What are you harvesting today?

Yay - tomatoes!! Well done FB!
Mine are still green, but should ripen in a week or two.
It's that time of year when things are just starting, and I'm coming in from the garden with a handful of fruit (so it's muesli for breakfast, or fruit salad for tea) or a handful of peas to cook with something else. I did find some more ripe peas today, but as there were only two decent pods, I ate them without even taking them inside!!

My tomatoes are a way off yet but they're looking promising. We're still eating fabulous strawberries and I am inundated with courgettes and cucumbers - I only have one plant of each. I've finished the mage tout and broad beans from the tunnel and just picked the first French beans. It will be a very long wait for any crop outdoors, growth is extremely sluggish but we've only had a couple of nights over 10°.

My tomatoes are badly affected by blossom end rot. I think it is probably down to the high temperature fluctuations of the greenhouse. All the advice says"erratic waterig" but this can't be true, even with the monotonous reguarity of computer controlled watering I still had a problem. Plum tomatoes Super Mama are especially useless, I may as we compost the plants now to make space for something else. Nothing nearly ripe yet.

Broad beans have given a good yield, and are finished now. Onions were useless - the allium leaf miner got to them early (they were overwintered) and the sets were tiny and poor quality to begin with. The garlic is harvested ad drying in the sun, I sowed autum crops in the space created yesterday - chinese greens and fennel.

Sweetcorn is looking prettyhappy at themoent.

I've picked a few green tomatoes with blossom end rot off the Buissonante, which I planted much earlier than the others I'm growing - I'm assuming it might be because of the weird 'winter - summer - winter' conditions they've had to endure. I also discovered (because I actually read the label for once...) that Tomorite has to be used every alternate watering in the greenhouse - I had assumed that it was once a week like the last tomato feed I used. So maybe my plants have been a bit undernourished (they are in pots rather than in the border). It's certainly a problem I get every year but rarely bad enough to lead to me pulling up the plants

If I get blossom end rot I always find it is confined to one or two varieties out of the 5 or 6 I grow. So I think certain varieties must be more susceptible. Touch wood, I haven't seen any this year so far.

Yesterday I harvested my first new carrots from the polytunnel (Amsterdam Forcing). We had them with polytunnel grown new potatoes, French beans and mangetout and home reared mutton chops. It was followed up with gooseberry crumble using my harvest of 52 gooseberries off 2 cordons. That was better than my last year's pick of 5 or 6!

After a quick trawl around the garden I have enough fruit to decorate a tiny mousse, or make our breakfast cereal tomorrow look like the picture on the packet

Early potatoes are looking good - this is from one plant: there were three and a half pounds. They're not exactly what you would call baby potatoes, but I'm very pleased. I dug some up last week and gave them to my daughter - my grand daughter's estimation was that they were 'A bit nice and a bit horrid' but she's not really a vegetable person!!

Lots of sugar snaps here. As the greenhouse crop is finishing, the outside crop is just starting. Strawberries going strong, although mostly pretty small, and raspberries just getting going.
Ate home grown salad leaves and spring onions today too.

Raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, loganberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, spring onions and we are awash with sugar snaps. I love this time of year in the garden.

Oh, and a superb crop of garlic.

Sounds good Freebird. I had my first tomatoes today - good old reliable Sungold though I will say that toms are looking very promising this year which I'm pleased about after a pretty rubbish crop last year.

My Sungold are nowhere near being edible. The only variety performing at the moment is Gardeners Delight.

I had the odd tomato - first black brandywine, and as so often with the big tomatoes, the first one is a bit of a mutant.

Spring onions, carrots, baby beets, new potatoes, blackcurrants ready now. And a few sprigs of samphire !

Haven't got much in but have picked one small yellow courgette, quite a few on the way, and a few broad beans which seem to be taking ages to produce anything. Rhubarb is rampant but will stop picking very soon.

I have joined the local community orchard as a volunteer and hope to enjoy some of the fruit later on. I'm also hoping there might be a smallish stray branch from an apple tree as my parrot is in need of a new 'toy' in her cage.

Cucumbers!
I only grow the small ones and I'm cutting 3 or 4 most days despite keep picking off a lot of tiny ones to try and keep numbers down. I only have one ( very healthy) plant.

Currently enjoying lettuce, spring onions and sugar snaps from the raised bed; raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, red gooseberries and blackcurrant from the fruit cage; tomatoes (gardeners delight, Sungold at last and a single ailsa craig) and cucumbers from the greenhouse.

I have spied tiny French beans developing. Courgettes are painfully slow to get going, though I could pick a yellow one - was waiting for it to get a bit bigger.

Gosh, Freebird you're doing well. My courgette in the tunnel is much slower than usual. I think it's the cool nights - even the last few nights have been only 5 or 6 degrees.
My black and red currants are ready to pick.

I think I may have said this before, Ploshkin, but although 800 feet up, the garden not only faces WSW, but slopes to the south as well. It makes quite a big difference, and all my fruit and veg is positioned in the best part of the garden as well.

Something is destroying my French bean leaves. Certainly a few slugs & snails, but I'm suspecting something like a leaf cutter bee as well. Hoping the plants can keep going to give me a crop.

Being at a lower altitude (and having a garden which is a suntrap - great for ripening things, but everything needs watering more frequently) I almost have courgettes coming out of my ears!! My other half is very patient about the number of times courgettes appear on the menu - I'm even going to have a go at chocolate and courgette cake tomorrow when the weather is cool enough to consider having the oven on. I had sowed two lots of courgette seeds (two varieties) at different times: one was old seed and wasn't doing anything much so I opened the new packet. Eventually they all came up and as I haven't had much luck with them over the past few years I planted them all out. Ha!! This is definitely the year of the courgette - strawberries have been sparse, tomatoes are struggling, and there are hardly any apples on the trees, so it's good that something is flourishing!

I picked three Gardeners Delight toms and a second small yellow courgette today. Have had a couple of mouthfuls each of broad beans and some very portly spring onions that have been sitting in the ground for ages.

Time to get the big trug out! Last picking of sugar snaps - going to have the plants out and get my purple sprouting in to replace them.

Quite pleased with the broad beans as I had no room for them in my raised beds. These have been grown in pots, standing amongst my vertical cordon fruit trees.

I've just had my first non Sungold tomatoes. Craigella, which I got for its reputed greenback resistance and Cristal which is an F!

We have German orange strawberry (which is in fact a tomato) and black brandywine.

The first lot of potatoes are almost eaten already.

First French beans today.

Will somebody please MAKE THE COURGETTES STOP!

In other news, we're finishing the last of the broad beans tonight, there's a box of tomatoes in the fridge, French beans need picking and kohl rabi are looking the right size for harvesting. The hot weather last week completely finished off the peas - the plants are brown and crispy so I'm going to harvest some peas for next year's seeds.

My courgette plant is a bit sulky this year. Ite producing just enough. It only has one growing point, usually it has 2 or 3.
Tomatoes are in full swing now.