What are you harvesting today?

Oooh lovely.

I'll be inventing a broad bean and blackfly recipe soon (I suppose I could pretend they're poppy seeds...)

Dandelion wrote:Oooh lovely.

I'll be inventing a broad bean and blackfly recipe soon (I suppose I could pretend they're poppy seeds...)

Tee hee - that puts me in mind of a game the man and I used to play called Ant or Chocolate.....

Is that like 'truth or dare'??

Not sure I ever played that. We play cribbage quite often and used to have a few squares of Green & Blacks chocolate at the same time. Breaking chocolate leaves 'crumbs' on the table which have to be dotted up with your finger. But one year we were having ant trouble, so there was always the danger of dotting up an ant instead of a chocolate crumb.

My broad beans are finished, save the ones in the freezer. I've cut them down in the hope that they might grow back to provide a second crop - it sometimes works.

The tomatoes are just starting; we've had the first couple, and another few yellow ones are just about ready. We are awash with strawberries - I don't know why they have done so well this year. Hoping that I will have pea "Linnet" to pick by Sunday; there's a lot of pods on that look like they will all come at once !

My first tomato from the greenhouse, and a small handful of french beans, also from the greenhouse. More sugarsnap peas, a single strawberry, a goodly few raspberries, and a few broad beans. They are quite small pods this year and slow in coming - still an improvement on last year's zero crop, though.

I had my eye on a very nice looking pointed cabbage, which I was going to cook at the end of the week. But when I looked at the cabbage bed this morning before I went to work the cabbage had been half eaten by a slug (which I picked off and gave to the chickens - it made me feel better!). I salvaged the other half of the cabbage, evicted a couple more little slugs and shredded it for a stir fry tonight. A handful of little sweet peas (no, that's not what I meant - not flowers...) finished it off nicely. Am fed up with the slugs though.

Today I picked a couple of meals worth of petit pois "Linnet", a few tomatoes and another 3lb of strawberries. Not quite sure what to do with them - stockpile strawberry ice-cream ? Looks like the blackcurrants are soon to be picked for my annual tub of blackcurrant sorbet

Doesn't look like I'll be harvesting many squashes or beans for drying this year, unless we get a very nice autumn ...

Chilli-head wrote:Today I picked ... another 3lb of strawberries. Not quite sure what to do with them - stockpile strawberry ice-cream ?

Puree them for topping/sauce for cheesecake or other desserts. Dehydrate them if you have the wherewithall, as they take up far less space. Sell some to Wimbledon. Donate to the Freebird Benevolent Fund for Strawberryless Gardeners....

Enough tayberries to eat with some meringues and cream, and somestrawberries, which mysteriously appeared in the meringues cut into small pieces. Wonder why that was??

Cherries, lots and lots of cherries

Nice looking cherries; what will you make with them Adrian, or are they all for eating fresh ?

I dug my first new potatoes today. Well, I say dug. The came up with a "slurp" from the soggy mud. Two plants just about made a meal's worth. The end plant in the row is dying, looks very like pictures I've seen of aminopyralid damage, but is in fact simply because they are drowning ! I presume that means the maincrops will be full of slug holes.

Still got a few overwintered cabbages left too, will go nicely with the potatoes.

Making another batch of strawberry jam tonight; C-H jnr seems to like it on toast, so one jar is empty already.

Freebird - are your strawberries new this year ? Mine didn't do much in the first year, but have really got established well now, having followed Geoff Hamilton's advice to give them a severe haircut after they'd finished fruiting. I'd happily let you have some, but doubt they'd post well - and the supermarkets are practically giving them away too, so presumably it's not just me who has a surplus - trust them to do well in the sort of weather that means nobody buys them. Bet the growers are fed up !

Mostly going to be compote - just me here at the moment and I have already gorged on enough fresh cherries to make me poop like a trooper..

this lot was from one branch on one tree - the crows seem oblivious to them this year.

We have a lovely crop of strawberries

Chilli-head wrote:I dug my first new potatoes today.

Freebird - are your strawberries new this year ? Mine didn't do much in the first year, but have really got established well now, having followed Geoff Hamilton's advice to give them a severe haircut after they'd finished fruiting.

I dug my first outdoor potatoes yesterday - not many from two plants, but quite large. The ground here is not too wet at all. If anything, a little drier than I would like.

No, sadly, the strawberries were new last year. I was looking forward to a fulsome crop, and there was plenty of flower. Some of the flowers didn't make fruit due to the cold, but plenty did. No, the fruits have been 'harvested' by a variety of garden creatures, mostly before they are properly ripe. Birds, slugs, snails and woodlice are the main culprits.

My sister who lives in Wales has, I have just found out, her strawberry plants in hanging baskets in the greenhouse. That seems like an idea worth trying.

I have my strawberries and blackcurrants under netting. I found some steel conduit in the garage when we moved in; I've bent it into "goalposts" with the pipe bender, given them a lick of hammerite and used them to support the netting. Even still I have to repair a few peck holes each year. Without the netting, I'm sure I'd have hardly any. This fanciful notion put about in organic circles of "planting enough for all" is ludicrous; nobody teaches the wildlife to share - they take the lot !

The ground here is quite sodden, so the straw under the strawberries has become quite unpleasant, and the berries are either going mouldy or getting slug damage.
Never mind though, because LOOK: I've grown my first cauliflower!!

It is a Serac - it was overwintered and planted out in the very early spring (all the ones I tried the year before were killed in the winter weather, but last winter wasn't too bad.) I think everyone in the family is fed up with me talking about cauliflowers now....

Wow that is impressive.

I grow my strawberries in pots these days and I'm never sure if I should put straw under the. When I tried to buy straw from the garden centre a couple of years ago, they offered me a huge bale of rabbit bedding straw so I just leave them as they are. I wassure I'd seen strawberry mates advertised somewhere in the past, but can't find them.

Your cauli looks like a catalogue picture - it looks superb.

Certainly a fine cauli, Dandelion. They are one of the hardest things to grow, I think, and certainly to get that clean. So many pests love them !

Mulching strawberries. I have read about mulching with straw to keep the fruit off the ground, but not having any straw I tried mulching half of mine with wood shavings, which I do have plenty of. Doing half allowed a comparison - turns out it was a bad idea ! In this wet weather the mulch reduces the airflow around the crowns and encouraged rotting of the fruit, I won't try that again with shavings or straw, they seem fine on the ground.

Jaded Green wrote:
I grow my strawberries in pots these days and I'm never sure if I should put straw under the. When I tried to buy straw from the garden centre a couple of years ago, they offered me a huge bale of rabbit bedding straw so I just leave them as they are. I wassure I'd seen strawberry mates advertised somewhere in the past, but can't find them.

I used weed-proofing membrane a few years ago when I planted a new batch of strawberry plants. I slashed X shaped cuts into it and put each plant into an X. It did keep the strawberries clean, but it got a bit annoying when I wanted to put Blood Fish and Bone around the plants. In the end I pulled it up, but it is an option if you can't find strawberry mats

Picked another couple of pounds of strawberries, and cleared out probably the same amount of rotten ones. Still, I have had enough now - several helpings, a litre of ice-cream and 7 jars of jam from about 18 plants must be good going.

Also picked the odd chilli Ring of fire to spice up tonight's pizza

Yipee! First courgettes today. Three Cucino cucumbers, Latah tomatoes and Tendercrop french beans all from the greenhouse. Sugarsnap peas and broad beans from outside. Yummy yum yum yum yum.

The first two kohl rabi - and I managed to catch them before they went woody!

Glad to hear things are coming together at last Freebird.

I've got a few things ready for eating - cucumbers still, tomatoes, chillies (green only yet), a few new potatoes, some mangetout, some lettuce. Seems that's hoe it is going to pan out this year; a little of most things, but not a great yield.

Mind you, I'm tentatively pleased with my carrots. The carrot cage is a big success; the carrots Ulysses under there are about 1" across the "shoulder", though I haven't pulled any to know how long they are. The rest of the carrots which were not protected are either gone altogether, or looking miserable.