Helen Jackson's Kitchen Garden

Mid-summer is a fabulous time in the kitchen garden diary. There is so much in season that is delicious and much of it easy to grow for the novice home gardener.

While my plum trees are the cause of some frustration and my plum sauce recipe will have to wait for yet another year... the courgettes on the other hand, are doing so well that if I miss a day of picking I will have marrows the next! Courgette, feta and mint fritters are of course a perennial favourite but they also sneak their way into much of my summer cooking including cakes (think swapping ½ carrot for courgette) and of course ratatouille – made primarily with eggplant, courgette, capsicum, tomato and basil.

This year we have just the right amount of glossy black eggplants - I shared the seedling punnet with a friend after a season last year of more eggplants than I could pickle!

The capsicum provide the main point of colour in my garden aside from the blue sage flowers grown mainly to attract bees.
Basil is grown in prolific amounts and as well as keeping the tomatoes good company it is wonderful for my annual pesto production. At the end of summer I send the kids to the garden armed with secateurs and baskets, they come back laden with fragrant basil and a few lace wings attached to their hair. Once the leaves are stripped from the stem then their job is over and I start to make pesto. While I used to use pine nuts price has dictated that they are not economical but cashews do the job just fine. Once made, the pesto is spooned into ice cube trays, frozen and then stored free flow in a container to see me through the rest of the year. While I try and get a basil crop established before Christmas, it really isn’t quite hot enough to get going and is best when planted late December and allowed to flourish through January and into Feb.

While I would like to gloat about my summer coriander, it really does best for me in the shoulder seasons of autumn and spring and because we are frost free I can also grow it during winter. I can’t remember the last time I bought seeds or seedlings and instead I have set aside a patch of garden and allow the coriander to grow a self sow, a sprinkling of sheep pellets and a top up of compost every so often and off it goes. Living in a moderate humid climate definitely has its benefits but it also means that fungal issues love to thrive, this summer the powdery mildew that can take over my courgettes and tamarillos is so far under control but a regular spray of eco fungicide keeps me, if not the plants, feeling happy that we are on top of things.

What I am really looking forward to with glee is the passionfruit that are currently ripening. After losing a plant to brown spot I replanted in a windier site – yes I do get more leaf burn but less chance of fungal issues. Keeping the plant well mulched with pea straw and fed with sheep pellets and good watering means that I now have a plant laden with fruit – I can almost taste them now!