Mary Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

The young pine plantation on my land

Two months in. It's time for a status update on the progress of my efforts to turn seeds into food.

Let me preface this with a reminder that the weather has not been kind. We were fooled by a brief but beautiful hot dry spell in mid-April before winter came crashing down on us again with sleet, hail, and sub-zero temperatures. As I type there is hope that we are climbing out and up into a more clement late Spring, but the soil is still cold and will take a while to warm up.

Lettuce ready to be planted out

So right now I have a greenhouse jam-packed full of leafy brassicas in pots - two types of kale, two types of cabbage, and kohl rabi - all at different stages of growth. None of them have been planted out yet, but the time is coming, oh yes, very soon.

The polytunnel. A place of refuge from the driving rain and wind. I have many seedlings in modules and pots, most still in their infancy but with some near ready to get planted outside. The runner beans are itching to get their roots into my soil. The lucky lettuce has already begun to take that rite of passage, moving from cosseted indoor plantling to grown-up outdoor plant. Well, some of them were not so lucky - I planted a couple of hundred bare-rooted lettuce-seedlings out just before the terrible weather hit us. Sadly some didn't make it.

What else is growing in the modules? Healthy-looking brussel sprouts, very young cauliflower, swiss chard, beetroot, more kale and more cabbage, cucumber, calendula, sweetcorn; the latter is fortunate enough to be remaining in the polytunnel - I've started planting some of them inside already. Then there are the seeds in pots that I'm still waiting for some sign of life - butternut squash, french beans, courgettes, achocha, patty pan squash. They need warmth to germinate but there's been precious little of that recently.

Lettuce planted out

Elsewhere in the polytunnel I have stuff growing in the ground - rows of mange-tout peas putting on a recent spurt, a little squadron of broad beans who are looking strangely pale, and more lettuce that I've stuck in two long rows. Two more rows of chard seed I sowed direct seems very reluctant to come up, and a line of radish between them. At the far end is the anarchy of the self-seeding flowers - nasturtiums and borage. I need do nothing but water them occasionally.

Outside it's a bit of a sad story. I've sown a lot of seed but most of it is extremely slow to germinate, if it ever comes. Carrot, beetroot, chard - I peer at the beds each morning wondering if each little shoot I spot could be what I sowed, or just another importunate weed.

The broad beans have at least on the whole started growing although their cousins the field beans have not, apart from a few. The turnips are visible, with the first batch even large enough to “thin” (remove the unwanted ones). The mange tout are surfacing, as are two or three tentative asparagus spears. Radish is growing too, it's supposed to grow fast, but I'm wondering if they'll grow fast enough for the first delivery to the veg box scheme on June 1st. I somehow doubt it.

Thankfully if ever I'm tempted to be a little despondent I can turn to the rhubarb bed and admire the nine plants, some of them huge, vigorous and prolific. Of course it's the one vegetable I've done absolutely no work for this year, and it's the one vegetable that's already brought in some cash. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Convert the entire garden to rhubarb, perhaps?