JUNE NEWSLETTER

Ways we can meet up this summer, extra recipe videos, significant birthday plans, and how to holiday from your harvests.

Jun 14, 2024

Welcome to my monthly newsletter - a round-up of news, recipes and life in the veg patch - which is free to all subscribers. If you’ve made it here without subscribing, that’s easily rectified:

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Hello you lovely lot.

It’s a jungle out there isn’t it? The plants in the veg patch are now growing almost as fast as the weeds and I’ve begun to harvest lettuce, radishes, pea shoots, rhubarb, copious armfuls of herbs and there’s even a baby courgette I’ve got on Marrow Watch.

So let’s tuck in.

(TECHNICAL NOTE: There are a LOT of recipes here and they might not all fit in your email. If so, just hit VIEW ENTIRE MESSAGE at the end of the email, or head to the app or online version.)

Rock Oyster Festival, Cornwall

’ll be back hosting ‘The Pearl’ chef demo stage and trying not to fan girl the likes of Matt Tebbutt, Emily Scott and many more. I’ll also be taking a ‘Grow Your Own Kitchen Garden’ cookery class - do come.

Book Rock Oyster

Seasonal Sundays at Fortnums

I hope this little video gives you a taster of what these classes are like. If you missed me whanging on about these (which would have taken effort), these are Sunday classes where I take guests shopping the food hall at F&M whilst the shop is still closed to buy a hamper of seasonal goodies, and then we go and cook lunch together with the bounty. Can you tell from my enormous grin how much I enjoy it? Next one is Sunday 21st July and costs £45. Hope you can come.

Book 12th July

And if you can’t make it, here are two recipe videos so you can still enjoy some of what we’ve cooked in previous classes:

A significant birthday

Tales From the Veg Patch turns one next month. That’s 80 (eighty!) posts, which is certainly something to celebrate so I’m planning lots of tasty treats and extras for you. Including:

Recipes coming up over the next few weeks

PSA: how to holiday from your vegetables

Now, it’s the time of year when I remind you all that it is possible to leave your patch unattended while you go on holiday without returning to chaos, but it takes some preparation. A reminder of my 5 tips:

Water. Water. Water. For very thirsty plants like courgettes, I sink an upended 2ltr plastic bottle, from which I have removed the base, into the soil around the roots. I then fill that with water on the day I leave so it can gradually soak into the roots in my absence.
Weed. I’m certain weeds grow faster when you aren’t looking at them, and I guarantee that a tiny single-leafed weed will turn into a triffid during the week you are away, shading your newly germinated carrots to the point they die from lack of sunlight. So have a really thorough weed before you go.
Feed. sprinkle a few handfuls of chicken manure pellets over the beds so the plants are freshly fed before you go. I also feed hungry veg like tomatoes with Maxicrop seaweed liquid feed the day before I go too. Like a nervous cyclist sucking an energy gel before a long stint alone on the open road. Which, I like to imagine, is how the tomatoes feel without me.
Tie, stake and generally tuck in. Don’t leave tendrals or new growth of green beans, sweet peas, climbing squash etc flailing about - it’s likely to damage them. Also, I think they like the attention and are more likely to behave when you leave them if they feel loved now.
Enlist help. If you have a greenfingered neighbour ask them to pop by to water and offer them harvests in return. Though take care: I know someone who asked a pal to drop in to check on their dahlia pots and perhaps water them, only to return and find their lawn had been scalped. On questioning, the overenthusiastic friend said they ‘thought it was looking a bit long, so they got the mower out and hadn’t it saved them a job now that they were home?’ If that’s not a lesson to us all about our choice of friends then I don’t know what is.