June is a month that can bring a little despondency to me. June is the end of the sowing and planting phase, well most of it, but before the harvesting phase. By now I am a little fed up with the sowing and planting bit anyway, and to top it off, June is the month that reality creeps into the veg plot. Back in January, perusing the seed catalogues, in my head I see me harvesting tons of veg, all different and exciting varieties. But at this time of year suddenly I remember that there will be problems. In any given year some veg will thrive and others will fail. When you are growing veg in a chemical free way, as we are, the problems are greater.. slugs and snails munch, aphids multiply, ants farm, leaf miners and butterflies have their share.
This time last year I wailed that even the tomatoes and courgettes were not thriving, and I could always grow them - and I informed my son that we would be eating nothing but garlic as it was the only crop succeeding. In fact 2007 was laughable in the sheer number of pests that were new to us that made themselves known. As it goes, we harvested a lot of veg; the tomatoes were fairly poor, but we still got some, and we were overwhelmed with courgettes as usual, along with a load of other veg despite these problems, and if I am in any doubt, by July I started to keep a record of what we had managed to harvest.
I would recommend this to anyone growing veg, keep a record of what you harvest and when - even if it’s only on a scrap of paper (I always lose my scraps of paper in the heap of other scraps of paper.. so keep it in the computer instead, here). It’s good because I find it very easy to forget when you actually harvest some things.. looking back I can see I was picking courgettes from July all the way through to November! (no wonder there is still a stack in the freezer…), but also it lifts my spirits during when I start to feel despondent about the whole growing veg business.
I think I shall even start to list what I am picking in the month on the blog. Although so far this month, one day in, I have only picked elderflowers. The elderflowers are really coming out and we have a production line of elderflower champagne going… lovely.
