon bulk up, especially in warm, wet weather. As with all alliums, keep drills weed-free.
Sowings can carry on until the end of August. Choose winter-hardy types like ‘Winter White Bunching’ for late sowings to bulk up over chillier months.
A r c h i v e T I Sow short drills of bulbing spring onions every month until early autumn, or opt for a non-bulbing type like ‘Ishikura’
Allium cepa ‘White Lisbon’
Step
by step How You can let to prune grapevines your grapevines ramble hither and thither, but fruit quality and quantity will be greatly improved if you can prune and train:
Why not try..?
Fuzzy orange Solanum quitoense fruits
Wine grapes can carry
1more fruit than dessert varieties. Thin out the number of bunches your vine carries, selecting the best. Choose one every 3ft (1m) of stem for dessert, and one every 20in (50cm) for wine. The bunches arise on
2side-shoots off the main stems. Cut two leaves past each bunch of grapes, so that the side-shoots are shortened. This helps to both boost fruit set and maximise individual grape size.
Cut back non-fruiting3 side-shoots and any others that arise as the summer progresses. The leaves can provide useful shade in a greenhouse, so cut back as hard or as gently as you wish to keep within bounds.
Wield that hoe to fight weeds!
WEEDS are such a pain. They can zap the motivation of experienced and novice gardeners alike, marching forth like a relentless tide of annoying greenness. Well, we can win that war! With so many other jobs vying for our attention on the summer plot, it’s tempting to assume that the bare patch of earth you raked over last week can be left to its own devices – but think again.
Tiny weed seeds will be germinating unseen, so I make a point of hoeing between my rows of veg every 7-10 days to ensure they don’t take hold. Larger beds of earth can be raked over – it’s quicker and just as effective, especially if you choose a windy, sunny day. Just imagine how long it would take you to
You might not see any weeds, but hoeing bare earth every two weeks will kill off germinating weed seedlings
A r c h i v e T I
hoe the weeds off if you allowed them to grow for a few more weeks – now that’s a very good motivator.
A young naranjilla plant growing in a pot
Naranjilla
IF you have space in a cool greenhouse or conservatory over winter, and you fancy your chances of growing an Andean shrub, then Solanum quitoense is for you. It’s quite a striking plant to look at: deeply lobed leaves flushed heavily with purple, and bristly as you like – it will make a talking point before it’s even fruited! Usually grown from seed in the UK, don’t expect flowers for a year or more (give it the same growing conditions as a tomato).
Once flowers do appear, clusters of small orange-yellow fruits packed with juice eventually follow. Rub off the bristly hairs, then consume them raw or cooked. Keep well fed with tomato fertiliser, and well watered throughout summer. Move under cover for winter, then keep irrigation to a minimum.
