Now is the time to help some of your vegetable crops with pollination.

Quite a lot of veg crops are self fertile because they possess flowers that contain both male and female reproductive structures (stamen and pistil- which consists of the style and the stigma) and are capable of transferring pollen from the stamen to the pistil within the same flower. Most peas and beans are self fertile and the fruits set easily.

Some plants have evolved complicated mechanisms to avoid self pollination and therefore improve genetic diversity. Two common vegetable plants that can be described botanically as ‘monoecious’ display this principle. A monoecious plant will possess separate male and female flowers, this helps to avoid self pollination. Courgettes, cucumbers and squash are all monoecious and it is easy to spot the female flowers as they are the ones attached to the ovary (the young courgette, cucumber or squash), the male flowers are simply attached to a stalk, they are only open for one day and rely on insect pollination but if the weather is very wet or windy this may not happen. You can help out by picking off a male flower, peeing back the petals to reveal the stamen in the centre and rubbing some of the pollen off onto the stigma in the centre of the female flower. This should improve fruit set (the fruit

will wither and drop off if pollination doesn’t take place).

Sweetcorn are also monoecious, but these plants are wind pollinated and this is why it is recommended that you plat them in blocks rather than rows so that pollen is more likely to be blown onto a nearby female ‘flower’. Again, the females are easy to spot as they grow out of the top of the young corn cob, they resemble lots of hairy green blades of grass sticking out – these are the stigma – each one needs to encounter a pollen grain if the little yellow corn kernel is to develop. Poor pollination is common in sweetcorn and the reason for the cobs not developing properly. If wind is too strong, or non existant then pollination can be very poor. When the male flowers open up on your plants and the green stigma are visible go and give each plant a little shake – you should be able to see the pollen falling down onto the female flowers.

Sweetcorn grown in blocks

Sweetcorn – female flowers

Sweetcorn – male flowers

These methods should give you a better crop of each.

If you have plenty of male courgette flowers – why not try stuffed courgette flower fritters – take fresh male flowers in the morning and keep then chilled. Stuff with a mix of rice, herbs and spices, sautéed onions, mushrooms, chunks of feta cheese, pine nuts.. in fact anything that you fancy…. dip into tempura batter and fry. YUM, serve with a salsa or tzatziki dip.

Stuffing mix

Dip in tempura batter

Fry until golden

If you are growing cordon, espalier, fan trained or other ‘restricted’ forms of fruit trees on dwarfing rootstocks, now is the time for summer pruning. In France we can start this process a little earlier than in England which is usually late July. The ideal time is when the lateral shoots that have grown all along the main stems are roughly as thick and as long as a pencil.

You need to cut all of these new stems back to a couple of buds, this will keep the shape of the tree restricted and in form, it will also reveal the fruits and main branches which will allow sunshine to ripen the fruits, making them sweeter, tastier and give them a red

bloom. It will also allow sunshine to ripen the wood of the main branches and spurs which helps to strengthen the wood, prepare for dormancy and induce bud formation for next years flowers and fruits.

We will be holding a demonstration at Le Jardin Creatif on Saturday 30th June at 11.00am FREE. Come along on Saturday and find out more.

Now is the time to pickle some walnuts! If you have never tried pickled walnuts before then you may not appreciate the subtle flavour combination of pickled walnuts with a good cheese, traditionally eaten at Christmas time but an excellent pairing at any time of the year.

Pickled walnuts do not look attractive as they turn a deep brown colour as they mature, and resemble sliced brains….. but dont let this put you off!

Walnuts are pickled whole in their outer husk before the inner shell starts to harden. They should be picked before they reach full maturity and should be around the size of a quails egg or slightly larger, this is usually around mid-June, to determine the best time for pickling you need to pick one off the tree and cut it in half, if the shell is still soft and they are a reasonable size then they are ready for pickling. You dont need many to fill a jar, maybe around 10 to a dozen per jar. There are plenty on the trees this year so you won’t miss them at harvest time.

You then need to prick them several times each with a sharp knife or fork and drop them straight into a brine mixture, avoid getting any juice on your hands or clothing because it stains a dark brown very quickly. They will need to stay in brine for two to three weeks depending on their size, change the brine each week (you can make brine easily by dissolving salt in cold water).

After the brining period they are ready to pickle. You should rinse them first and then leave them to oxidise for a few hours so that they go an even brown colour all over (they will start to brown in patches during the brining process). Then pack into jars and cover with hot vinegar – you can use red wine, white wine or cider vinegar that has been heated with a few pickling spices such as star anise, allspice and peppercorns and a desert spoon of sugar to reduce the acidity slightly.

They need to be stored for a few months before eating, ideally until Christmas!

Serve with cheese and port.

Grape vines are vigorous and prolific and can quickly get out of hand but training them is straight forward and getting the best out of the fruits is simple but it does take a little maintenance.

All over France you will see neat vineyards and immaculately trained vines, on a large scale this is usually done using specialist machinery but we can adapt the principles to pruning your vines on a domestic scale.

Grown against a wall, the usual method is similar to the ‘Geneva Double curtain’, this system consists of permanent main stems or ‘rods’ trained in the shape of a capital ‘T’. If you are planting a new vine, this is easy to achieve, simply pinching the top out when it reaches the height that you want it and then allowing two stems to grow from this, training them in horizontally as wide as you want them to go. This may take the first growing season to achieve. In the second year you will find that many new stems appear from all along the horizontal top of the ‘T’ (you may also get some up the vertical). Look carefully at these stems around early June and you will be able to see the tiny bunches of flowers which will become the grapes. If you want ‘dessert’ grapes for eating, you want to encourage them to grow as big as possible, so only allow one bunch per stem. Cut off the rest of the stem including any additional bunches of grapes one bud beyond the bunch that you are keeping, this may seem harsh

but it will channel all of the energy into one bunch, making them bigger and better quality and they will ripen better with more sunlight getting to them. If you are growing for wine then you can allow two bunches to form on each stem, the grapes will be smaller but with a more intense flavour. (see video below). The ‘Double Guyot’ System is more suitable for vines grown in rows in the field, look out for further information in a future post!

After harvesting in the late summer you can then cut back each stem to one bud, keeping the T shaped main rod in place. You will get regrowth the following year from each of the buds along these main stems. Grapes grow on ‘new wood’ i.e. the newly developing stems each year so you can keep them neatly trained in and if you need to renovate them you can cut them hard back and still get grapes in the current year. Major pruning should be done between harvesting and Christmas time because the vines will bleed heavily once the sap starts to rise in late winter.