It's harvest time...
It is always exciting to be harvesting the first of any crop and potatoes especially so – the feeling of anticipation is heightened by the fact that you cannot actually see the crop until digging into the soil; but you have to be prepared to be delighted or to be disappointed.
As you can see by the expression of contentment on Susie’s face (above), in her case it was delight! This was enhanced by the obvious pleasure expressed by a group of schoolchildren visiting the garden of seeing potatoes being dug out of the ground. Later in the month saw the first courgettes being harvested.
June is the month that we do summer pruning on soft fruit. Redcurrant and black currants were done earlier in the year and Garry is just starting to tackle the grapes and the kiwi fruit. We grow desert grapes as cordons against the wall in the vegetable garden with the aim of getting some edible table grapes, so here is Garry pruning back the long shoots to two buds beyond the bunch of grapes he wants to mature. Wine grapes are grown in the Potager as ornamentals, but if we get enough grapes to make some Rosemoor wine, it will be an added bonus!
We are very proud of our kiwi fruit which adorns the arch over the seat in the vegetable garden. This is a relatively young plant to be cropping (only about four years old) but we had three fruits mature last year – we can only assume that the visitors could not believe their eyes because they were squeezed so much that they became inedible! Despite the hard winter, we seem to have more blossoms this year – so fingers crossed...
The June drop of the apples is coming to an end which marks the beginning of the summer pruning for the apple trees and cordons.
Finally I couldn't sign off without leaving you with a colourful picture of the dianthus beneath the fan trained pears and peaches and potted pelargoniums in front of the shelter.