There has been a lot going on in the Harrod Horticultural HQ garden and greenhouse over the last few weeks with the warm weather meaning lots of watering!
A real success story has been the red onions - these have grown really well this year and it looks like we are on for a bumper harvest. Think there will be some squabbling over these in the staff kitchen!
We have really tried to keep on top of the watering to prevent the bulbs splitting and distorting and also to stop them bolting.
When it come to harvesting the onions, we use a fork to loosen bulbs from the soil and leave them to dry out in the sun until the skins get crispy. When the onions are dry we will knock off the soil and then if there are any left after the staff kitchen rush, these can be stored in onion nets in a well ventilated frost free place or can be tied and hung ready for use.
We have also picked one of our marrows this week and looking forward to trying out this marrow recipe. Always a bit unsure of what to do with these so going to stick to a tasty looking recipe and hopefully make it a new favourite!
Unfortunately we have had a bit of a disaster with our cucumbers - lack of watering and a hot weekend led to a them wilting pretty badly in the heat and some of the leaves turning yellow.
We have tried taking off the yellow leaves, re-tying the plant up the canes and we are hoping with plenty of water and some TLC they may get back on track - fingers crossed!
We were having problems with blossom end rot on our tomatoes, caused by irregular watering. We try our best to keep on top of the watering but it has proved difficult this year and especially with no one watering over the weekends plants can suffer.
We have removed some of the lower leaves on the tomato plants and re-tied these to give them more support and also stood the pots in a tray. The tray can be filled up so that over the weekend the plants are still getting watered and the improvement on the fruits has been great. We still seem a bit behind but should get some turning red soon.
We have got the latest batch of spinach coming on in one of the raised beds. We like to successional sow these salad crops to try to keep us in leaves throughout the Summer. We have to be vigilant with slugs and have used some of our Organic Slug Pellets to protect these young plants.
So, lessons have been learnt the last few weeks, most noticeably the importance of regular watering which hopefully we have now got on top of and hopefully we will start picking our tomatoes soon...
Happy Gardening!
