A pre dinner service chat with a colleague of ours, who was feeling like Spring and Summer had been challenging for veg growing (hasn’t that been the case for us all!) led to us talking about how there is still hope and time to plant vegetables that you can be eating through Autumn and into next year. Of course, after some hype talk, and reassuring… I left it with… “I’ll ask Jan for advice”

Let me hand over to Jan, who I am sure most of you know by now, and those who don’t, she is the driving force behind our kitchen garden, and has worked from design right through lots of heavy digging in the never ending winter, and now the beautiful flourishing gardens you see out the back of the restaurant. If you’re keen to know more about her, she has recently published her first book, which you can buy HERE.

So over to the woman who knows her seeds, to tell you what you need to know!

“It hasn’t been the easiest of gardening years, with a long, cold and rather wet spring accompanied by an unwelcome invasion of the slug army. Earlier in the year we were needing to attempt several repeat sowings of vegetables in order to get anything to grow! However, many of us have managed to make the most of the variable weather and are now reaping the harvests of our persistence in the kitchen garden.

Now we are into August, many of us are finding gaps to fill in the vegetable garden and the good news is that it isn’t too late to sow more seeds for crops to see us over the autumn and into early winter.

There are a range of vegetables we can grow at this time of year, many of them are the same varieties we would normally grow in the Spring, for a quick and early crop.  If you have some covered space, such as a greenhouse or polytunnel, the growing options are even better, but if you just want to sow outside, there are still plenty of options.

My favourites for growing at this time of year are the many types of Asian greens, such as Pak Choi, Mizuna and Komatsuna. These are fast growing and surprisingly hardy. The advantage of growing them at this time of year is that they don’t bolt and produce flower as easily as they do from spring sowings. They can be eaten as a salad leaf when picked small, or else used as a spinach substitute once the leaves get bigger.

Other leafy salad crops to grow now include many varieties of lettuce, such as Marvel of Four Seasons, Winter Imperial and Winter Density. Sowing now will provide you with lettuce right up to the first frosts. Other salad leaves suitable for sowing now are Rocket, Claytonia or Miners Lettuce, Corn Salad or Lambs Lettuce and the various Mustard leaves, from the dainty Red Frills through to Giant Red mustard which is wonderful in curries.  Spinach does well sown at this time of year and I often repeat sow right up until the end of September.

I also sow Spring onions, as these will supply you right through the winter months with a little protection. It is possible to grow ordinary onions for overwintering, to harvest next year, but up here in the North, a bad winter can make this a bit hit and miss, unless you have a sheltered garden.

You can sow Spring Cabbage now for harvesting next year as well as the American Collard Greens, which are very like cabbage but can be picked as single leaves over a very long period.

You can also plant quick maturing roots, such as Radish, either salad varieties, or else the cooking types, such as Daikon or Mooli.  I also plant Turnip, my favourite being Purple Top Milan and also beetroot for baby vegetables, and if we have a mild autumn, carrots can also still be sown.

All of these seeds are best sown directly into the soil at this time of year, rather than sowing in trays and pricking out, as we would do in the spring.

Finally, don’t forget to leave room in your vegetable garden for growing some garlic. This is usually planted at the end of October and I often prepare by garlic bed with a good thick layer of manure or compost now, so I am ready to plant out the cloves in a couple of months’ time, but make the most of the space by sowing some fast growing leaves in there while you are waiting.”

Why not visit Jan’s website for more gardening inspiration – About – Artemisia Gardens