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Growing under cover is a great way to extend your growing season, these broad beans will be producing pods earlier than those grown outside.

Apparently this year was a difficult one for growing Pumpkins! Not here at Sissinghurst, no sir! Not only did we have a fabulous crop of Uchiki Kuri squashes, Butternut squashes (which need a longer than average growing season) we also had wonderful success with our giant pumpkins. We still have two of our largest examples on display outside our restaurant and shop. Grown Organically, we gave each plant 2 barrows of compost, planted them, watered them in and then gave them no extra food or water at all throughout the season. The only attention the plants recieved was weeding and hoing around them.

As i said before Florence Fennel is easy to grow your main enemy is slugs. Organic slug pellets are available but other prevention methods are bran, copper rings or crushed eggshells and sharp grit.. Personally i like bran the best as it really does work. The only downside is it will need to be reapplied regularly in a ring around your plants, but then you have to do the same with the pellets and bran is cheaper.

Florence Fennel, a somewhat unusual crop some might think but incredibly easy to grow. We sowed these seeds in late August and have just cropped the lot, weighing in at just over 12 Kg of fennel from one packet of seeds (average 50 seeds in a packet). Growing for yourself i would reccomend staggering the sowings to maybe 9 every 4 - 6 weeks as then you will have a continuous supply as opposed to a glut. Our restaurant loves our vegetables in large quantities though so no problem there!

Polyculture: Courgettes, basil, marigolds, tomatoes.

Squash under corn et al

Polyculture: corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, marigolds, nasturtiums, cucumber.

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