Gardeners are born optimists, which is handy, because growing vegetables is a swings-and-roundabouts business. In one season, carrots and parsnips might excel, egged on by consistently warm days and nights, yet onions—which thrive in a damp, cool spring followed by a hot, dry summer —will turn out like marbles. The following year, things could well be reversed.
One thing we are pretty much guaranteed is that, by mid May, the ground will be warm and frosts on the wane. This is one of the reasons why our ancestors held such sway by May Day. The date is misleading, however, because when we adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752, 11 days were lost and May Day jumped forward. In Oxfordshire, there is still a tradition of planting runner-bean seeds and other vegetables on Old May Day, about May 12 or 13. This, then, is the perfect time to up your game: order some different seeds, plant mixed rows of leaves, add some flowers. In short, ensure your vegetable garden is more beautiful and more productive than ever.
Make summer plentiful and plant a tripod of climbing beans with a companion planting of lettuces and edible flowers. Many people stick to a favourite heritage variety of red-flowered runner bean, the ones with dark-mottled seeds. Growing these has two major problems, however. Being equatorial plants, these older varieties prefer evenly balanced days and nights, rather than long summer days, so their growth spurts wait for longer nights. They are also heat-sensitive and drop their flowers once night-time temperatures exceed 16ËšC. Recent summers have been getting hotter, so it makes sense to plant white-flowered runner beans, with pale, non-blotched seeds, as these are more tolerant of hotter conditions. If you want to go traditional, sow a mixture of red and white runners. Polestar is an excellent stringless red with plump pods; White Lady is a classic, white-flowered variety.
Denne historien er fra May 13, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 13, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
