Success with Greenhouse Melons

Here’s how I grew 30 Charentais melons in a narrow greenhouse bed just 5 ft long and 1 ft deep.

Charentais are a fragrant variety of cantaloupe or musk melon, bred in France in the 1920s. Typically they are more difficult to grow than standard cantaloupes and rarely succeed outdoors in UK climates. Their short shelf life makes them expensive in the supermarkets and the narrow window for picking them at their best means you are always at risk of getting a dud when shop buying. Home-growing these exotic fruit can, therefore, be a very rewarding challenge. But if you have a greenhouse I’ll let you into a secret or two…

Brussels Sprouts – a winter winner

Here is my sprout bed. It’s 8ft long by 4ft wide and holds 8 sprout plants in it. The netting has kept the pigeons off and the early plants have been in production for a couple of weeks.

I grow these from plugs which I purchase from Organic Plants in June. This is their sprout collection which provides a range of varieties (two each of four varieties) so that you get a harvest over several months avoiding the glut which would happen from growing a single variety. It would be cheaper to grow from seed, but for the small quantities I require plugs are convenient and easy.

Each plant was given 2ft x 2ft space and planted in soil that was enriched with manure the previous season. Sprouts are hungry feeders, so I top dress with pelleted chicken manure too. The little plug plants are 4 inches tall but can be planted deep so their stalks are partly buried but the leaves are above ground. This allows the buried stem to root into the surrounding soil. Like most brassicas they need to be planted in firm soil, so I use a heel around them to make sure they are tightly gripped.

Greenhouse 2017 – the Veggies

I’ve planted the greenhouse with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, aubergines and some hot-house ornamentals. Trying to cater for all of their needs is tricky: the tomatoes need good air circulation to avoid fungal diseases, but the aubergine and cucumber like a humid environment. This year I’m giving them all a bit more space and TLC.

Late season apples

In my garden I have tried to include fruit varieties that extend the season as widely as possible. This is the first year that I have been able to pick apples in December extending my record to seven months of fresh fruit this year. As you can see, they are a good size, and in pretty good nick considering they have hung on the tree for six months. I picked them on December 3rd after several nights of frost. They were still firmly attached and could have been left even longer I expect, but the birds were taking an interest and I had lost a couple to furious pecking despite my attempts to cover them with netting. How do they get underneath?

Gone fishing for gooseberries

Garden gooseberries in a fish-dish

How to grow carrots – for beginners

Carrots as a main crop are well worth growing. They can be temperamental, but once you get the hang of it you can grow all the family needs for six months of the year. Carrots are not a posh crop like asparagus or melon, but the flavour when they come straight out of the garden and are on the plate within half an hour cannot be beaten by anything in the supermarket.

They can be planted between March and June for harvesting from July to April Overwintering is easy either by lifting and storing, or as I do, leaving them in the ground where they will keep best with little or no protection.

What’s picking? April harvest

April can be the leanest time of year in the vegetable garden as stored carrots and onions have been used up but the new season’s veg is still at the seedling stage. However, with judicious planning and a bit of luck, I have been able to continue putting food on the table through late winter and spring. Here’s the best of the month’s harvest.

1. Celeriac

Celeriac, or turnip rooted celery is a great winter vegetable that can still be picked in late spring. Planted in mid-summer my celeriac bed stood this year’s mild winter well. Heavy snow in previous years damaged these pseudo-roots, making some of them unusable. A thick layer of straw would have protected them, but this year they managed with no special attention at all.

The Vegetable Garden, August 2013

As you can see the vegetable garden is pretty productive at the moment.

Summer Squashes

ID Parade

Can you identify these three apples?
A. (left) 129 g. Sweet, fruity, aromatic, mildly acidic.
B. (centre) 213 g. Sweet, floral, crisp, well balanced acidity.
C. (right) 165 g. Honey-sweet, aromatic, crunchy, tangy, fruity bouquet.

It has been a very good season for apples in my garden this year. I train my fruit trees as espaliers and cordons so do not get vast numbers – which is good – but I do get good plently of good quality fruits, and this year some were very large. As you can see above I collected three of the largest specimens for comparison, the smallest variety being 7cm across, the largest 9cm.

I’m pretty sure about variety A and B, but if C is the variety claimed on the label then it should only be 5 – 6 cm diameter. Or perhaps I have just grown the largest examples known! 

So, can you identify the three varieties above?

Answers on a post card please (or perhaps it would be quicker just to leave a comment below?)