What's growing this week in the kitchen garden and what's not

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the channel.

[00:00:03]Well, this week in the garden, it looks like it's starting to turn a corner.

[00:00:09]All the hard work that has been put in so far is starting to pay off.

[00:00:14]Not everything in the garden is rosy, however. Uh some things have not gone to plan.

[00:00:20]But let me take you around and show you the good and the bad, and you can see what the garden is like in the second week in May.

[00:00:28]Down this side of the fence are the buckets that I grow potatoes in.

[00:00:34]And it forms a potato hedge as the plants come up and start to get, you know, really bushy on top.

[00:00:42]And whilst the ones further down here, which are the main crops and the second earlies, haven't come through yet, the first earlies actually have started to pop their heads up.

[00:00:56]And down here you can see two pots that have got very well established, actually, plants.

[00:01:02]These are Duke of York, which are first earlies.

[00:01:08]I also have some first earlies in a bed, and I'll show you how that's looking as well.

[00:01:15]So, here we have it. It's a a raised metal bed, and I put 10 seed potatoes in here. Again, it's Duke of York, first early.

[00:01:21]And as you can see, they're looking mighty healthy.

[00:01:27]Down the side of the path here, there are four circular metal raised beds. And I've already planted these up, mostly with this year's seedlings.

[00:01:38]And they're really starting to fill out the beds now. There's the odd one like, uh this geranium I bought in, but we've got in this bed, we've got nicotiana, we've got poppies, we've got snapdragons.

[00:01:53]And we've even got a cosmos here, and you can see the cosmoses uh starting to put out flower buds.

[00:02:01]On this one we do have a a daisy that was grown from seed last year and I have great success with these. So, this will probably get be the only year it stays in this metal raised bed and then it will be moved.

[00:02:14]But again, I've got cosmos and poppies and snapdragons and nicotiana in there also. And it's starting to fill out as you can see and if I just come down like this, you can see the height. We're starting to get some height with some of the plants as well.

[00:02:34]This one has got an astrantia in it which is a perennial and it's it lives in this raised bed but the rest are again the mixture of nicotiana, snapdragons, cosmos, poppies and there's a little botan geranium as well.

[00:02:50]And similarly with this bed here. So, I'm really pleased with the progress of the plants in these beds. There's still some space and I'll be popping in some calendula and some marigolds when they're when they're ready.

[00:03:05]And yeah, we'll see how that goes but usually we get a fantastic show, really bright flowers that lead you up the garden.

[00:03:16]I moved these four raspberry canes from a bed that was alongside the polytunnel because I didn't want the raspberries when they were sort of growing up, whipping around and damaging the plastic in the polytunnel. So, you can see that they're starting to grow again this year. Some of these are summer fruiting and summer autumn fruiting so I won't necessarily get fruit on them all this year because I cut them all down.

[00:03:40]But they're coming on nicely. I've actually got them some other raspberry canes in another bed and they're doing the same.

[00:03:47]Now here in the polytunnel things are mostly going rather well.

[00:03:52]And where the cucumbers concerned here, this is telegraph. It's now in the bed and growing up its string.

[00:04:02]And we've got a pepper here that is purple beauty.

[00:04:05]A sweet pepper and it is growing well and in fact you'll see we've got a little fruit now on that. So our first sweet pepper fruit. I have been madly picking off the flowers until a week or so ago.

[00:04:20]And you know I'm just leaving it to it.

[00:04:23]Now from tomato tomato perspective some of them are looking really nice.

[00:04:28]You can see there's a a few here in pots at the moment just letting them grow on a little bit.

[00:04:34]But I've had a bit of a nightmare with some of the tomatoes.

[00:04:38]Let me show you.

[00:04:40]This one here is San Marzano and it's it was sown ages ago and it's taken such a long time to take off.

[00:04:47]It was a sickly little thing. I've potted it on in to hope in the hope that it's going to start growing.

[00:04:55]And also the Nagina, I think it's called here looking really a bit sickly as well.

[00:05:05]And these should be growing up big and strong.

[00:05:09]I'm putting it down to initially I had them growing in that rocket grow compost. I'm never going to use that again.

[00:05:15]And I just think they never really got a good start because of it.

[00:05:19]However, as I said, uh we do have some good successes with our tomatoes and look here.

[00:05:27]This is Mongolian dwarf.

[00:05:31]And look at that. It's a little dwarf tomato.

[00:05:34]And I've just noticed there's tons of fruit on it. Tons of fruit on it. Oh my goodness.

[00:05:40]It's only about 30 cm tall if that.

[00:05:45]Uh but as you can see it's quite happy out here. Yay!

[00:05:50]And up here in this hanging basket, I have got some orange tumbling Tom orange.

[00:05:56]And you can see here, I also have some fruit forming.

[00:06:01]So, that's exciting. In fact, here's another one here just coming round.

[00:06:05]Yay!

[00:06:07]While I'm in the polytunnel, I'll show you this field.

[00:06:10]This is sweet corn. I can't even remember.

[00:06:13]Incredible.

[00:06:15]No Earli bird F1.

[00:06:17]And uh, you can see I have got exactly two germinated. And this is the this rocket grow compost that uh, I've had real difficulties with. Every single one of those cells had a sweet corn kernel in it, and I got two germinated, and this was new seed.

[00:06:37]So, looks like I'm not going to have any sweet corn this year unless I happen upon some uh, at a garden center.

[00:06:44]At a garden center near me soon, but um, it may just be that I decide to know it's not worth it this year. I really wanted to grow some sweet corn myself again after having such a good crop last year, but yeah.

[00:06:58]Darn.

[00:07:01]So, in general, I'm really pleased with how things are coming along in the garden.

[00:07:05]But, it doesn't you know, it doesn't stop. There's always things to do. And in this garden, there's always additional parts of the garden to reclaim. Uh, I got this raised bed at Christmas. I got another one as well.

[00:07:17]They're a flat pack. So, I've built one up so far. No.

[00:07:21]Um, and I've started to fill it. I layered it with co- um, bedding from the chicken run, then some lawn clippings, and then some lovely compost, and it's just a little bit more compost or top soil to top soil to go on top, and this will be ready to plant into. I think this one I'm going to have some onions and uh leeks planted into.

[00:07:47]And I've not been alone when it's when it comes to preparing beds.

[00:07:53]I do have the lovely uh chickens who are my ground maintenance crew. And anytime that I have a bed that I'm wanting to get ready to plant into and that has no longer get anything in of worth, I'll open it up and let the chickens go in and they have a great scratch about to um they have a good root around to to find um pi- to find pests and so on or to their to them it's lovely snacks.

[00:08:20]And uh they'll also rip up weeds and so on and just generally aerate the soil a bit. So, they really, really help where it comes to bed preparation.

[00:08:30]The challenge though is to keep them out once you've planted up. So, there are various techniques I use. As you have seen if you have seen my videos in the past, this bed I'm going to net up because it will be an allium bed and we want to keep allium leaf miner out. But, other beds I I use other techniques to keep the chickens out if it looks like they're going to be jumping in and >> [music] >> ransacking the crops.

[00:08:55]The first of this year's cosmos plants has given us a flower. Isn't that lovely?

[00:09:01]And another one of the cosmos is giving us even more.

[00:09:06]Fantastic.

[00:09:07]And look at them mixed in with these pink tulips.

[00:09:12]Isn't it gorgeous?

[00:09:15]So, there you have it. Nothing's feeling abundant yet, but everything is definitely moving in the right direction.

[00:09:22]And I'll learn from my mistakes where the failures are concerned.

[00:09:26]And you know, that's all you can do.

[00:09:29]I'd love to hear how your garden is in this second week in May and the successes and failures that you're experiencing at this point in the season.

[00:09:39]For now though, I'll call a halt. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you have, please give me a thumbs up and I'll talk to you again very, very soon. Bye-bye for now.