What are you harvesting today?

A good haul today; new potatoes (Maris Bard), overwintered onions and garlic lifted, and blackcurrants picked before the birds get them !

The foliage on some of my garlic has collapsed, so I have dug them up - they look nice and plump! The peas are good, and so are the broad beans, kohl rabi and beetroot (which I've baked with garlic and rosemary). Strawberries are more or less coming to an end (just the mutant fruit left!) but the tayberries will be good for a week or so. Have frozen bags of mixed fruit for emergency summer pudding therapy in the winter!!

Onions and garlic here too! Lovely stuff, first time I've done onions from teeny tiny plants instead of sets, and they were far more successful. I shall do the same next season..

Plus dug up some lovely spuds, on the crappy side, my leeks have got rust, so they had to go.. sniff... hey ho, there's always something...

Nearly got 4lb of strawbs for wine and goosegogs not far off now either... whoohooooooooooooooo!!

Runner beans crap, I actually resorted to buying 6 plants from a car boot sale!! I just couldn't get mine to really take off, first year ever that's happened, yet my caulis, which are supposed to be far harder, were fab! Don't get it...

I emptied a pot with garlic in today. 3 nice ones and about 6 small ones, as we don`t use a lot I am well pleased.

I think it is almost time to get out the stepladder:



Mmmm apricots. Never had so many on the tree.

Mmmmmmmm looks wonderful mmmmmmmmmmm

Today I harvested 10 lb of Carlton tomatoes...that was precisely 5 fruits! Wonderful flavour and really "meaty" even when cooked...

Were a HSL try out new to me this year...will def. be seed saving from them!

So expect to see them in the 2012 Seed Swap!

Compostwoman wrote:
So expect to see them in the 2012 Seed Swap!

I'm glad you mention that - I will look forward to it

Only thing I am harvesting is rain!!

100 Lb of Charlotte potatoes, the first of the raised beds, grown in my home made compost - 18 seed potatoes, so more than 5 Lb per seed...pretty good going this year considering how dry it has been!

The Nicola bed is on the list to be done tomorrow, and looks even better yield from the couple of roots we have dug so far.

Also more Carlton and Costoluto Genovese tomatoes, huge and plump and juicy and tasty, and 3 cucumbers - been a bit too hot for them in the SW corner of the Polytunnel this year...might have to move them in future years or provide a bit of shading /forced ventilation!

And a lot of spinach, which had finally finally bolted beyond just taking out the tops and letting it grow again...but I have a load of Chard and Perpetual /New Zealand spinach on the go as well so not a problem

And the hens loved the stalks!


AND assorted salad leaves

AND herbs ...have got the dehdrator out and will start using the free electrons from the PV array to dry stuff....tomorrow

AND 25 lb of Rivers Early Plums. So jamming will be on the cards in the next few days...

No Tayberries left, though..the ( very noisy keep me awake in the early hours) Green Woodpecker familiy discovered the fences we grow them along and have stripped the lot. Still, we have 5 lbs in the freezer and 10 jars of jam made, so not a terrible issue...

A further 30 lbs from the Nicola raised bed, which considering we only have harvested less than a third of the roots is a very good sign...we still have the rest of the Nicola bed AND another the same size of Desire AND a similar area in the veg patch in the ground.

So potatoes looking good for the next 9 months or so.

I have also harvested 20 kg of assorted tomatoes from the polytunnel today.

Nothing as large scale as CW's major potato haul, but I am quite proud of having grown some cabbages this year which haven't been eaten by anything except us (thanks to having covered tham with mesh completely with no gaps this year...). We've just finished one cabbage which was quite big and fed ten people. In the grand scheme of things it's nothing great, but I suppose it's a personal best!!!

Our potato harvest is exceptional this year - last year was around half the weight and a fair few were badly slugged.

I suspect the hard winter killing pests, the good weather early on letting me get them in the ground earlly and, of course the magic of growing them in my own compost ( no soil, just compost...I have five, 2 m x 3 m raised beds filled with the stuff!)

But even so am very pleased..even tho' in the scheme of things it doesn't save that much money, I love our home grown spuds so much....even the best local organic ones just don't compare!

Dandelion, I can't grow cabbages at all, here...neve had any joy...Kale yes, PSB yes but not cabbages...so I envy you your cabbage!

Want to do a swap?

Oh, that 100 Lb of spuds was grown from 20 seed spuds a total weight of around 3.5 Lb...so a really good yield this year!

As was the Nicola bed...!

Compostwoman wrote:

Dandelion, I can't grow cabbages at all, here...neve had any joy...Kale yes, PSB yes but not cabbages...so I envy you your cabbage!

Want to do a swap?

Sadly I only have one cabbage left until the autumn ones grow a bit. I don't grow a lot of anything as there are only three/four of us, so I tend to grow things in half dozens in modules, then stick them into available spaces. I found reading 'Square foot gardening' by Mel Bartholomew very useful a few years ago, and I use his some of his ideas though I don't measure things in square feet!

Just pulled up my shallotts, should make a nice lot of pickled onions. well pleased. Will definately be on the list for growing next year.

Today I harvested tomatoes and more apricots (picnic lunch), spring onions, courgette, mangetout (stir fry for dinner), and petit pois, carrots, tomatillos which are in the fridge until I think of what to do with them !

Tomatillos grown outside at the lotty look really successful, loads of husks on them. Looking forward to Rick Bayless' -> Chipotle - Roasted Tomatillo Salsa <- to pep up my tacos !

Anyone else having a below-par harvest this year ? I don't know if it is the hard winter, but there seems to be all manner of wildlife eating my crops before I get to them. Wasps eating the apples (which were looking like a good resuls last month), mice (?) at the strawberries. Squirrels at the apricots (though there were enough left for me at least). Sparrows eating the peas. I have spent more money on netting than the vegetables I've harvested have been worth, I'm sure !

Got a bit depressed by it all at the lotty at the weekend. One week of being ill and the weeds are out of control. Wish the squashes and the beans were growing as well as the horsetails ! Still, turned a compost heap and started another to cheer myself up. At least I can look at the weeds as potential composting material; I'm getting very practiced at looking for the bright side of life these days.

It seems to me that the pests have just got a hold on things over the past week or so. There have been caterpillars on the nasturtiums and kohl rabi (most of the brassicas are under mesh, but I caught a cabbage white which had found a way in last week, so I will have to be vigilant.) I'm scraping eggs off the leaves of plants daily - these butterflies have an amazing urge to procreate!
I'm picking the first of the plums: some are fine, but some have sawfly grubs inside. (I contacted Garden Organic last year to find out what organic means I could use to prevent the maggots, and found out that the best thing to do was not to have planted a Jubilee plum, as it flowers at the best time for the moths.)
I've picked courgettes for tea today, but the butternut squashes are sluggish. Also outdoor tomatoes seems very late in developing - the fruit is small and it all seems very slow this year.
Hope you're feeling better CH...

Sorry to read you have been ill, C-H. Hope you are feeling better, now.

It all seems a bit variable, here...with the outdoor plants. I have notice a lot fewer pests this year tbh and have put it down to the proper winter we had....!

But the dry weather does seem to have had an impact- I have only just picked the first French beans ( both climbing or dwarf) yesterday, the outdoor toms are going very slowly - have had a few lbs off them but it all seems to take ages - especially when compared with their siblings inside the polytunnel.

The cougettes have likewise only just started to run riot, ditto the pumpkins...onions are disapointing looking,

Cabbage has been eaten to bits BUT PSB and Kales are growing fine . .all under netting so I guess a rogue pest got it!


On the plus side, however, the carrots are superb, spinach likewise, and the spud harvest has
been exceptionally terrific - a record breaker for us since we have been
here, the plums and damsons are laden and the Rivers Early plums ( only
tree so far to be ripe) were very good this year in taste and quantity.

Other plums, damsons and apples all look really good, no damage and lots of fruit.

Leeks look really good. Parsnips and Celeriac look very good.

The stuff inside the polytunnel has been truely exceptional this year. It is getting too hot now in there and I am losing tomato blossom to heat scorch, but that usually happens this time of your and I have 5 or more trussess set on each plant so it is no loss.

I'm much better now, thanks, Nothing serious, but both C-H Jnr and I were afflicted with something nasty in the tummy department after a day at the National Space Centre - all those hands-on interactive thingys are presumably a great way of exchanging viruses. Suffice it to say that it affected us differently; he spent a week carrying a bucket around with him (there's an emoticon for it, but it is a bit too grim !), I had to stay somewhere, erm, "convenient" IYKWIM. Half a stone lighter now !

I'm also finding squashes, outdoor toms and French beans slow. I do have a good few beans on my Cobras, the Blue lake are only just starting, and as for the yard long beans - they will be lucky to make it to a yard high ! Pathetic really - do they need to be in a polytunnel ?

Tomatoes

2 Kg of Costoluto Genovese, 2 Kg of Costoluto Fiorentino, 1 Kg of Latah ( the end of these, now but they were cropping well from mid June!)

1 kg of Romano sweet peppers and 0.5 Kg of Nardullo - which looks like a very hot chile pepper, but is actually a sweet pepper with a small hint of fire.

10 lbs of assorted Dwarf and climbing French beans.

A LOT of Thyme and Oregano, which is now drying in the dehydrator - mmm smells delish!

Am now clearing out the freezer to make soup and sauces from the remains of last years veg and fruit, so as to get cracking on freezing the stuff from this year.

And running the dehydrator all the time...!

Lots of apples so far and it looks like the first tomatoes should be ready tomorrow. Also think the damsons aren't going to be long!

Mrs C

Runner beans, tomatoes & broadbeans. Well pleased.