What are you harvesting today?

Curry night tonight, with a fair few home grown ingredients - onions, garlic, chillies, French beans, coriander, and even lemon grass

freebird wrote:I'm not sure exactly what it is I hate about beetroot. It smells vile, both raw and cooked. I've tried it in soup, salads and a beetroot chutney recipe my grandmother gave me, which she told me I was bound to like. Tried it again more recently in case my taste had changed (as it did with blue stilton) but nope. Shame, because it's a beautiful colour.

I remember someone saying (years ago) on this forum that there's a compound in beetroot which some people find repellent. It was so long ago that it was easier to Google it than find the original post - the compound is called geosmin. (Interestingly while I was looking for this, one article said that some people have the same feeling about coriander. I didn't know this was a 'thing' - I only tried fresh coriander for the first time a couple of years ago, once by choice and a second time by accident - it was in some swanky chocolates we were given. Both times I really couldn't bear it in my mouth, and I'm not generally a fussy eater.)

Yesterday, first french beans from the allotment, though I've been picking them at home for a couple of weeks. Also first runner beans and today a turnip.

In London, I could reliably expect french beans for at least 4 weeks before I saw any runners. They were always useful for filling the gap after the sugar snaps finished. The much drier and warmer weather there always stopped my runner bean flowers setting, until things started to cool a bit. It's a bit of a nuisance having them arrjve at the same time.

Freebird, that's why iw usually lavd runner bean sowing until July. It's quite rare for us to get a bean killing frost early in the autumn and some years I get to pick runners into November. It's a gamble but I always get a crop of some sort.

Thank you Ploshkin, I'll bear that in mind. Though, on the plus side, equally as important as the edible crop is saving seed, so I'll have plenty of opportunity to do that. All my seed is old, not having grown last year, so I'm keen to replenish with fresh.

Runner bean seed left to dry on the plant can still be an edible crop, used like kidney beans in chillies, of course. The white seeded types like czar etc can be used in place of butter beans or Greek gigandes.

Talking of dried beans (and I'm probably on the wrong thread now), I recently made Adrian's slow-cooker baked beans recipe. I've been meaning to ever since it was posted, years ago. They are utterly delicious. I've never much cared for tinned baked beans, and these have spoiled me completely now!

I sowed borlotti beans yesterday, a present from a friend. I've never grown them before. Hopefully they will come after the runner beans (which I'm hoping will have some flowers on soon...) I didn't know you could harvest the actual beans in runner beans, CH.

I grow Greek giant beans for drying every year. But the seed are hard to find, so I save some for the following year. Of course, being a variety of runner bean, they cross with other regular runners on other allotments, so each year I get about 3/4 white flowered, white seeded Gigandes, and 1/4 red flowered plants producing seed like regular runners - black and purple flecked - but huge like giant beans. I save them for mixed bean chilli to be served in half a roasted squash

Today we had another good harvest, so with our roast chicken we had roasted courgette, new potatoes and Greek oily beans made with home beans, tomato, onions and parsley. Followed by tarte Tatin with our own apples. Yes, what kind of seasonal confusion, apples from the Laxtons tree are already ready ?

A ripe pear fell off the tree this afternoon - I had gone down the garden to look, as I had noticed it while washing up from the kitchen window. The rest are green (as they should be) but this one was already turning gold. And as I brushed past it fell off. Still hard, but I'll keep it in the kitchen where I can hopefully catch it as it ripens. I've never quite got my timing right with picking pears - I know you ripen them off the tree, but I usually leave it too late before picking them.

I think pear ripening is one of the Dark Arts and if you're not a practitioner you have to be very lucky to catch it in the nanosecond between hard and mush.

Really hoping I can taste at least one of my Merton's Pride pears as this is the first time it has fruited. The Comice all look small and sad this year so I don't have those to look forward to.

First Rose de Berne tomatoes from the greenhouse.

FloBear wrote:I think pear ripening is one of the Dark Arts and if you're not a practitioner you have to be very lucky to catch it in the nanosecond between hard and mush.

Really hoping I can taste at least one of my Merton's Pride pears as this is the first time it has fruited. The Comice all look small and sad this year so I don't have those to look forward to.

Sadly I'm definitely not a pear practitioner. I ate the pear this morning, and despite the fruit still being very hard it had gone brown in the middle There are about another 8 pears on the tree (still green) so I have another 8 chances to get it right! I hope you are successful with your Merton's Pride, FloBear.

Sweet Million toms from the GH are being harvested now. Nice taste, skins a bit chewier than I'd like. Gardeners Delight and the orange one whose name I can't recall are not doing well, I put them in a part of the garden where they're really not happy. A pity because they are my favourites.
Raspberries - Joan J - are a constant delight.

My raspberries are autumn fruiting, so no sign of them yet (plus they are in the chickens' half of the garden, and the plants get a bit nibbled in the spring!) Berries are one of the few things which have done well this year - Oregon Thornless blackberries are very plentiful, but quite sour and pippy, so I have been making coulis and freezing it. I may branch out and do some jelly with the rest.

Is anyone else feeling that their garden has been less than productive this year? French and Runner beans are sparse here, there are very few courgettes (for once!) and both butternut squash plants died. There are very few apples on the trees (and some are rotting already on the Spartan).

I am having a fairly good year. Not because of the weather, but because of putting more time into it. The allotment needs at least half a day per week to keep on top of it, I reckon.

Courgettes have not reached a crisis yet, but dwarf French beans are producing about a kilo per week from the first row (about 12' long) which is good by my standards. Tomatoes have a lot of blossom end rot, as usual. I can't seem to sort it. Cucumbers made a lot - 5 at a time from the two plants but then got mildew and stopped. Giving them a good feed and removing the mouldy leaves seems to have produced new growth and flowering so fingers crossed. Pears are plentiful but apples are early, sparse and codling moth affected.

My strawberries at the allotment can't cope with the heat. My Mulato chilles - growing outside - have scorch marks on the fruits, and some of the tomatoes were half cooked so that the skins slipped off without the need to plunge in boiling water. Quite hot enough, thanks !

We haven't had any great heat here - an advantage to be at 800 feet above sea level.

It's very early days for my gardening, but I can truthfully say that my runner beans seem to be the best I have ever grown. They seem to thrive in the cooler conditions here. Onions also shaping up to be best ever - they're huge. Courgettes plentiful, though quite a lot of the earlier ones would partly develop then rot. Same is happening with my winter squashes. Keep thinking I have fruit developing, then it rots.

It's been a bumper year for my summer strawberries (as opposed to everbearers) - again, best ever. And again, they seem to prefer the cooler conditions - well, at least Florence did, though the other, unknown, variety has been poor.

Tomatoes and chillies are in the greenhouse. The fruit set on the tomatoes has been poor, but no disease or blossom end rot. Fortunately I planted a lot of plants, so we have sufficient, but for the number I have, we should be inundated. Chillies looking ok, and picked my first ripe Apaches last week.

Winners and losers as always, but overall so far, it has far exceeded my expectations.

freebird wrote: Courgettes plentiful, though quite a lot of the earlier ones would partly develop then rot. Same is happening with my winter squashes. Keep thinking I have fruit developing, then it rots.

Yes, same here - there does seem to be a lot of rot with courgettes, apples and blossom end rot on tomatoes. But so far no signs of blight, which is a relief.

Your garden sounds really productive, Freebird

Chilli-head wrote:
My Mulato chilles - growing outside - have scorch marks on the fruits, and some of the tomatoes were half cooked so that the skins slipped off without the need to plunge in boiling water.  Quite hot enough, thanks !

They sound positively dangerous!!

I picked a kilo of blackberries yesterday before it got hot then looked up a recipe for jelly. Realising that to make decent jelly I needed cooking apples, I set out to Tesco, but when I got the bag of cooking apples home I discovered that they were Granny Smiths. I've always thought that G Smiths were eating apples, but according to Google they are dual purpose. (And to be honest they were very tart when I tried them - not at all nice to eat uncooked.) So that was my learning curve for the week - and they have made some half decent blackberry and apple jelly, so I'm very happy about that!

Fatali chillis are ready. I had one tonight in my pizza 'Vesuvio ' ! Mrs C-H just drank from my water glass by mistake and had to head to the kitchen to cool her lips with some uncontaminated water ...

Imminent danger of a courgette and runner bean avalanche here.

Chilli-head wrote:Fatali  chillis are ready. I had one tonight in my pizza 'Vesuvio ' !  Mrs C-H just drank from my water glass by mistake and had to head to the kitchen to cool her lips with some uncontaminated water ...

Fatali? As in 'fatal'??

freebird wrote:Imminent danger of a courgette and runner bean avalanche here.

No danger of that at all here - I wonder if it has been hotter here than in your neck of the woods FB? I have managed to cook three meals with courgettes since June, and that was only because I had let a couple of courgettes grow large enough to feed two of us. French beans (Mr Fearns) are looking done in: I'm leaving the last few beans to ripen for seed. Runner beans do seem to be picking up though - there are a few flowers now, and they do look as if they might have some beans in a week or two. Borlotti beans are coming along OK too - I may have some beans on those in a few weeks.

This year's  chillies. This one is Prarie Fire, overwintered for 3 years (despite being Capsicum Annum). Overwintering is worth it for an early crop.  70,000-80,000 Scoville units (SHU). Quite hot in a managable kind of way.


This was what went on my pizza.  Chocolate Fatali, a Capsicum Chinense type.  These are 125,000 to 325,000 SHU, or in my terms, properly hot.  I have 4 plants of these, so umpteen chillies.


But lurking in the greenhouse are 3 plants of these.  Pretty, eh ?  7 pot yellow,  another Capsicum Chinense  from Trinidad.  The name "7 pot" is because one single chilli was considered enough to flavour 7 pots of stew.  >1,000,000 SHU.  However I am going to use all these, I dunno. It is supposed to have a sweet, pineapple fruity flavour.  I love fruity chillies.  I have a copy of Dave DeWitt's  "The Habanero Cookbook", which has many great recipes, but the Carrot, Apricot and Habanero soup is amazing, and would be great with these - though inedible to the rest of my family (and maybe me too !)