Act now to keep your veg beds productive

Act now to keep your veg beds productive and prevent the notorious midsummer lull, when suddenly your early harvests finish with nothing to follow. It’s easy to get carried away with the excitement of your first harvest as you dig up your first succulent new potatoes or pick the first fat broad bean pods to eat as fresh and tender as possible.

But unless you're careful, after you've eaten your way through the harvest you'll be left with an empty patch - wasted space that could be growing more crops. Think one step ahead, though, and you can fill that gap with ready-grown plants to take up the baton and keep you picking right through summer.

Stock up on veg plug plants, now available in our garden centre at Co. Limerick, to drop in to gaps as they open up. And stagger sowings of peas, French beans and beetroot, putting in a new row every time you start picking one so you have one row to pick, one row growing and one row just sown.

Even in August you can re-stock your beds: spring cabbage, turnip greens and Chinese leaf are great gap-fillers and keep your garden at full steam from one end of the year to the other.