Harvest time in the September garden

I hope some of you have more to harvest than I have !  Lots of poor performances this year,  some things never caught up after the slow start.  Still, I took a trip to the allotment tonight to collect some sweetcorn, which is no bumper harvest, but tastes good none the less.  Still plenty of beans - looks like my Italian ones will come good before winter kills them, and the Cobras are still producing something.  A couple of big pumpkins on for halloween.

I need to start tidying sometime.  Strawberries need cutting back, and I need to tidy up the paths with the rest of my woodchip pile to make space for a manure delivery.  I'd like to get it on before winter as a layer on top - it seems to make the digging easier in spring.

Lots of cayenne chillies ... still waiting for ripe Red Savinas ...

My Italian beans are coming on a treat, despite my earlier concerns. The plants are vigorous, and seem to be sending out shoots to the other wigwams, so I think there will be plenty. I looked the variety up and apparently they are much prized by chefs for their flavour!

My plans to grow climbing French beans in the greenhouse have had a slight hitch. The beans have been sitting outside in their pots, growing nicely up their cane and twine supports in the late summer sunshine. That was until I tripped and fell headlong against them, leaving a bit of a mess!! I was a bit bloodied and bruised but OK - the beans are not in such a good condition. However there are enough there for me to give a report on how they get on into the winter months - the plants which I managed to snap in half seem to be rallying,so hopefully they will forgive me and produce some beans. (By then we will have got over our bean glut, and will be pleased not to be eating frozen peas!!)

I hope you're not to bruised and battered Dandelion.
I'm doing ok in the garden but mainly because I've relied on the polytunnel for the less hardy stuff. My Mr Fearns and purple teepee are doing brilliantly and I've got a good crop of cabbages, though not winter hardy. I'm a bit perturbed by the slowness of the brussell sprouts, nothing much happening there. I've just started picking some Victoria plums, it's a good crop this year but the wasps have started sweet feeding so I have been picking up the windfalls and baiting the compost heap with some to draw their attention away from the tree.

I'm fine thanks Ploshkin - I have have a technicolour knee, but no stiffness which is good!
Brussell sprouts here have got tiny pea sized sprouts on - I did start them off a bit early, and was worried that I might have sprouts in hot weather when no-one wanted to eat them, but it's OK. It's not a crop I grow usually because they're a bit of a pain to protect from the cabbage whites, being so tall, but I took a packet of sprout seeds from the seed swap pack and thought I'd give them another go.
Your polytunnel sounds very productive Ploshkin!

Oh dear DL. Hope it returns to normal quickly.

My Italian beans are now producing quite well; their lateness is perhaps a virtue because the purple teepees have just finished and the Cobra are slowing down; hopefully these will give me continuity for a little while longer.

Still only have ripe cayenne and ohnivec chillies, though the Mexican varieties are starting to turn.

It really is harvest time in the polytunnel. I've got 27 squashes of 2 varieties. The same 2 plants in the garden produced 2 small ones of one variety so I might as well give up trying to grow them in the garden. I've had a couple of sweet peppers,there are a good number nearly ripe and they are about tennis ball size. The later ones didn't suffer from the mysterious hole borer. I've got loads of green and red chillies (Palivec) and I have been using them a lot. I've just picked 3lbs of Italian plum tomatoes - I'm using them for passata. Though they aren't actually paste tomatoes they don't have to many seeds. I found the Seeds of Italy site a bit confusing and ended up not ordering what I had intended to.
I've also been seed sowing in the tunnel. A bit late but I realised that I should have had some seedlings ready for when the sweetcorn and squashes came out but I hadn't started anything. I've sown winter lettuce, pak choi, turnips and spinach beet. Oh and I'm still picking strawberries.

My polytunnel envy carries on growing ... I have about 6 squashes, and I'm going to need an indian summer for them to all ripen, I think.

I cleared out my strawberry bed yesterday, because Monty Don told me to on Gardners world. I've potted up a few runners; if they do well I plan to bring them into the greenhouse to force them along in spring. Never tried that before.

Chilli-head wrote:
I cleared out my strawberry bed yesterday, because Monty Don told me to on Gardners world.  

Ha ha - me too!! I didn't think of potting up runners: that would have been a good idea. The strawberry plants looked very bare and miserable afterwards, but with a bit of rain at the weekend and a couple of days to recover they are producing new leaves and looking much better already.

Well, this isn't harvesting but more growing. The Mr Fearns climbing french beans I planted in pots (then fell over!) seem to be happy in the greenhouse - the beans are starting to form, but unfortunately the aphids have got in on the act, and the plants are becoming smothered. (Note to self - check for aphids earlier next time...) The good thing is that last Christmas, one of my daughters bought me some hand-made soap which she had got at a Christmas market. The soap went gooey quite quickly, and fell apart in the soap dish, but has made some very gloopy soft soap spray. Hopefully this will sort the little pests out!

Aphids have been quite bad this year, presumably because of the mild winter. Here's hoping for a cold period this year (only gardeners and winter sports fans would say that, I guess !)

My tomatoes have ended fairly early this year - I cleared out half of the plants on Sunday and moved the peppers which I had in a sunny spot outdoors into the greenhouse space freed up, in the hope of getting some late fruits on them.

I harvested some bonus coriander seed; I didn't sow any this year, but this must have been self-set. It produced both leaves and enough seed to make and a batch of Afelia (Cypriot pork dish, see here)