Kitchen Garden Diary, July

July 3

I spend hours out in my greenhouse at this time of year looking after my tomatoes. If my family can’t find me, they know I’ll be here, lost in the calming ritual of tying in and pinching out, breathing in that evocative, uniquely tomatoey smell. I never really succeeded with tomatoes until I got a greenhouse. I tried growing them outside on my allotment but they always succumbed to blight, so when I inherited the greenhouse I immediately put in raised beds and a Heath Robinson system of canes and string in order to grow tomatoes that I could actually show off to my green-fingered mother. Growing them indoors gives them the warmth and shelter they need; you can start them off earlier and therefore get them cropping earlier, and they are sheltered from wind-borne blight. I try different varieties each year, mostly cordon or vine types (the tall ones that need staking) as opposed to smaller bush tomatoes. I’m trying two new varieties this year, ‘Costoluto di Parma’ and ‘Black Crimean’, both from Seeds of Italy, as well as ‘Green Zebra’ from Real Seeds, and the stalwart cherry tomato ‘Gardeners Delight’, so I’ll have a good mix of colour to make my salads look as good as they taste. The vines grow pleasingly quickly, but you have to keep a close eye on them, pinching out the side shoots as soon as they appear in order to keep the plant neat and controlled. If you let the plant become triffid-like, all the energy will go into producing greenery rather than fruit, so it pays to keep on top of it, tying in the central stem regularly to make sure it doesn’t flop. One of the most important things I’ve discovered about tomatoes is that they need a regular supply of water; if you intermittently let them dry out and then flood them, they will be more susceptible to blossom end rot, which causes dark crusty blotches on the fruits. I have invested in an excellent timed self-watering system that took forever to set up but was worth every swear word in time saved afterwards. Feeding tomatoes isn’t always necessary, especially if you’ve planted them in well-prepared, nutrient-rich compost, but to maximize your harvest you can feed them with a potassium-rich liquid feed such as Tomarite – or make your own from comfrey or nettles.

July 7

The recent warm weather has brought everything on in leaps and bounds. I’m harvesting my first courgettes, sweet and delicious when picked young, and making the most of them before I go on holiday, as I know that even a week’s absence at this time of year will result in overgrown marrows when I return. I have learnt to restrict myself to growing only two plants each year, knowing that these will produce more than enough courgettes for a family of four. This year, seduced by the Italian names more than anything else, I’m growing stripy-skinned ‘Striato di Napoli’ and a round courgette called ‘Tondo di Piacenza’, and already they are promising the normal glut. Last year on the other hand I was flummoxed by a complete failure of my courgette crop. The baby courgettes formed but then almost immediately started rotting on the plant, a sign that they hadn’t been pollinated. This can be a regular occurrence in cold, wet summers when pollinating insects are in short supply, and having read up about it, I realized, too late, that I could have helped matters by hand pollinating my plants - in other words spreading the pollen from the stamens of a large male flower (one that doesn’t have a tiny courgette forming at the base) to the stigma of an open female flower, either by using a paintbrush or by physically rubbing one against the other. Now I know what to do next time there’s a cold snap.

July 12

It’s amazing what a difference a week can make. The weather has taken a nose dive, and I’ve been sheltering in the greenhouse today sowing seeds for some extra autumn crops. It’s so easy to run out of steam in June and July, and to forget that if you don’t keep sowing, your supply of vegetables will dwindle later on in the year. Leaf vegetables like chard and oriental salad greens can be sown now, either directly into the ground or into modular seed trays, as well as root crops such as carrots and turnips for winter stews. Today I sowed turnips and chard in modules, and ‘Winter Marvel’ lettuces in the cold frame. I’ll also have plenty of leeks to take me through the winter and by the looks of my Crown Prince plant, which is romping away in all this rain, plenty of winter squash too.

July 22

We’ve raced through the first early Duke of York potatoes, and I’ve been wondering what to do with the cleared bed, having dug up the last potatoes today. I had planned to transplant the leeks into that space, but had already found another spot for them, so decided to sow some phacelia instead as a green manure. It promises to be swift growing so I’m hoping it will flower before the frosts so I can use some of it for cutting, as the mauve, spiky flowers are so pretty. The rest of the plants can stay in the ground all winter and I’ll dig them in next spring. It took me all of 20 minutes to dig the bed over, give the soil a rake and then broadcast the seed. I won’t have to water much as the forecast is wet over the next few days. Another typical British summer.

July Checklist

Sow fennel, salad leaves and crops of beetroot or chard for autumn harvesting. Water all veg crops regularly. Continue to hoe off weeds in dry weather. Pinch out top and side shoots of cordon tomatoes and tie them in to canes or string. Pinch out climbing beans or squash plants if the vine growth is excessive.