Here in the South East of England we had the pleasure of heavy rain followed by bright prolonged sunshine, which has led to a doubling in size of the vegetable plants. We are delighted that almost* everything is looking strong, green, and in some cases such as runner beans and courgettes, even flowering.
The final raised bed plant count from left to right, top to bottom, is:
2 Elephant garlic
30 Hercules onions
5 each of 6 varieties of potatoes*
6 Calabrese broccoli
2 rows of Tender and True parsnips
21 heads of Red Iceberg lettuce
4 Verde di Italia early courgette
8 runner beans
3 rows of Long de Meziers leeks
2 rows of Giant Red carrots (which will actually be orange)
30 full white celery (which sadly are very green so far)
12 Ashworth sweetcorn
4 Waltham butternut squash
4 Summer Crookneck squash
*Two Charlotte potatoes suddenly keeled over and died. We are worried this will spread, but so far fingers crossed it is an isolated incident. We are expecting some losses overall, but I hope we don’t lose the whole lot of potatoes.
We have also rather retentively started a spreadsheet to calculate the economics of growing your own. This is not to prove that it is cheaper, because certainly this year it will not be! But it will provide an economist like me a little insight year over year into the monetary cost of our home produce. Now the time cost is another study altogether…
So far, the list has two strawberries. I will post the results in winter.
The Modern Gardener 