What are you harvesting today?

Meant to say, those grapes look fab, C-H.

You're right about birds not being senstive to capsaicin. I thought that was the case but decided to check!

Interesting about birds / chillies. But, my dog loves a curry and formations how hot it is.
I'm not harvesting anything new in the polytunnel but still have a regular supply of carrots, mange tout, courgettes, tomatoes, pepper and strawberries. Beans are now coming from the garden and I've had a moderate harvest of lovely, unblemished Victoria plums and I've been picking a decent amount of crab apples for mint jelly and chilli jelly (had to buy chillies!)

Interesting auto-correct thing there, Ploshkin - I've never had a curry and formations! Can't figure out what it was meant to be.
Nothing new since my last post, tomatoes still reddening - well, orangeing, to be more precise. Most go in the freezer. Will need to find quite a few tomato-based recipes for Autumn and winter.

No idea where formations came from - I probably said .... no matter how hot it is.

Not much harvesting here - a few Marmande tomatoes left in the garden and more or less the last runner beans (but irritatingly all the beans I missed when we were away for a couple of short breaks which are now hard and lumpy and on the way to providing me with next years beans. Irritating because I didn't actually need that large number of bean seeds!!)

I picked my first butternut squash today, it had developed a crack with the rain following such a dry summer. It probably won't keep long, so I might cook it Indian style with dahl.

Some good carrots too, enough for a batch of soup. And of course courgettes. There are always courgettes.

I picked the last small strawberries yesterday which, considering I thought the plants were a goner after the first flush of fruit, is pretty good. For the first time I'm getting some lively autumn raspberries. They have taken 3 or 4 years to establish but are going well now. I think they've benefited from being in my beehive plot (to stop Mr P pinching the fruit). They flower when there is little other forage for the bees so they've made a good job of pollination.
I brought back 6 good sized courgettes from the polytunnel yesterday - it would be interesting to know how many my one plant has produced. It must be in excess of 100. The sweet peppers are holding really well on the plants and I just pick a few at a time as and when I want to use them. They ripened so quickly I didn't get much opportunity to have green ones.
I've cut all the squashes now and left them to ripen - final tally is 5 smallish butternuts off 2 plants which is a bit lame and 10 big Uchiki Kuri off one plant.
Also using cabbages and Kale from the garden now.

I forgot, last week I had the last of the 6 apples off my tree. That makes a total crop of 10 I think in the 11 years I've had it. The skins had some black spots and needed a bit of trimming but the fruit truly lived up to its name which is Scrumptious.

When there is a man here with a machine I'm going to ask them to dig it up and I'm going to put it in the polytunnel plot. I've got nothing to lose and it could end up better off.

Apples were poor for me this year, but happily my woodworking friend Jim gave me a bag full. I do however have a load of quinces - suggestions ? ATM my garage smells fabulously fruity

I've just been into the kitchen to consult my new (second hand!) Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall book on fruit, and I can oiffer you recipes for herby roast quince (to eat with roast meat) and poached quince. I know there is also quince jelly - I think this is the reason I don't actually like quince, as when I was young my mother made quince jam from the fruit on a neighbour's tree and tried to make us eat it. I think there's still a bit of the stubborn child left in me!!

In this part of the world people have had bumper Apple crops this year which is odd because when the trees were in blossom it was just blowing off in the high winds. My 6 apples was a bumper crop for that tree and I had loads of crab apples when the usual crop is about 12. I'm not in a good spot for apple growing.

I have three dwarf(ish) apple trees, two of which have had a bumper harvest which I was amazed at because we have had so little rain. The apples are smallish but there are lots of them. The Spartan hasn't had any fruit at all, but it did have a large crop last year, so I think it's having a rest.

Dug my last potatoes yesterday. Went with our roast pork, along with roasted root vegetables - homegrown carrot and beetroot.

Weeding the vegetable plot revealed I still have some rocket to hsrvest for a salad with the renaining Cerise cherry tomates (which are still very nice).

I had a bonus melon today. My melons were over and done with a couple of months back but I hadn't cleared the plants. About 3 weeks ago I noticed another one about the size of a grapefruit. I didn't think it would ripen but it had come away from the stem today and I found that it was ripe and delicious (with some autumn raspberries).

Ploshkin wrote:I had a bonus melon today.  

I've never played on a slot machine, but a bonus melon sounds as if you might get a payout from it!!

I brought in the remainder of my sweet peppers from the polytunnel today. I had left them on the plants and was harvesting when I wanted them but found yesterday that some creature(s) had chewed off and decimated at least half a dozen great big ones. I was not amused. I suspect rats and now have several traps and bait boxes in the tunnel.

A couple of tomatoes and large chillies - Mulato still has a good amount of fruit on it. Also harvested radish seed. The radishes never grew to be edible, as they bolted in the hot weather, and I didn't get around to pulling them up.

My lunchtime sandwich last Thursday contained the last tomatoes from the greenhouse - I'm not sure I've managed to make tomatoes last until November before!

I've just used my last tomatoes to make some soup today. I did rescue them from the tunnel a couple of weeks ago when we had the heavy frost.

It won't be that long before we're sowing next year's tomatoes!

Picked my first winter salad leaves of the season yesterday. They so nearly didn't get planted out from their seed trays, but now I'm glad I did.

It has my first Brussels sprouts today and they were excellent. I think I bought some plants because I hadn't got round to putting any seed in. The plants went out just before our 9 weeks of no rain and I only recall watering them once because they looked a bit wilted. The sprouts are some of the largest and tastiest I have ever had.

Only leeks left in the ground now, they have been found by allium leaf miner, though not so badly that they are all spoiled. I will have to peg down the environmesh more carefully next year.

Lots of chillies left in the greenhouse though

I've still got a few raspberries, but not enough to harvest (I eat the odd one when I'm out in the garden, and throw them for the hens who love them!)

Snap, Dandelion, on the raspberry situation for both me and hens.

I still have a few chillies left on the plants and one pepper that is resolutely green.

Oh yes, and a few leeks.

More leeks today. We're using our last celeriac today too. Yesterday I picked peppers and chillies, I have some chillies drying, and some need chopping and freezing for when a quick chilli hit needs adding to a dish. Also got a few Mexican types, Ancho and Serrano, which I need to think of a recipe to combine with my squash abundance !