Mimulus, Petunias, and the Great Beetroot Emergency of Last Night

Right then. Picture the scene. It's last night, tea's nearly ready, and Sara turns round from the hob with that particular look on her face — the one that means a question is coming and I am not going to like the answer.

"Have we got any beetroot?"

Now, I want you to understand something about me. I am a man who grows beetroot with something close to devotion. I sow it, I thin it, I fuss over it, I talk to it more than is probably healthy. So you'd think the answer to "have we got any beetroot" would be an easy, confident yes. Instead I did that thing where you open the freezer door and stare into it as if eye contact alone might summon beetroot into existence. It did not. We had peas. We had a mystery bag of something from 2025 that nobody dared open. We did not, in that precise moment, have beetroot.

Crisis narrowly avoided, because right at the back, behind the mystery bag, I found a bag of last year's beetroot that I'd cooked, cooled and frozen whole. Defrosted it overnight, and this morning, before I'd even had my second cup of tea, I had a jar of pickled beetroot on the go. More on that in a minute, because I know some of you come here specifically for the jars.

First though — a bit of garden joy, because the flowers up the plot have been showing off this week and I'd be doing them a disservice not to mention it.

The mimulus has gone an absolutely glorious yellow, the sort of yellow that makes you stop halfway down the path with a barrow full of weeds and just look at it for a bit. Mimulus, or monkey flower as some call it (apparently the bloom looks like a little grinning face if you squint — I'll let you decide), is a damp-loving, cheerful little plant that doesn't ask for much. It likes moist soil, doesn't mind a bit of shade, and will happily self-seed and pop up somewhere new the following year, usually somewhere you didn't plan, which I've come to quite enjoy. They come in shades of yellow, orange and red, often with little speckled throats, and they flower their hearts out right through summer if you keep them watered. Lovely along the edge of a bed or near anything boggy that nothing else fancies growing in.

The petunias, meanwhile, are doing their usual trick of looking better every single day, which is more than I can say for me. They're another firm favourite of mine — full, trumpet-shaped flowers in every colour you can think of, and they'll flower non-stop from early summer right into autumn if you keep deadheading the spent blooms and give them a feed every couple of weeks. They're not fussy about much beyond a sunny spot and decent drainage, which makes them a brilliant choice for pots, baskets, and the front of a border where you want something reliable doing the heavy lifting colour-wise. Ours are tumbling out of an old tin bath by the shed and genuinely stop people in their tracks.

Right, the beetroot. Once it had defrosted and I'd sliced it up, I made a simple sweet pickling vinegar: white or cider vinegar, a good few spoonfuls of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a few peppercorns, warmed through gently in a pan until the sugar's dissolved — never let it boil away to nothing, you just want it dissolved and fragrant. Pack the beetroot into a clean jar, pour the warm vinegar over until it's fully covered, pop the lid on once cooled, and into the fridge it goes. Ready to eat within a day, better after a few.

So there we are. A jar on the go, the flowers showing off, and crisis avoided thanks to last year's foresight .  Who else is a beetroot fan? Boiled, pickled, roasted, grated raw into a salad, I genuinely don't mind which. How do you all like yours?