May harvests

The garden is starting to really take off. More of the overwintered onions have filled out and a few are starting to produce seed heads.

The peas and the mange tout are now producing pods. Most of the plants are at the back of the portable grow beds next to the kitchen and bathroom extension. Many of them started out earlier this year as providers of pea shoots on the kitchen window sill (see http://cavershamgarden.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/pea-shoots.html) but are now doing very well outside as normal pea plants.

The lettuces around the base of the fig tree are doing well but are perhaps a little too close together. I should thin them out a bit more.

And while we are on the subject of thinning out, I have pulled up some of the garlic that I have been growing from bulbils. I allowed a couple of my garlic plants to produce flowers and bulbils and planted them in pots to see if and how many would grow.

It seems that almost all of them have produced young garlic plants with the result that the pots are overcrowded. So I am pulling up a few and using both the small bulbs and the young leaves in cooking and salads. They are now in their second year.

The sprouting broccoli and kales are going to seed. I generally let them get on with it as the flowers encourage insects. They self sow around the garden so all I have to do is transplant or remove any surplus new plants. I usually put them in pots and eventually offer them as plant swaps.