This Month in Your Garden - June

‘I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.’
-  L. M. Montgomery

June is the month of festivals, medieval fayres, airshows, horse racing, tennis and strawberries and cream. You could be forgiven for not having much time to spend in the garden but if have been hard at it all year, digging, sowing, pruning and hoeing, when you do get into your land of herbaceous borders, cottage garden plants, shrubs and roses, take a deep breath.

The Lawn Care Guide - June

Mow as you mean to go on

May rolls into June and the mowing regime is much the same with twice a week cutting if the soil is moist. If there’s a long, dry spell, raise the cutting height on the tractor deck or mower and leave off the grass box. But mostly continue as you were, with frequent mowing a benefit for the grass.

Lawn Care: Questions & Answers

Q. We seem to get a lot of areas on the lawn that get shaved bare when we cut the grass. What can we do to stop it?

The Vegetable Plot - June

‘Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people.’ - Elizabeth Berry 

There is no better vegetable than fresh from one’s own garden, with the knowledge of where it came from.

The Big Glut Recipe - June

Pan fried gnocchi with broccoli pesto and grilled veg

Smoky, tasty, fast fresh veg with fried gnocchi for extra crunch. By Michel Roux Jr. From Food & Drink.

Ingredients

For the pesto

This Month in Your Garden - May

'Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment'. -  Ellis Peters 

All the careful planning, neat planting and border tidying and there’s always some plant, some flower, pops up to astonish us. Now where did you come from? May is always full of surprises and with the frosts passed we can sow and plant more to delight the eye in the months to come. Early bulbs have gone over so we may be thinking about lifting them if they are overcrowded.

The Lawn Care Guide - May

Early warning: weed attack

Just when the lawn is looking good you step out one morning and notice there are a lot more weeds than there were yesterday. Or so it seems. The speedwells, chickweed, dandelion and daisies all find your lawn a nice place to live. The buttercups with their pretty yellow flowers are creeping around and may be regarded as not offensive until, that is, off they go covering the turf at an alarming rate.

Lawn Care: Questions & Answers

Q. We have cracks appearing in the soil surface of our newly seeded lawn, what can we do about it?

The Vegetable Plot - May

And sow on

Succession sowing brings you a plentiful and regular supply of fresh vegetables through spring and summer. Somehow there’s a greater delight in enjoying the crunch of home grown lettuce, salad onions, carrots and radishes on a warm summer evening, compared to taking them out of a plastic bag.

The Big Glut Recipe - May

Creamy broccoli and bacon spaghetti

Super, simple midweek dish serves four, courtesy of Delicious Magazine.

Ingredients

• 400g spaghetti
• ½ large head broccoli, cut into small florets
• Olive oil for drizzling
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 4 British free-range unsmoked streaky bacon rashers, roughly chopped
• 100ml half-fat crème fraîche
• 5 free-range egg yolks (freeze the whites in a labelled freezer bag)
• Grated cheddar to serve (optional)