THOMPSON & MORGAN
DEFENDER: A real benchmark. Very heavy and early crops of solid, mid-green courgettes. It just keeps on producing.
DE NICE A FRUIT ROND: I grow this one every year for its curious round fruits which have a flavour all of their own.
SOLEIL: Resistant to mildew and very prolific, the delicious yellow fruits are worthy of a place in any ornamental border.
ALL GREEN BUSH: One for the gourmet, these tiny French delicacies are a highlight of the veggrowing year.
Protect your investment from birds
While few of us can boast of a garden large enough to grow fruit on any decent scale, an allotment presents the perfect opportunity. A decent-sized plot will give you plenty of space to grow all the veg you could eat and still leave you room for several fruit bushes and even trees if they’re allowed on your site. Unfortunately, like all the tastiest plants, we’re not the only ones waiting for the crop. Birds will strip currants and berries even before they have ripened. Fruit cages are becoming increasingly popular and are much easier to build than you might think. Get the biggest cage you can afford; you’ll be glad of the room when you are shopping for plants. Harrod Horticultural (0845 4025300, www.harrodhorticultural.com) has a good range, including the corridor design pictured here. Quality is also an issue. Aluminium is cheap but steel will last longer, and timber frames can be beautiful but are more difficult to construct. Most cages come with a heavy-duty net for the sides and a lighter grade for the roof. Once that’s in place, all that’s left to do is to plant your fruit.
Thin seedlings
It can be tricky to sow seeds at exactly the right spacings so that plants come up just where you want them. Besides which you never know if all of your seeds will germinate, so it’s wise to sow a few more than you need. I for one can’t stand to see gaps in my rows of veg! Avoid the temptation to let all of your seedlings grow on freely though – overcrowded plants will be more prone to pests and diseases, are harder to maintain and won’t crop as heavily as they should (possibly even not at all). The answer is to pull out the weakest plants before they affect the growth of the others. Depending on what it is you are thinning, if you lift seedlings carefully (without disturbing their neighbours) you may be able to replant elsewhere.
SAFARI: A personal favourite for its open habit, spine-free stems and numerous, cheerful fruits striped green and white.
Try kohlrabi
This fast-growing brassica is an odd but rather beautiful plant that deserves more attention than it gets. It has a sweet, turnipy flavour and tolerates drier, hotter conditions than other brassicas. The purple cultivars tend to be the hardiest and are the ones to sow now for a winter harvest. Either stationsow direct or sow into modules and then plant out at 10cm (4in) spacings with 30cm (12in) between rows. A fertile, lighter soil is ideal, but a heavier ground will also give a crop. Pick when the bulbs swell to around 5-10cm (2-4in) in diameter, or leave in the ground and cut the leaves as you need them. Plants will often resprout after a first cutting, while even the young flowering shoots are tasty raw or cooked.
Even the flowering shoots are tasty raw or cooked Grow it! June 2011 35
THE PRACTICAL TEAM – the organic allotmenteer
FIVE COURGETTES TO TRY