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 will also be planting out our cabbages into our slot and lock cloche. We have already assembled the cloche and put on the insect mesh cover in preparation for the cabbages.
As always we will be continuing to water, weed and feed all our crops. This week we will be giving our box hedge a foliar drench of seaweed feed ready for the big annual clip in early June.
Our pepper plants are now beginning to set fruit. Where a fruit sets, the plant forks into two and, in order to maintain a cordon, we will nip out one of the shoots where the plant forks to keep one central stem which is tied in to the support. We will also be continuing to pinch out the side shoots on our tomatoes. Once our aubergines reach 30cm high, the central stem is nipped out to encourage it to bush out. A couple of our plants have already reached this stage and the others are rapidly progressing.
This week we will be harvesting rhubarb, asparagus, salad leaves, watercress, spinach and chard.
