What are you harvesting today?

180 chilles yesterday. And that's not all of them Ristra stringing will be the job for one evening this week.

I decided it was time for my tomato plants to be cleared out.  The Rose de Berne, which for some unknown reason were slow starters, have been keeping me supplied but we've had some heavy frosts now so I took the remaining  green ones off.

Coincidentally, we watched one of my favourite films that I haven't seen for about 15 years - Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and it got me wondering if fried green tomatoes were more than literally just that.  And so I discovered a new favourite thing, fat  slices of green tomato with a lovely, crunchy cornmeal coating with a dash of paprika  I've got a few more green toms in the fridge and then I will have to wait until next year to have some more.
I've learnt that fried green tomatoes are traditional in the southern US states when the unripe tomatoes are harvested and sold before the first autumn frost.

I was really pleased with my weekend harvest. The prized item was a proper bulb of Florence fennel, fat and squat and not the least bit bolted, and tender when braised. Lovely with Sunday roast chicken.

Also got some purple curly kale, which despite my fears is nice and not bitter. More lazy housewife beans, the last of them. Some good hot chilli, decent sized carrots and a plump red cabbage. Oh, and a celeriac, which I have to admit was not the most impressive size, but hopefully the flavour will be good.

Just winter salad leaves here - but they are very nice. And we are eating chillies that I dried from last year's harvests

All my fruit that came with me is in the ground now, apart from the apple tree grafts which I will pot on for a while. Hoping for some small fruit crops next year, starting with rhubarb.

Fried green tomatoes sound interesting - hopefully will have a chance to try that next season.

Ploshkin wrote:

Coincidentally, we watched one of my favourite films that I haven't seen for about 15 years - Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and it got me wondering if fried green tomatoes were more than literally just that.  And so I discovered a new favourite thing, fat  slices of green tomato with a lovely, crunchy cornmeal coating with a dash of paprika  I've got a few more green toms in the fridge and then I will have to wait until next year to have some more.

I LOVE that film, especially the bit at the end where she gets really annoyed in the car park!!

Dug some parsnips for Christmas yesterday. First one was tiny, so I managed to put the fork through the next, which was huge. Mostly seem huge and no canker, so curried parsnip soup may be needed too. Also got a couple of celeriac (to got into Borscht, for FIL's birthday) and plenty of leeks. The environmesh has done the trick of keeping the allium leaf miner off of them. The penultimate red cabbage too, for coleslaw.

I harvested carrots today. Notable for two reasons - I don't think you're supposed to dig up carrots in January, and until this point I didn't think I could grow carrots! On holiday in August I was thumbing through a book in Waterstones which suggested sowing carrots in August, and covering with fleece in September, to dig up in the autumn. I bought carrot seed and tried it out, forgetting to cover with fleece but using mesh instead to keep any late carrot fly away. We've had very few frosts but too much rain to consider digging any up. But it's dry at the moment, so I had an experimental dig, and this is what I found!

I haven't grown carrots outside since I've had the tunnel but when I did I always left them in the ground and usually finished harvesting about March. Some would get slugged but most were fine.
What variety did you sow?

Er...(nips into utility room to look in tin of seeds) Nantes 2

Ah, so it's not too unusual to harvest them in January. I've grown tomatoes for over 45 years, but I'm a complete novice where carrots are concerned! Yes, only one had slug damage, and that was at the top where the carrot had been visible. I wonder if our soil is so thick and muddy that no self-respecting slug would try to go any deeper!

Most books advocate digging them up and storing them in dry peat or something but I've always found they store better in the ground even with our wet, claggy soil. If I try and store them dry they grow fine white roots all over (which suggests that it is not dry). I always used to find Autumn King particularly good outside.

I'll certainly try the later sowing again this year - I just can't get seeds to germinate if I sow them straight into the soil in the spring, but a summer sowing seems to work fine!

Carrot germination is always a struggle for me. I can't sow them straight into my heavy clay, so sow them into a trench backfilled with the old tomato compost. But that is very light, making them susceptible to dry spells. Sowing later usually seems more successful. I like the red sort - Atomic red last year. Seem to taste more carroty. The fly resistant variety I grew left me sure that even the carrot root fly turned their nises up at them because they had little flavour or aroma !

I've done similar in the past CH. Always found that flooding the trench prior to sowing, then a little unwatered compost on top of the seed, all topped with a layer of fleece seemed to keep it all moist enough for germination.

That sounds like a good approach. Watering the drill before sowing the seed then dry compost on top would help trap the moisture. I will try watering my backfilled trench more thoroughly before I sow; usually it starts fairly dry, having been bagged up over winter. It also has quite a bit of sand in it, which helps any water there is to drain away ! I don't have any fleece; I generally put carrots and leeks under one large environmesh tunnel - we have allium leaf miner and carrot root fly around, the carrot root fly are supposed to be confused by the allium scent - it doesn't work well enough on its own though !

I also do soaking the drill then sprinkling dry compost on top and I usually have good carrot germination.

When do you / would you start sowing carrots (outdoors that is) ? Yes, I have read when you can sit bare bottomed on the earth without it feeling too cold, but I hesitate to try that at the allotment !

Outdoors here I probably wouldn't sow until at least April, when the soil has warmed up a bit. In the polytunnel, I sow some seed in January.

I've just had the very last of my carrots from a June sowing in the polytunnel last year. There's a bit of chard still growing in there.

Rhubarb! Not much - just enough for a small portion each for the man and me. The plants came with me, split from some in my previous garden, and were only planted out in August last year. They're looking healthy and will, hopefully, flourish in their new home.

Well done on having enough rhubarb, even for a small pud, FB! I've been thinking of pulling a few sticks of mine, but I still have three large seed trays of cooking apples left from the autumn so I think it'll have to be apple crumble rather than rhubarb for the present. But if we have a lock-down at any time I'll be supplying my neighbours with apples! (They are a very old variety called Winter Greening. I've probably mentioned them before - they are meant to keep for up to a year. They do seem to get a bit sweeter after keeping, and could be used for eating apples, althoughthey wouldn't win any prizes in a beauty competition!)

I had 6 strawberries from the polytunnel yesterday.

Sweet! I've harvested the first pickings of summer salad leaves.

Just been doing a bit of pyjama gardening (as you do on a lovely sunny morning and you were meant to be just opening the greenhouse and cold frame). Discovered my winter salad claytonia plants that I left to seed are shedding their seeds all over the place. Individually. Tiny shiny black things that roll about. So I have just harvested my first seeds of the season. Individually. A damp finger picking them up one by one! Need to work something out for collecting the rest.

I think that's called dedication Freebird!