Cabbages, lettuces, leeks and flowers

Last week was a kimchi week, with about 10 cabbages all ready at once;  the variety is Dutchman (an F1) which I bought last year in the £1 sale, and I grew them at both the allotment and home.  They are a lovely, quick growing sweetheart type--most of them no more than 3# in weight (a few smaller, one actually much bigger).  I've made somewhere in the vicinity of 10 L of kimchi.  I'm not out of cabbage yet, and I'm also not quite out of big jars--but I've got no room in the fridge and the kitchen counter is also pretty full.  I eat kimchi pretty much every day with my eggs and bacon at breakfast, and sometimes with lunch or dinner too;  I'm not worried about having too much as it will keep for several months or longer--but I may need to rethink my food storage space.

I've now picked most of the lettuces and cabbages (to the left), June 2025

Actually I was going to sow even more cabbage seed last week in the hopes of a second harvest but it turns out I don't have any more.  I have four small Savoy seedlings which I've planted them in the gaps in the bed above where the lettuces and cabbages have gone;  however one has seemingly expired from the heat/dry and the other three don't look very promising either--it was old seed and not many sprouted.  I will turn instead to pak choi, which I definitely have seed for;  however, it too doesn't like hot dry conditions so I will probably wait at least another week to sow (it did finally rain again on Sunday but we're forecast another heatwave this week).

I finally got to the end of the first batch of butterhead lettuces, but have planted out another batch, seen below with leeks.  It's actually kind of amazing how fast it has grown;  I protected it with those wire trays at first but the lettuces outgrew them and the birds started pecking the leaves poking out;  I've now put up some bird netting and canes and it is looking a lot less tattered.  There is still some curly oakleaf lettuce about--and I've just pricked out the newest batch of these into a tray, for hopefully planting out at the end of the month.

These Lyon leeks have grown since this picture, as have the lettuces (under the wire, front left), June 2025

When I planted out the leeks, their tray had some unexpected calendula in it so I just planted them all out together.  This bed borders my patio and also has some wallflowers at the front of it, to flower next spring;  I grew a few other flowers from seed this spring, including:  zinnia and French marigold, lupin, echinacea, verbena, aquilegia and perennial sweet pea.  Most of these have already been planted out in the wider garden but I wanted the wallflowers close to the house so we could still enjoy them from the kitchen (when it's too miserable to go out);  the rest of my new flowers bloom in later spring/summer.