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How to Grow your own Food

April, 4th Week - Hoeing, Root Veg And Runner Beans

Dirty Nails writes from personal experience, having supplied his family of four over the years with enough fresh produce to eat their fill. His book combines his love of gardening with the natural pleasures of being outdoors and 'in amongst it'. The author seeks to de-mystify the art of kitchen and allotment gardening, making the thrills, spills, triumphs and tribulations accessible to all-comers, whatever their level of gardening experience.

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HOEING, ROOT VEG AND RUNNER BEANS

Hoeing

A dry spell at this time of year means perfect hoeing weather. Dirty Nails gets busy with his hoe as early in the day as possible, to give sunshine plenty of time to shrivel up the annihilated weeds. He aims to pass the blade back and forth through the top layer of soil with small, smooth strokes. Dirty Nails keeps his blade sharp with a small file which he carries in his pocket. Stopping regularly to keep his blade keen also allows him an opportunity to stretch his back. The hoe is number one tool in the battle with weeds from now on and through the summer. He loves getting in amongst his crops, having a really close look all the time. Hoe when it is sunny, dry and before you can see the weeds.

Runner Beans

Runner beans can be sown now. Dirty Nails grows Enorma, which is high yielding with long, straight beans of excellent flavour. He also grows White Emergo which is an old-fashioned, white flowered variety. It is prolific and tasty, as well as looking beautiful when in flower. He pops the classic pink and white speckled beans into small pots of compost, on their ends, 1½ inches (4 cm) deep. These are placed in the greenhouse or on a sunny windowsill and watered. Kept moist, they should start to sprout in a few days. Dirty Nails won’t consider planting them outside until after 12 May because they are very tender and easily killed by a late frost.

Root Veg

Parsnips, sown in mid-March, are just beginning to show their first pair of small, pale green leaves. It is a hard job spotting them amongst the seedling weeds at this stage, but Dirty Nails always makes an effort to clear around the tiny ‘snips when they first emerge. It’s a painstaking job, but well worth making the effort before the parsnip bed turns into a mini-jungle.

NATURAL HISTORY IN THE GARDEN
Cow Parsley

Cow parsley will be growing well this month. Its fern-like foliage bursts out from around the bases of trees, under hedges, throughout areas of rough ground. As April passes, look out for the frothy flowers that reach up beyond the green leaves and dance atop them like a white mist. Each big flat platter of flowers is made up of half a dozen or more smaller flower heads, and each one of these consists of tiny individual florets.

Dirty Nails has thinned his salsify and scorzonera this week too. They were sown in the first week of April and have germinated quickly. Two seeds were sown at 6 inch (15 cm) intervals, and by now they look like strands of grass. The weakest one has been pulled from each sowing station, the lines hoed and watered.

VEGETABLE SNIPPETS
CATCH CROPS

Catch crop is the term used to describe a rapidly maturing crop that can be sown at the same time as another, longer term, main crop, with the seeds of both mixed together. The two grow cheek-by-jowl but being much faster of growth, the catch crop is harvested and eaten way in advance of the main crop. Having become established, the remaining developing plants then have plenty of room in which to thrive and plump up.

To this end, salsify and scorzonera seeds can be comfortably mixed with those of lettuces or radishes, which are ideal catch crops. They won’t impede the root veggies, which will occupy the ground for many months, but will increase the yield and variety of foodstuffs which any one piece of ground can produce.

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