Published: 2 June 2026 - Watch on YouTube
Hello and welcome back. It was a cloudy Friday evening when I filmed this, gone six o'clock already, after a couple of overcast days that followed several days of extreme heat. We had a little rain the night before, and since then it has stayed grey. The plan for the evening was a happy one though, getting my tomatoes and cucumbers into the ground at last, with one small zucchini and an attempt at the beans arch if the light held.
My raised bed is a little bit wonky, which means anything that sits on top of it ends up wonky by extension. My husband managed to find a trellis that fits it perfectly, so I painted it the same colour as the bed and he helped me put it up. I secured it myself and I am hoping that is enough. If not, I can always add more later.
This trellis is the support the tomatoes will be tied up to. It was one of those evenings where I could potter about for a while before the light went, which is exactly the sort of time in the garden I love as we come towards summer.
I had ten tomato plants laid out ready for the border, mostly cherry tomatoes with two beefsteaks at the end, which are my favourite. Those ten went straight into the ground in the middle of the bed. I have another ten that I am potting up into big black pots instead. They will end up in the greenhouse eventually, but for now I am keeping them outside so they can grow on a little, and because we are going away for a couple of weeks. My husband will connect the outdoor plants to the watering system so nothing dies while we are gone, whereas the greenhouse would be a risk.
The potted ones are a real mix of varieties. Two are Bosman, and then I have three Ożarowski, which is a Polish variety I have not grown before, with a different leaf to a standard tomato. There are also three Warszawski, or Warsaw, which has a similar leaf shape and density. Because they are in pots and more limited for nutrients, I give them more feed. My only problem was compost, with just a bag and a half left, so I had to be frugal and give each one about three handfuls to get them going, then top up later.
At the edge of the border I planted my cucumbers. These are Merlin, a long variety that is lovely and sweet, perfect for salads or sliced into sandwiches. I grew them from seed but sowed them quite late, because I did not realise I had run out of seeds, and by the time I looked I could not find Merlin anywhere. In a bit of a panic I bought a pack of two seedlings from the garden centre called Femspot, a variety I did not know but which sounds similar from the description. I planted the Merlins at one end of the trellis and the Femspot pair at the other, so they can all be tied up and grow.
To make the most of the space, I tucked one small zucchini into the corner. It is a yellow variety, I think the name is Soleil. It is teeny tiny at the moment, so fingers crossed the slugs do not demolish it.
For crops like tomatoes and cucumbers I use chicken pellets and worm castings, mixed in with the soil. Cucumbers do not want to be planted deep, the level of the pot is deep enough for them. Tomatoes are the opposite and I plant them deeper when I can, though the plants I had were doing well enough that I left them at their pot level rather than stripping leaves.
I have also changed how I support the tomatoes this year. Normally people attach the string under the root ball before planting, then twist it up the stem. I use jute twine because it is organic and decomposes, but that is exactly the problem, the part in the ground rots and snaps, usually just when the plant is tall and heavy with fruit. I do not want to use plastic string. So this year I plan to attach the twine a bit later, wrapped around the lower stem above the ground and above where the water lands. I will fit it once the plants are a little bigger, unless they start flopping around before then.
My broad beans were looking very sad and were already badly infested with black fly. I have grown broad beans successfully in this small space before, but this year I planted them out too soon, so they grew big and were as tall as me by late May, when I would normally be pinching out the tops. With my other crops going in nearby, I did not want the black fly and aphids spreading to everything else.
In the end I pulled them out. I left the roots in the ground because beans fix nitrogen into the soil, so they can decompose there and do some good. In their place I planted a Small Sugar pumpkin right in the middle with plenty of fertiliser. A couple of years ago I grew a small pumpkin here and trained it along the blue picket fence, and it gave me two pumpkins hanging off it, so I have hopes. The infested foliage went straight to the compost bin, black fly and all.
The arch at the back is for climbing beans, though my sowings were a disappointment. Only about four really came to anything, as most of the pots rotted, probably from me overwatering during a cold spell. That is fine, I will sow more beans directly into the ground once the arch is put together. In front of the trellis I will put salads, which I bought as plants because I have never once managed to grow salad from seed, it either refuses to germinate or bolts straight away. The garden centre had a buy three pay for two offer, so I also picked up some parsnip, which I love, even though I have already sown some at the allotment.
The pumpkins and squashes are only sitting in the kitchen garden until they can go to the allotment, as there is no room for them here. I have a Big Max pumpkin, some Small Sugar, and Sunburst squash. I have started a little experiment at the allotment too. I bought a lot of fresh horse manure from a local farm and I have been warned that if the horses ate feed treated with weed killer it can affect big leaf crops until the manure has properly rotted down. So I am planting some spare pumpkin, squash and cucumber seedlings straight into the fresh manure, alongside others in fresh compost, to see what survives. It is the only way I will find out whether I can use it freely rather than waiting a year or more.
I dotted some marigolds in between the tomatoes to give the slugs something else to nibble on and distract them from my crops. I will admit I cheated and bought these from The Range, which sells them cheapest, because I completely forgot to sow my marigolds this year. I did sow plenty of other flowers though, and I have been pricking them out. There is phlox that germinated, cherry caramel came up but blushing bride did not, one echinacea, lots of rustic dwarf Rudbeckia, cosmos in apricot lemonade and peppermint rock, sunflowers, dwarf beans for the allotment and all of the dahlias.
And of course there were slugs. I do catapult mine off to a different dimension when I find them, though for the record I am not lobbing them into anyone else's garden. There is a school field on the other side, so they can go and live happily there instead.
By the time the tomatoes were all in, the light was turning grey and the sun had dropped, so I called it a day there with the arch and the beans left for another evening. Once those are done, the kitchen garden here is more or less finished for the season. I would love to know if you have your tomatoes planted out or potted up yet, which varieties you are growing, and what you put in the soil when you plant them. I use chicken pellets and worm castings, then a liquid tomato feed, but I am still learning and always curious to hear what works for you. Thank you so much for spending the evening with me, and I will see you in the next one.
Tags: #KitchenGarden #GrowYourOwn #PlantingTomatoes #GrowingCucumbers #WestSussex #MyWindyGarden