What’s been happening here at my homestead in Wales, in May and early June. It’s a bit long. You’ll probably want to make a cup of tea first.
Whatever the weather
The past few weeks have certainly been ones of dramatic contrast across the UK. Mid-May was cool and wet, with a really chilly wind, which was followed by the hottest May temperatures since records began. And now we seem to be in autumn! It’s cold enough to light the fire in the evening: windy and very wet. My poor plants don’t know what is happening.
peas thriving in the back garden beds
The peas don’t mind. Cool, wet weather is perfect for peas. They are looking lush, filled with flowers and forming pods. But the warmth loving outdoor plants, including runner beans, squash, courgettes and sweetcorn are looking rather sorrowful. Frazzled by heat, and now battered by driving rain and cold winds, they are unhappy. Hopefully we’ll have more seasonal warm weather by the middle of next week, and they will perk up.
I could have covered the more tender plants with horticultural fleece, which would have protected them from the cold to a degree, but it has been so windy here that I would be concerned about the fleece blowing away, or being blown repeatedly onto the plants, causing damage. So they’ve had to cope with the cold weather.
What to sow now
I was away during the period of intense heat, and although my son was here watering, it was so hot quite a few plants died or bolted. Fortunately there’s plenty of time for sowing most things now, and any gaps will soon be filled with something else. Every month I post a list of some of the edibles that can be sown on my social media. It is handwritten, partly because I enjoy writing and partly to keep things created by human hands on actual paper alive. Humans have been making marks with their hands to communicate, or just for the sheer pleasure of it, for thousands of years.
There’s a useful sowing and growing chart in my new book The Productive Garden. There are two “second spring” online webinars coming up on July 15th and August 12th, where I’ll be explaining what to sow and plant for abundant harvests throughout the autumn, winter and next spring. Tickets are only £10 per person.
May and early June polytunnel growing
In the polytunnels, growth has slowed down in the cool and the gloom, but the plants are looking much perkier. During May, I cleared most of the over wintered crops and planted out much of the summer cropping plants. This includes tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, melons, dwarf French beans (bush beans), Shark Fin melon (a kind of gourd), tomatillo, Cape gooseberries, lemongrass, luffa, edible flowers and some strawberries. Also, a few courgettes and smaller fruiting winter squash. Although these can grow outside, I grow some undercover for an earlier crop and also as a “just in case”. In cooler parts of the UK, squash and courgettes productivity can be really reduced if the summer is grey and damp.
Herbs including many kinds of basil and shiso (perilla) are way behind where they should be now. They’re still in trays in the greenhouse, which is much warmer (it’s insulated with horticultural bubble wrap) and will hopefully be planted out into the polytunnel beds later this week.
The larger polytunnel plastic needs a good clean. I use a long handled brush but as it is a very soggy job, it can wait until the weather is a bit warmer. In the smaller tunnel bolting dill and coriander has been knocked over by a something (cat? fox?) running through the tunnel. I’m leaving it for now, the flowers are a magnet for insects including hoverflies, but it’ll soon come out so I can plant something else in its place. Both dill and coriander bolt quickly at this time of year, so I grow it successionally to get enough for summery cooking and preserving.
In both tunnels, it is time to use sticks and string to stake up the tomatoes, melons, cucumbers and anything else that will grow upwards towards the crop bars.
First soft fruit harvests
We’ve been nibbling on the first ripe wild and cultivated strawberries, and in the fruit cage redcurrants are starting to turn red. I must check the mesh for damage to make sure the no birds can get inside. Here, I grow lots of soft fruit outside of the fruit cage too, so there is plenty for us and the wild things.
The Timperley Early rhubarb has been cropping since late February. I’ll stop picking it at the end of June, to give it time to recover. The nameless (because I lost the labels!) later cropping rhubarb will carry on into July and early August. It is such an easy crop, reliable and productive.
The fruit trees including apples, pears and figs are covered with baby fruit now. Unfortunately despite plenty of blossom, it looks as though the greengage and plums haven’t got any fruit this year. In the larger polytunnel there are some baby peaches and nectarines, but far fewer than last year. Perhaps they fancied a year off.
Strawberry cordial recipe
I posted a recipe for strawberry cordial on the website last week. This is a delicious way to use up gluts, whether homegrown or bought from the bargain area at supermarkets.
The recipe works for most sweet soft fruit, including raspberries and Japanese wineberries. Other cordials I’ll be making this month include rhubarb and elderflower (separate cordials – you can make a rhubarb and elderflower cordial but I like elderflower on its own).
Out and about
Chelsea Flower Show press day is always a delight, and I was thrilled to attend again this year. I got in very early, well before 6am, to get the photography done and explore the gardens whilst it was still very quiet. I was commissioned to write an article about it for Kitchen Garden magazine. It’ll be in the July issue, and I’ll also share photos and news from the day on this blog later on.
As part of my book tour, I gave two sustainable gardening talks in May. The first was at Llandovery Literature Festival, in a town about 40 minutes away from here. The other was at Trinity College, University of Oxford. This is about a four hour drive from here, so I made the most of travelling across the border in England, and spent some time with family too.
My Mum and daughter Caitlin attended my Trinity talk (mum lives in Oxford, Caitlin is an environmental social scientist at the Environmental Change Institute, Oxford Uni) and we had a fun time enjoying a meal together afterwards. It was so interesting staying at the college, and the next morning I was taken on a garden tour, which I’ll write about in a separate blog post.
Summer projects
I have five main projects here this summer. The first one is the least fun – sorting out the dreaded brambles which snuck in and have made the most of the bonkers weather. This will involve cutting them right back, and digging out all of the roots. Probably several times!
The second is to work on the main growing area between the two polytunnels, creating a mostly perennial food forest, with a couple of annual beds in the middle. This is an on-going project for the year, not one of those instant makeovers. The budget for this is £0. At the moment, that area is looking rather wild.
The next is to make more veg growing places – beds and also in containers. This is a response to the crazy prices of everything, which just keep going up. So I am going to squeeze in as much food as possible, especially storage food such as potatoes, drying beans and squash. Almost everything has been grown from seed, and I am using as many free containers (repurposing and up-cycling) as possible. The compost is some homemade and some bought in, I have two huge piles of free woodchip, some card and some sheep fleece. I’m spending as little as possible on this because it would be really daft to spend a fortune to “save money”.
The fourth is much needed – decorating and repairs. The repairs are mainly outside, winter storm damage to shed roofs. Inside, repairs are mostly filling in holes caused by taking shelves down plus getting all of the windows replaced (by a professional, sadly a necessary expense). Everything needs painting – I haven’t decorated here since I moved in, I haven’t had the time. and it all needs freshening up. Fortunately I already have tools from my previous house, and quite a lot of paint. The budget for this is being as frugal as possible, repurposing what I can and only buying what I have to (such as more paint).
And lastly, more writing projects. New books. This will take much longer than this summer!
YouTube
I’ve had a long break from You Tube, which I had planned to start again in the spring. However my phone, which I use to film it, could no longer take landscape videos of a suitable quality – a cracked lens, due to me smashing the phone by accident in May 2025! It’s taken a while to be able to get a replacement. I now do, and shall be starting the videos again later this week.
You can watch videos from the homestead in previous years on my channel here.Â
Talks coming up in June and July
The next Productive Garden Book Tour Talk is at BBC Gardeners’ World Live on Thursday 18th June, on the new QVC stage. GWLive is one of my favourite shows, it is always such a lively and fun event.
I’ll be at RHS Badmington with my press hat on (another mag commission on July 8th and 9th. Next, it’s the marvellous Royal Welsh Show, where I’ll be speaking in the Horticulture Village on 20th and 22nd July, before heading to London to speak at the London Permaculture Festival in Camden on 26th July.
I give talks at shows, gardening clubs and all kinds of events, nationally and internationally. To discuss booking me, please contact me here.
Articles online
Every three months I write for the Dalefoot Blog. This year, my series for Dalefoot is about growing and using herbs. Read the latest one here.
Tanya of Lovely Greens invited me to contribute an article to her gorgeous website. It includes some recipes from The Productive Garden – you can read it here.
I write for various magazines: in June my articles are in BBC Gardeners World Magazine and Kitchen Garden Magazine. Do get in touch if you’d like to commission me.
