Notes from the veg patch

A couple of years ago Sarah Parker joined our team of garden volunteers. Her speciality is vegetables, and we have all seen the results .

She sent this note round the Walled Gardeners and we thought you would enjoy her plans for next year:

Notes from the veg patch

Hi, I have finished going through the seed catalogues and am excited about the coming year’s potential delights. Sicilian snakes, yin and yang dwarf French beans, hopefully some better cucumbers and cucamelons ... Japanese parsley (mitsuba) and more of that lovely crunchy lettuce. I thought we might try some chillies and maybe an outdoor melon [think brave] and a tortarello [a cucumber melon, much bigger than the cucamelons]. Maybe some fennel and a variety of beans and pumpkins and squashes. Maybe even a giant pumpkin or two.

Last autumn we had a terrific onion crop from one small bed despite the bird attacks - they liked the sweet flesh too. So will definitely try those again. Indeed they are already in, along with some garlic and some very brave broad beans. And we will find room for some more sunflowers. Winter lettuce and endive are already planted and the apricot trees have arrived and are now planted. 

The veg. patch has slowed down now for the winter -  just time to send out a plea for more eggshells, walled Gardeners,  please. Clean and baked, or even unbaked. The eggshells exceeded all expectations last year in helping to repel slug attack - it was quite remarkable, even more so as the RHS has come out against eggshells being effective.

Thanks for all your help  - see you soon in the Garden.