Remember To Keep Planting For Ongoing Crops

mjr600

It's easy to forget that the seeds you planted a few months ago and which are now starting to provide tasty food will stop producing food just as quickly.

Salad runs out, cucumbers are all eaten, you get sick of courgettes and then it's autumn.

To make sure you've got as much growing as late as you can in the year keep planting for the next few weeks.

Raddish every two weeks, just a row or two, a couple more Toms from the garden centre, stick a couple of pots from the kitchen cupboard into an unused piece of ground and see what happens.

Believe me if you don't and you have to head back to the supermarket after a summer of cheap food you'll be crying into your trolley at the prices knowing that for the sake of a few seeds planted late you could still have cash in your pocket.

nozzy6

Thanks mjr, any tips on what is ok to still sow from seed at this time (for a total novice)? I've got lettuce on the go and a couple of toms, strawbs and leeks in pots too, and a cucumber. I can only do things in pots til next year

Jack's_mummy

Very good reminder there.

I have a couple of old potatoes that have sprouted in the cupboard. Just waiting to empty the first pot of new potatoes out and then I'll have space for these next ones

serena

Salad leaves are great to sow successionally. I also regularly sow short rows of turnips, radish, spring onions, rocket, carrot Early Nantes, beetroot.

You can sow endive and chicories in June, and in July I can recommend a selection of oriental vegetables - oriental or mooli radish, chinese cabbage, komatsuna, mizuna, mibuna, oriental mustards, texel greens and pak choi. Cover with fleece immediately after sowing and keep covered. These vegetables crop really quickly - six to eight weeks, and some last well into the winter.

Leek plants may be available from garden centres or nurseries, or mail order, and can be planted out in June and July. I also sow a couple of rows of leaf beet, which will crop from autumn into the following spring.

twiglet98

I decided to start growing veg in containers in mid May and clearly haven't planted enough of anything. Started with little plants from the garden centre - 3 mange tout plants, 3 dwarf beans and 3 spinach have grown well enough but I picked some this week and have got 8 mange tout, 4 beans, and stripped the bolting spinach to get enough leaves for two helpings. Good thing greedy eldest DD and her chef b/f are away, picky younger DD was out, and only my hungry son (19) and I needed feeding!

The 2 courgettes have a few ready for cutting so we'll have them tonight. If I can save my storm-damaged tomatoes there should be a fair crop of those later on. I forgot to sow lettuces for weeks after planting the first batch and will have a big gap while the new ones, sown two weeks ago, grow on. But I did sow 60 purple sprouting seeds and 20 beetroot so perhaps there'll be a glut of those.

I have a big space to fill in the front garden after cutting a cotoneaster back and wonder if it's too late to get a couple more courgette plants in there to fill the space? Or spinach? Or maybe the purple sprouting seedlings should go there as my planned raised beds are yet to be built... mental note, must go on freecycle for some topsoil...

irishwexford

for dinner tonight we had loin chops with pototoes (from allotment) and lettuce leaves, courgette, beetroot, spring onions, radishes and onion (all from allotment). Had to make dishes of cauliflower cheese to freeze as they started bolting and I got sick of eating them, cabbages are so tasty. We have red cabbages nearly ready and all our onions (red and white) can be picked.
I wondered about winter veggies, we already have parsnips and leeks growing but just bought packets of seeds for winter cabbage so we should be still eating our own produce until Christmas. We decided we are growing too much stuff as its our first year and we got carried away. We grow lots of things we can freeze but some amounts of other stuff. I can say our allotment has been a great success.;)

WestonDave

Good reminder - I put in another row of late carrots and parsnips a couple of weeks ago along with a final attempt to get some beetroot to grow (first lot disappeared without trace!) but other than them I don't really have another inch until something is ready to clear - probably the peas. We do have a fair amount of winter veg already in - brocolli, purple sprouting and sprouts as we didn't do salad this time (the kids are too young to enjoy the texture so it won't get eaten hence no point wasting time and energy growing it).

Next year hopefully we will have another bed up and running which should increase space by 40% and give us a bit more flexibility for continuous cropping. This year was a bit of a proving exercise as my OH was somewhat sceptical - now entirely converted and itching to pick something!