Two for tea

Camellia sinensis sinensis

Our two Scottish-grown tea plants have found a new home in the 'glen'. We totally changed our mind about their siting after reading the planting instructions: They want partial shade, good drainage and good shelter from the wind. They're not fussy about soil type. But the shade is important, otherwise their leaves might scorch. Apparently a place in a forest garden border is ideal - so now ours are partially shaded by a big beech on the other side of the burn. And we've put up extra windbreak fabric on two sides of them to keep them nice and sheltered. All that's left to do is a good mulch and then we hope to watch them grow quickly.

To harvest, you pluck the top two leaves and bud on each shoot every seven to ten days. Eventually, the plants are meant to form a metre-high flat tabletop for easy picking. Used straight, it'll be a green tea. To make black tea requires a bit of processing: rolling the leaves to bring out the oils, then drying and a slight roasting. Looking forward to getting to that stage!

It does feel a lot more summery these days, but note the angle of our bean poles:

Veg garden - front half

Veg garden - middle

The squashes are still looking poorly, for the most part, but the brassicas are doing well as are, at least so far, the fennels.

Broccoli

Fennel

 The potatoes are growing steadily but no flowers yet - wish I could say the same for the onions!

Back end of the veg garden

 The harvest season has begun. Here's my first platter of the season:

Beetroot, garlic, artichokes and onion

We've been having 2-4 artichokes per week each - it feels almost decadent.

I've cleared out some more aphid-prone peppers and aubergines from the conservatory, which is now given over almost exclusively to tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and basil (which will not grow outside here, even last year in our super summer). Below is the second of our lemon cucumbers, a very tasty little variety:

Lemon cucumber

Until our green tea is ready, I'll stick with my old herbal favourites: mints, lemon balm, lemon verbena, rose petals, sage and nettle. In fact, it's time for a cup of the ultimate snooze tea now: catnip, spearmint and lavender.

Salad season

First of the onions

Things are finally picking up growth-wise in this stop-start summer. We haven't got much new produce yet, but a steady stream of salad leaves (rocket, red mustard, little gems and salad bowl red), some rather fine onions, radishes, mangetout and cucumbers. So it's back to a salad a day - yay.

More cucumbers

The outdoor cucumbers have sadly been devastated, as have some of the squashes and most of the sweetcorn. The asparagus seeds didn't germinate at all in this cold spring, so I've ordered some more to try again. I also had to resow a lot of the beans, but they're now finally starting to climb. On the good side we should have the first of the broad beans and beetroot and more artichokes this week and it looks like a good crop of gooseberries and strawberries will be with us shortly.

Invicta gooseberries

Tigerella is starting to show stripes

I've gone back to being organic for sorting out the aphid plague since the Bayer chemicals didn't seem to do much apart from smell nasty (they were very effective against gooseberry sawfly though). Other than the soap solution, I've tried tomato leaf spray, garlic spray and moving the plants outside to where friendly predators like ladybirds can eat the aphids (I even moved some ladybirds on to them). Both the soap and the tomato leaf spray were rather harsh on the affected plants' leaves, but the garlic spray seems pretty effective and the leaves stay green. Most of the peppers are now outside and this method also seems to work, but we'll probably have less crop that way - still, better than none.

Peppers in among the roses

The last of the plastic has come off this week, to make space for the tea garden corner. Yes, we got ourselves a couple of actual tea plants since they seem to be doing so well in Scotland where a little tea revolution is happening (sadly only for the luxury market). More on this next time, when they're hopefully planted out. I've also got six more mints (including an amazing-smelling Eau de Cologne mint) and an agastache rugosa, to go with my sage and camomile seedlings.

The tea garden corner

We've also sorted out our raspberry surround. The windbreak fabric had suffered a bit.

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Autumn raspberries, with mint and tomatillo plot behind

The bluebells have gone and the hawthorn and iris are in full swing.

Sweet hawthorn blossom

Elsewhere, the lavender and roses are on the cusp of flowering and my first sweetpeas have taken off. The front garden has had an extensive weed and mulch and some very nice geraniums are in bloom.

The lavender is coming out to play

Front garden

My first sweetpeas

Happy mid-summer everyone - may the summer improve from now on!

Out there

That's what the weather is this spring. It's June and temperatures are still hovering around the 12C mark. On Wednesday, it was sunny, not windy for once and a hot 13C so we decided to go for the big plant out. The crammed conditions in the conservatory and greenhouse didn't help our aphid plague, which is still on-going despite repeated spraying. Now a lot of the plants are out there, in the veg garden, and things are a bit more manageable inside.

We went from:

Before the big exodus

Crammed conditions

 To this:

Pepper and melon corner

Tomato and cucumber corner, with a few herb and cabbage seedlings

Luckily, inside the plants are making great progess, lots of tomatoes and little cucumbers, and the chillies are starting to flower.

Not long till the first cuke

Chilli flower

Meanwhile, outside I'm trying out a few different growing spots. The outdoor cucumbers have been planted next to the polytunnel frame, since we're not going to get a cover this year. The plan is to level the site properly in the winter and then get the cover for next spring. Let's see if the cucumbers will climb up or sprawl at the bottom.

The cucumbers have been framed

The tomatillos, apart from three plants, have found a new home in the old playground, in the bit where the summer raspberries were devastated last spring before we surrounded it with windbreak fabric. The good thing is that the site's already fairly well protected from the wind and there are lots of posts and chicken wire that supports can be tied to.

Tomatillos in their new home

The veg garden is filling up at last. The three sisters bed (squashes, sweetcorn and beans - squashes to provide a ground mulch, beans to support the sweetcorn by climbing up it) has been planted and, luckily, all our squashes just fit the allocated space.

Three sisters bed, even if you can only see one

The courgettes, celeriacs and fennels are also out and about, and Jim's just digging the final bit of the main veg garden.

Fennel seedling, now outside. Another one that wants a hot summer, sigh.

Still digging

Over in the middle paddock, the Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes are coming on. Soon it will be time to earth up the tatties. I'm beginning to appreciate tubers and root vegetables, they don't suffer so much in the wind and rain.

Tatties and Jerusalem artichokes

The freshly mown bottom paddock, with the fruit bushes we planted in April

On Monday, we had a nice little gourmet dinner while a storm was raging outside - our first artichokes of the year! And delicious they were.

Scottish artichokes, yum, yum, yum

The main casualty of this latest gale were the broad beans, which had already suffered a bit of cat wrestling damage beforehand. Just as well I sowed lots this year. Luckily, this beauty only decided to open up the day after.

Last year, the poppy flowers only lasted three days since they were in such an exposed spot and were simply blown away. I moved them this winter, and they seem to have taken to their new position. Let's see how long the flowers last this year. The next gale is coming through tomorrow...