Page 20 - Simply Vegetables Autumn 2023

It’s Sow Simple’s 2023 season so far
2023 has been an eventful year for us. Although at the time of writing, we’re only two thirds of the way through.
We spent the first six months of the
year largely focusing on planning our wedding in our spare time. However, Dad kindly started off lots of plants for us in the earlier months, as well as DIY-ing anything and everything I requested that I wanted to feature as part of our big day.
The plants he started off for us has meant that we have a garden full to keep us occupied now we have our free time back. Haha! Turns out this didn’t transpire as we’d imagined it would based on the amount of time it felt we spent planning the wedding!
Summer Holiday and Gold Mine courgettes
We have a number of different container courgettes growing again this year. Lots are old favourites, like Midnight and Piccolo, but we have a couple of new varieties too. One is a regular striped, yellow courgette called Gold Mine and the other a round yellow striped courgette called Summer Holiday. Initially, both wanted to throw
out lots of side shoots which made them rather unruly and very difficult to keep within the bounds of their container and
tie to their stake. However, we soon made the decision to cut off the side shoots so there was one main growing stem and both
Despite a very sunny wedding day at the start of June, the month of July has then been one of the rainiest (as has the start of August) that I remember.
I will have to remember
to ask my father-in-law whether this is actually the case – his hobby is keeping weather records for Essex dating back years and years – so he will know.
seem to have adapted well to their container and upright environment. As a reminder, these are in 30 litre pots in multipurpose compost, fed with a liquid high nitrogen fertiliser a couple of times a week and watered once or twice a day depending on the weather/temperature.
Patio Baby aubergines
We tried aubergines
for the first time in our garden last year with some success, but
we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try a variety specifically bred for containers given we are always short on space.
At the time of writing, we haven’t harvested any aubergines yet, but there are plenty of fruits set and they are starting to swell. It will be interesting to see whether the plant manages to support all of the fruits to maturity. These have been treated similar to the courgettes, but we feed
Despite a very sunny wedding day at the start of June, the month of July has then been one of the rainiest
with a liquid high potash feed rather than nitrogen.
Marmande tomatoes
We have lots of different tomato varieties growing again this year. However, one that is new to us is Marmande, a beefsteak variety. I saw this when I was browsing online at the start of the year and messaged Dad to say I wanted to give it
a go. Little did I know, he’d done the exact same thing a couple of weeks before and the seeds were already in his possession ready to be sown – great minds!
It was a relatively slow starter, with the plants growing more slowly and compact than the other beefsteak tomatoes (Big Beef and Borsalina) that we’re growing this year. However, they’ve now caught
This has meant that the
weeds have been growing like there’s no tomorrow, not one of my favourite jobs in the garden (albeit Chris doesn’t seem to mind it). That being said, it has also helped all the vegetable and flower plants along too.
We have lots of “regulars” growing in the garden this year, but also a few newbies to us, so we’ll focus on those here.
20 Simply Vegetables
EMILY HARRIS FNVS