SUMMER

June

In the garden

June gardening is the height of pleasure. Nothing makes me happier than setting out for my plot with a shallow basket packed with well-grown courgettes, beans, tomatoes and squash plants ready to set out.

I have some idea where they’ll go, but the act of putting them in is always a spur to creativity. I love the combination of egg-yolk yellow courgette flowers with vivid, jewel-coloured dahlias. Step-over apples underplanted with strawberries and marigolds made a pattern worthy of William Morris. In another bed, two-tone violet and white turnips (Rapa Tonda a Colletto Viola from Franchi Seeds – see page 31), ‘Boltardy’ beetroot and Swiss Chard ‘Fordhook Giant’, with its glossy, crumpled, dark-green leaves, compete for the most luxuriant foliage. A bed cleared of early potatoes is sown with a salad mixture – Misticanza di Lattughe, also from Franchi Seeds – which includes a selection of meltingly soft butterhead lettuces.

On my journey to the allotment the banks are thick with comfrey (). Recognisable by its hairy, shield-shaped leaves and hooded, purple flowers, comfrey is a wonderful compost plant. Its leaves are rich in potash, nitrogen and phosphate, and work as a compost activator: use them to line a potato trench or later on as a mulch between potato plants. You can pack the foliage down into a barrel with a weight on top to make a fantastic tomato feed, or mix the leaves with leaf mould to make a base for potting compost. You can even eat the leaves dipped in batter. You can use the wild form as compost, but the most useful as a fertiliser is ‘Bocking 14’, a cultivar of Russian comfrey x . It should be a must on any vegetable garden. You can buy a pack of five. Likewise, if you have an overgrown area thick with nettles, scythe them down and add to a barrel of water to make a similarly nutrient-rich liquid feed.