The Vegetable Plot - May

Growing, growing, gone!

Growing your own vegetables is not only a pleasure on fine May days, you will also notice family and friends can’t wait to get the flavour of home-grown. Be it simply growing tomatoes in the greenhouse or outside, or a host of different veg in your plot, or even in borders with other plants, the story is the same. 

You can’t beat the taste with shop bought produce. About now you can put in a main crop of runner beans and French beans in a warm spot. If the soil is warm sow bush marrows and courgettes. You may already have brassica seedlings and they still need protecting, while celeriac raised from seed in March can be planted out. 

Sow late broccoli, peas, maincrop beetroot, dwarf beans, sweet corn and plant out winter greens such as Brussels sprouts and cauliflower that are hardened off. Earth up early potatoes and plant out winter greens. That should keep you going for a while.

• Pot on and harden off capsicums and aubergines
• Keep growing successions of lettuce, carrots and onions
• Harvest asparagus from second or third-year established beds 
• Mulch fruit trees
• Thin peaches and nectarines
• Cover strawberry beds with clean straw