This week we have been harvesting the last of the French beans and picking our mini sweet corn cobs. Mini (or baby) sweet corn is great to grow,  and a bit different too! The plant looks just like normal sweet corn but produces succulent, little cobs. They’re best picked when the cob is 4-5 inches long. Don’t let them grow too large or they’ll lose their delicious sweetness and turn starchy.

Baby sweet corn adds a nice sweet crunch to stir-frys but is lovely raw too. Try it in a salad or use it for dips. Kids love them!

Kohlrabi: this week’s new addition to the garden

Kohlrabi is a great vegetable for the autumn / winter plot, and we’ve just planted our young plants in the demo garden. It’s an unusual and attractive looking vegetable which comes in green and great shades of purple.  Although it is often mistaken for a root vegetable it’s actually a member of the leafy green Brassica family.  The name kohlrabi means ‘cabbage turnip ‘and it has a sweet turnip-like taste. It produces a bulbous root which tastes sweetest when harvested young, about the size of golf ball.

As well as being tasty it’s a hardy vegetable, and is less prone to slugs and snails attacks and many other pests that attack winter greens.

Where has the summer gone?

Another week of rain and slug protection for the demo garden. It’s strange how often the British weather never quite seems to create the ideal gardening conditions of hot, sunny days and gentle rains during the night! Let’s hope we get a break and have a late Indian summer come September.

When is my sweet corn ready to harvest?

We’ve had a few questions about this at the garden so here is a general guide:

When the silky tassels at the top of the sweet corn cobs turn dark brown, gently peel down some of the outer leaves of the cob so you can see the grains. The corn is ripe if the grains are pale yellow and when you squeeze a grain between your fingers a creamy liquid squirts out. If the liquid is watery then it isn’t ripe. When harvesting, twist off the cob from the main stem and cook straight away to get the sweetest flavour.

If you are growing mini sweet corn varieties these are picked while the cobs are unripe. Wait until the silk tassels show and the cobs have reached a decent size of about 4 inches and then harvest.

It’s been great to have some really good long rain showers for the garden and the volunteers have been saved dragging out the hose pipe and watering it themselves!

 We have been sowing winter radishes and a variety of salad leaves such as kale, mizuna, mustard and pak choi to harvest during the autumn and winter.  

It’s a great time to sow some crops for autumn and winter eating now as the cooler conditions and wet weather will help quick germination.  

Salad Days...

 Autumn and winter salad leaves are very versatile and make a great addition to salads, pasta and stir fries. Salad leaves are expensive to buy but easy to grow and taste delicious!

 There are many different varieties of salads suitable for cooler conditions ranging from mild to hot to suit different tastes.  If you like mild leaves try planting lambs lettuce, mizuna, kale, chard and pak choi. If you prefer spicier, hotter flavours try rocket, land cress and red mustard.

 It’s quite easy to find different types in garden centres and from online catalogues. If you’ve never tried growing them before try a mixed variety so you can taste and test different leaves to decide which you like best.

 To grow, simply sow the seeds in good soil half an inch deep in pots or directly into the ground and cover with compost. Give the soil a good water and keep the soil moist as the plants grow. They can all be harvested as cut and come again leaves by cutting the leaves when they are about 5inches tall and leaving an inch of growth in the pot. The plant will soon grow new leaves and can be cut about three times. 

The French bean wigwam has given us a great crop of delicious beans but has nearly exhausted itself so we will be replacing this soon with a crop to see us through the Autumn and early Winter. Elsewhere in the garden dwarf beans are still cropping well, and we are picking young, tender kale leaves, sweet rainbow carrots and the courgettes seem to double in size overnight!

Aphids and Helpful Insects

The aphid population seems to be bigger than normal this year, perhaps because of the warm, dry weather. We have had gatherings of these small, soft bodied, little pests all over the garden, especially on the sweet corn and parsnips. Our first line of attack has been to jet hose the aphids to wash them off the leaves. We have done this several times to make sure we stop them coming back and it has been pretty successful. Now the ladybirds are foraging around the leaves so we have stopped spraying and will leave it to them and visiting hoverflies to finish the job for us!

The garden is producing abundant amounts of cucumbers and French beans. We have two types of French beans - climbing ones trained up a wigwam and dwarf types. Both of these take up little space but produce lots of delicious beans which are also easy to freeze.

We also have two mini cucumbers plants called Pepito planted in one of the beds, which have been producing masses of sweet, small cucumbers. With so many cucumbers we have had enough for all the volunteers and been able to give some to people visiting the garden.  The cucumbers have been rambling through the bed but have now grown so long that we have trained them off the ground onto canes. This prevents the leaves and fruit getting damp and rotting on the soil. The cucumber leaves also give the lettuces below some welcome shade as lettuces prefer cooler conditions. (Thanks to garden volunteer Sue Craske for the lovely photos accompanying this week's blog!)

Stopping Tomatoes

August is the month to ‘stop’ cordon tomatoes. Cordon tomatoes produce fruits from a central main stem, unlike bush tomatoes which produce fruit from many stems. As the weather starts to cool down the fruit needs time to ripen. Once the tomato produces four clusters of fruit (known as trusses) cut or pinch out the top of the main stem, two leaves above the fourth lot of fruit. This will direct the plant’s energy into producing good tomatoes rather than leaves.