Vegmonkey and the Mrs.

We have had a lot of success this year with lettuce and the oriental veg we have planted quite regularly since March.  The problems we’ve had with the leaves have been with the rocket, spinach and chard, which have pretty much gone to seed as soon as they started producing leaves.

Quite annoying. To get around this we planted ‘Leaf Beat’ or ‘Perpetual Spinach’ as it is also known. It tastes just like spinach, but seems to grow a lot quicker, and doesn’t bolt! We’ve had two harvests this week as a side dish with our dinner, with a few cashew nuts thrown in, much better than buying bagged lettuce from the shop!

As the weather is a little duller this time of year i’ve decided to put a little rocket and chard into see what happens. Hopefully, it will grow well, and we’ll have a harvest well into the winter like last year!

Along with garden alterations and bowser photography, we’ve found time to keep up with the planting. Gone into plugs in the mini-greenhouse today are:

Spinach (Bordeaux), Leaf Beet (Perpetual spinach), Rocket, Spring Onion (Laser and White Lisbon), Swiss Chard (Bright Lights), Salad Endive (Bianca Riccia da Taglio), Lettuce (All the Year Round and Granada).

Straight into the space in the cucurbit bed (pushing the crop rotation slightly aside) have been planted Carrot (Amsterdam Forcing 3 and Autumn King Improved) so that later in about six weeks we will have a lovely little crop of carrots, up until the first frosts, when they will have to be taken out and stored in sand or peat.