Stephanie's Garden Blog

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our leeks. It's a little later than we would normally like to plant them, but they always follow our new potatoes into the ground and these are a little late being harvested due to the cold spring. The leeks are good size plants though, so should have plenty of time to get to a good size before the winter.

The weather has at last warmed up and our crops now need more care and attention to keep them productive. We like to use fish, blood and bone every six weeks on our leafy crops such as brassicas, spinach and chard, and seaweed feed on flowering crops such as courgettes and beans.

This week In the Kitchen Garden we will be planting out the remaining tender vegetables currently taking shelter in our cold frame. Courgettes and squash will be planted out into the last remaining places in the garden. The garden will then be full with only small spaces for salads to be squeezed in.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our sweetcorn. The plants have spent the past couple of week in our cold frame waiting for the temperatures to warm up and hardening off. They are now big enough to survive outside. We will be covering them with cloches just in case a cold night threatens. These will be removed in a few weeks time.

We're off to the Chelsea Flower Show for a few days, so will need to leave our plants in good shape for our absence.

Believe it or not, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is nearly upon us again and the Harrod Horticultural team are busy preparing for another show-stopping exhibit. With a string of previous Chelsea trade stand awards and twice winners of the Chelsea Product of the Year, the pressure is really on to raise the bar yet again and we are determined to do this as you can see with this sneaky peak of our 2015 exhibit

Success with composting depends on heat, biology and a good balance of ingredients in your compost bin. Adding in approximately 10cm. layers 'Green waste' (grass, border and hedge trimmings, snipped or shredded woody prunings) heats up steamily, starts to break down rapidly and can be stirred into layers below to speed everything up. 'Brown waste' (e.g. shredded paper, packaging and straw) should be added at regular intervals to counteract the wetness of the greenery and will rot down too

There are many reasons why you need to be aware of your soils acid/alkaline balance. The solubility of minerals can be compromised if there is an imbalanced pH. Minerals become locked-up in the soil making them unavailable for your plants to absorb.

This week In Stephanie's Kitchen Garden we will be planting out our runner beans and climbing French beans. We sowed the seed in rootrainers in the greenhouse a few weeks ago and they are now good sized plants. Last week they were placed in the cold frame to harden off. Now that the night time temperatures have at last warmed up we can plant them out into the garden.