A Year in the Temperate Kitchen Garden · Vol. I
The Kitchen
Garden Journal
Late Spring · The Sowing Season
The Almanac
- Moon
- Waxing Gibbous
- Last Frost
- May 14th
- Daylight
- 15h 42m
- Soil Temp
- 12°C, rising
- Rainfall
- Light, frequent
Instrumenta Horti — the gardener's hand
The beds wake slowly now — first the broad bean, then the pea, then the bold rows of the early carrot. The soil, lately frozen, gives way to the trowel like soft bread. There is no hurry in the garden, only the long patience of green things turning toward the light.
— from the journal, the third week of May
The Twelvemonth Calendar
0% sown
Section the Second
The Planting Beds
Five beds, surveyed bed by bed, each with its sowing & harvest windows mapped to the twelvemonth above.
The Nightshade Bed
Tomato — Solanum lycopersicum
Sown under glass in early spring and set out once the frosts have passed. Pinch the side-shoots faithfully and the cordon will repay you with fruit until the first chill of autumn.
The Root Bed
Carrot — Daucus carota
Beetroot — Beta vulgaris
Sow thinly into a fine, stone-free tilth and thin without mercy, for the carrot resents a crowd. Successional sowings every fortnight keep the kitchen in roots from midsummer to the frosts.
The Legume Bed
Pea — Pisum sativum
An early crop, sown direct as soon as the soil may be worked. Provide twiggy hazel for the tendrils to climb, and gather the pods young while the peas within are still sweet and tender.
The Orchard Border
Damson — Prunus domestica
Trained against the warm south wall, the stone-fruit blossoms early and must be guarded from late frost. Thin the fruitlets in midsummer that the remaining harvest may swell full and sweet.
The Salad Bed
Lettuce — Lactuca sativa
The most obliging of crops, sown little and often along the cool edges of the bed. Cut the loose leaves with the morning dew upon them, and shade the summer sowings lest they bolt in the heat.
In the Month of June
This Month in the Garden
Pinch out the side-shoots of the cordon tomatoes each week, and stake them firmly against the summer storms; a single leading stem, well tended, bears the truest fruit.
Sow a fresh row of carrots and a short drill of lettuce for succession, watering the seed-furrow before sowing rather than after, that the fine seed be not washed away.
Thin the beetroot seedlings to a hand's breadth apart, and the young thinnings need not be wasted — they make a tender garnish for the supper table.
Hoe between the rows on a dry morning to sever the weeds at their roots before they seed; a weed cut in June spares a hundred in July.
Gather the first peas while the pods are bright and yielding, picking from the foot of the plant upward to encourage the vine to crop on.