Propagating Thyme

We use a lot of Thyme in our cooking, so I try to make sure we have plenty of it in the garden. This has proved harder than I expected. I find that it is very susceptible to insect damage - I think from thrips. Whatever it is, they eat away the surface of the leaves, stripping them of the glossy dark green part that contains all the essential oils, and leaving them brown, dry and unappetising.

I am reluctant to spray edible plants like herbs with too many chemicals, so I have been forced to accept that in my garden Thyme needs to be grown as an annual, not a perennial. Most years I buy a few potted Thyme plants and put them either in bigger pots or in the border. This is one of last year's plants:

They get cropped until they succumb as described above, then are replaced by new ones. This can be expensive, but fortunately this year it probably won't be necessary - because of these:

Last Autumn I realised that my most recent batch of purchased Thyme plants had self-seeded after flowering, so I potted-up some of the seedlings and kept them over the Winter in my coldframe. They are now quite decent little plants.

I have planted some of them in the border over by my fruit trees.

I wonder how long they will survive???

A recipe for Purple Sprouting Broccoli

At this time of year the Purple Sprouting Broccoli is at its best, and in our household we try to find lots of ways to use it. Here's a dish that I recently invented...

Stir-fried PSB with Butternut Squash

I made this dish to complement a chicken risotto, so let's show you that first... Nothing special, just a conventional chicken risotto. I think you'll agree that is looks a bit "monochrome".

When I have finished cooking a risotto, I like to leave it to stand for 10 - 15 minutes to let the rice plump up a bit. This gives a "window of opportunity" in which to cook a side dish of some sort, which is where my PSB comes in.

A bit of advance preparation is advisable:

You can see there half a Butternut Squash, halved, peeled and diced; a sliced red chilli; about 10 Walnut halves; and a slack handful of PSB, washed and cut into small florets. Here's a closer view of the PSB:

I doused the Walnuts in Pumpkin Seed oil and toasted them in a hot oven for 10 minutes or so, which really brings out their flavour.

I also pre-cooked the Butternut Squash, roasting it with a splash of oil in a hot oven (200C) to achieve a bit of charring at the edges. I think this looks attractive as well as enhancing the flavour. It took about 25 minutes. When it was done, I set it aside until needed.

When the risotto started its 10 minutes standing-time, I whacked the heat up high on one of my gas rings, and heated some vegetable oil in a wok. Then, in went the PSB, shortly followed by the squash, the chilli and the walnuts. I turned the veg frequently with two wooden spatulas, adding a couple of splashes of water to create steam to help the broccoli cook. [Note: I think if I did this dish again I would parboil the PSB in advance, because I had to stir-fry it for longer than I had initially intended in order to soften the stems.] Just before serving, I added a generous splash of Balsamic vinegar to sharpen-up the flavours.

Here's the finished dish, served alongside the chicken risotto.

I've not illustrated it here, but the final element of our meal was some toasted home-made bread, with garlic butter - Yum!

I felt this was a good meal - nutritious, well-balanced, tasty and a good mix of colours, textures and flavours.

P.S. Might need some more recipes soon...

For the record

This post is really more for my benefit than yours! (I'll explain this in a minute.)

As you know, Mark's Veg Plot is devoted primarily to vegetables, and flowers don't feature very prominently. However, this year I am making an effort to grow more flowers. Last Autumn I divided some of my perennials and potted-up lots of "root-division cuttings", which I have kept in my coldframes over the Winter.

Now that the weather has warmed up a bit, the cuttings are all beginning to sprout new growth, so I decided the time was ripe to plant them. They have gone into the gaps made by the recent removal of several of my Dogwood (Cornus) shrubs from my North-facing border.

I have put in 7 x Verbena Bonariensis, 7 x Rubeckia "Goldsturm", 5 x Helenium and 2 x Echinacea "Pom Pom White". They are mostly quite small so there's not a lot to see at present, but hopefully by the Summer time there will be a good display. This post is intended therefore to record for me the starting position, as a point of reference for later on.

Following my usual cautious approach, I have kept back a few plants just in case... They are still in the coldframe, just in case we get another really cold spell and some or all of the ones I have already planted get killed off by frost! If all goes well though, I have another place earmarked for them, next to my shed, where until recently there were two more Dogwood bushes.

Planting First Early Potatoes

Wow, another post about planting! Things are really kicking off in my garden...

This time it's potatoes.

Chitted tuber of "Accord"

At the weekend I planted my First Early potatoes, two tubers each of "Juliette", "Lady Christl", "Accord" and "Belle de Fontenay". Funnily enough I planted my First Earlies on March 11th last year too.

I used the smallest of my containers, reserving the bigger ones for the Second Earlies and Maincrops which will be planted later. This is because the First Earlies are generally smaller plants and don't need so much space. The pots in question are 35cm in diameter, and 30cm tall.

This year I am using soil from the raised beds that I recently decommissioned, but I also added a good handful of Growmore general-purpose fertiliser to each pot. It will be interesting to see how things go, because I usually use compost for growing potatoes in, either commercial or home-made. As regular readers will know, I have become suspicious and disillusioned concerning commercial compost, so I am trying to minimize my use of it.

My planting method couldn't be easier. Dig hole in soil; drop potato tuber in it; cover with soil; done! The tip of the tuber ends up being about 2 or 3 inches under the surface.

Notice that I have planted the potatoes with the biggest chits (shoots) uppermost, and that I have used labels to remind me of which variety is which. Later on, when the shoots break through the surface I will add more soil.

My pots are placed inside my two "Seedling Greenhouses", which will give them some protection from wind, rain and frost.

Notice the bricks weighting-down the greenhouses!

If I didn't have these greenhouse things, I think I would probably delay planting for another two or three weeks, to allow the weather to improve a bit more (hopefully), but I acquired them specifically for this purpose. Their existence will permit me to harvest potatoes over a slightly longer period, which is what I want.

If things go according to plan, I should be harvesting spuds in Mid- to Late-May.

Harvest Monday - 13 March 2017

Don't say I didn't warn you... my harvest this week is just a little more Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

Yes, just this one piece. It is the main head of my "Rudolph" plant.

It may not be a big harvest, but (though I say it myself) that is a mighty fine-looking head of broccoli!

Just enough for another 2-person serving, I'd say.

In the next few photos I'm going to show some broccoli that I didn't harvest. It's one of my "Early Purple Sprouting" plants. At first sight it looks far from ready. Just a mass of leaves, you'd think.

But pull back the leaves, and you'll see plenty of nice spears (shoots) forming:

Once these things get going, they develop quickly, so it probably won't be too long before there's another crop to be had.

I'm linking my post today to Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

Planting Broad Beans

Having got my Onions planted, I have now done the same with my first batch of Broad Beans. Like the Onion sets, they had been raised in little 5-inch pots and kept under cover in one of the plastic mini-greenhouses. I had sowed 18, one seed to each pot, and 16 of them germinated within a few days of each other. Two were "No Shows" though, so I brought those two indoors to see whether the extra warmth would kick them into life. One has sprouted a very weak little shoot, but there is still no sign of the other. This is not a problem really, since I always sow more than I need.

"Witkiem Manita"

A lot of people would sow their Broad Beans directly into the place where they are going to grow, but I usually don't. I like to sow mine in pots because it makes it easier to protect them from mice, and to keep them warmer, which in turn will make them germinate quicker.

When the bean plants each have 3 or 4 leaves I reckon they are OK to plant out.

Planting is easy and takes just a few minutes!

I chose the 12 biggest of the 16 plants I had available, and put them in roughly 6 inches apart. In due course I am going to plant another 12, so I will end up with a total of 24. After I had planted today's 12 I sowed the seeds for the second batch, which will mean that there is about a month between the two batches. However, the second batch will probably catch up and come to harvest only a week or two after the first. This is what normally happens!

Again, just like the onions, I have covered my row of BBs with a pair of cloches.

The only difference is that alongside the BBs I have sown a row of Radish seeds, a mix of "French Breakfast" and "Scarlet Globe", both dependable old favourites. This so-called "inter-cropping" is a good way of getting maximum yields from a piece of ground by growing two different crops at the same time. Radishes grow pretty quickly so they will be out of the way before the beans get tall and block out their light.

Can you see the Radish seeds?

The protection provided by the cloches will hopefully allow the Radishes to develop more quickly than would be the case if they were out in the open, which will give me a nice early crop. I like to make an early start with Radishes because I find that in my garden they do best before the weather gets hot ("less cold" I mean, since we're in the UK). Ones sown in high Summer often bolt or go woody and excessively peppery, but the early ones are usually crisp, succulent and milder.

Planting Onion sets

Having got my cloches washed and ready to go, I am eager to get the raised beds filled once more. With the protection the cloches will provide I felt that it would be justifiable to plant something at last. The onions I have been growing in the big coldframe looked ready to go, so they were the first candidates for planting.

"Sturon" (L) and "Red Baron" (R)

As you know, this is my first time growing onions, so I was not really sure that they were ready, but an enquiry posted on Twitter and Facebook has produced some reassurances that they look "Good to go". When I tipped them out of the pots there was a decent amount of root - enough to hold the soil together while I planted the onions.

"Red Baron"

A couple of the "Red Baron" onions had been reluctant to sprout, so I brought them indoors for a few days, which did the trick, and they have now sprung into life. Being about 2 weeks behind the others, they are smaller than their siblings of course, so I have kept them as spares to replace any casualties.


So here you go, I now have two rows of onions. I planted not only the ones from the little pots seen above, but also more that went straight into the soil "from scratch". I now have 40 onions - plus of course the ones I have grown from seed, though those are still too small to plant out. Presumably they will mature at different times.

Once the planting was complete, the rows were covered with two of the Longrow cloches.

The other side of the bed will in due course be populated with the grown-from-seed onions and a row of Leeks.