What are you harvesting today?

Lots of stuff to get in today. I spent the morning digging potatoes, then in the afternooon went back to pick some other stuff - cucumbers, beetroot, peas, sweetcorn, calabrese, raspberries, and peppers and chilles from the greenhouse. Just got to work out what to do with it all now !

Quite a lot of tomatoes - Auntie Madge's, Black Russian, and some cherry tomatoes which are supposed to be Yellow Stuffers but aren't...

Ahh Dendelion, have you got a bottle of sherry stashed in the garden too ?  Still not figured out what happened with my chillies.

Funnily enough I was thinking yesterday that if I was in the habit of keeping sherry in my shed it would be undrinkable after the hot summer we've had!!
The tomatoes came from a colleague at school - I'm putting it down the pressure of wirk!!

Non Sungold tomatoes are finally ripening -Belle (F1)  Black Cherry Purple Ukraine & Amish Salad.  Unfortunately my tomatoes never have much flavour apart from Sungold which is always fantastic.   It's due, I think, to insufficient sun as we are down in a hollow surrounded by tall trees & miss out on early morning & late evening sun.  I've tried countless varieties over the years, including ones bred from Sungold.  I was hopeful for the black cherry, they've got more flavour than most but not as much as I'm sure they should have.  I'm going to push for the excavations for a polytunnel this winter, I've identified a nice spot in full sun in a field behind the sheep shed & next to the muck heap so there's a ready supply of water & fertiliser.  If I can't grow flavoursome toms there then I'll just give up.

Had another big bowlful of strawberries from the gh.  Pretty much the last picking though there are still a few left ripening. They've been one of my best things this year.

Ploshkin wrote:Non Sungold tomatoes are finally ripening -Belle (F1)  Black Cherry Purple Ukraine & Amish Salad.  

I tried Amish Gold last year, but had no success at all - I don't know if it was down to no pollinators because of the lack of sun, but I had no tomatoes forming at all. I noticed this year that Yellow Brandywine was also not prolific (I think it's a similar tomato type to Amish Gold) - the flowers just dropped off the plant and left bare stalks except for a couple of fruits on each plant (one indoors and one outdoors, but no difference in productivity) Haven't grown many beefsteak toms before - is this lack of pollination a typical issue? It didn't happen with any of the other varieties I grew in either year.

Amish salad are a small - medium sized pink skinned tom. The plants seemed to have an odd growth habit, quite stunted & they suffered horrendously from leaf curl. I've got a good crop though as always not a lot of flavour. I don't grow beefsteak varieties but Belle are pretty huge. All my toms are grown in the greenhouse & I've never had any pollination issues with any variety.

I tried that purple Ukranian one year (FIL is Ukranian !) It had a thin skin, prone to splititng and a bit bland. I have found some French varieties to be best for flavour - Royale des Guineaux usually comes out tops in my taste tests. Lots of sun and not too much water seem to be important too though.

We are picking up lots of windfalls. so far I've daelt with some from our garden, my parents' garden and their next door neighbours. More apple for supper tonight

Picked lots of chillies today, though I'm staggered to find that those barsteward snails eat them! Quite a few of the fruits were missing a large chunk at the stalk end. Also harvested more courgettes, a handful of autumn raspberries, runner beans, tomatoes and some lovely eating apples from a very old tree. Reckon it was planted in the 40s/50s and the RHS identified it as a popular variety of the time called Maidstone Favourite. It doesn't keep at all, not even for a few days, but it is utterly delicious.

that sounds fab, CH. (Am intrigued to know what happens to Maidstone favourite after a few days...)
And from the same county, we had apple sauce with our pork tonight made from Beauty of Kent which grows in our garden

Oh, I do so miss tasty apples. I've almost given up buying apples because they're always the same old varieties & just tasteless. I've not had any success growing here. Somebody gave me a bag of Beauty of Bath the other day but unfortunately had picked them too soon & they're very sharp. I can't remember whether or not apples ripen off the tree.

I picked my first Uchiki Kuri squash & used it in soup with some toms. It was just a small one & had gone quite a dark orange colour. They're not completely ripe yet & I'm intending to leave them until the first frost but couldn't resist a try. I roasted it first & liked the texture. I think they should get sweeter the longer they're left to ripen.

Are Beauty of Bath the apples which have a pinkish tinge to the flesh? You should be OK ripening them off the tree - we have ripened up apples when they have blown off the tree before they were really ready.

I picked off and froze the last of my sweetcorn yesterday.  Quite a nice yield in the end (it was Lark).  Some quite nice raspberries polka on now too.

I unoffically harvested the odd Cox apple today ( ) - still not quite ready ...

I have a sad story.

A few years ago I planted a pear tree - it's a family tree, and has a Williams and a Conference grafted on to the same stock. This is the first year it has fruited. It has four pears: I have been regularly assessing the pears to check for ripeness, and had decided that they were still much too hard to pick. Yesterday I went to look, and discovered that three of the pears had been blown off in the wind we had, and had been eaten by something!  

Oh no Dandelion, that is such a shame. I had my first plum tree crop this year - every fruit bar one was maggot ridden. Anyway, nurture that last pear and enjoy it when it's ready.

 I did actually take drastic measures - I cleaned the nibbled pears well, cut out the chewed bits, peeled and ate the good bits. Sorry, I know it's probably not hygenic, but I waited a long time for those pears!
 

Dandelion wrote:Are Beauty of Bath the apples which have a pinkish tinge to the flesh? You should be OK ripening them off the tree - we have ripened up apples when they have blown off the tree before they were really ready.

Yes, they are & I'm pleased to say that they have ripened and are now just perfect - it's quite a big bag of them & I'm really enjoying them.

Ploshkin wrote:

Dandelion wrote:Are Beauty of Bath the apples which have a pinkish tinge to the flesh? You should be OK ripening them off the tree - we have ripened up apples when they have blown off the tree before they were really ready.

Yes, they are & I'm pleased to say that they have ripened and are now just perfect - it's quite a big bag of them & I'm really enjoying them.

 

Noticed that quite a few Spartan apples have fallen off the tree, so we picked them all this afternoon. For a tiny tree it produced a lot - five trays (the trays were rescued from school, from a storage unit, and are about 14"x12") The chickens were happy pottering about at our feet while we did the picking - we cut a few apples in half for them to peck.

apples - 18 pounds of them and there's still lots on the tree and lots of windfalls.

We're currently simmering chutney

Where to start ? I went to the allotment on Saturday and picked of a really good quantity of flageolet type beans for drying. Whilst there I also harvested carrots, beetroot, a couple of pumpkins (before the low life steal them !), a cucumber, and some of the last bits of calabrese and a good picking of raspberries. From the garden, I've harvested my coriander for seed, which I've hung to dry in the shed, and apples for apple crumble (and nice it was too !) and french beans. On Sunday we went foraging and picked sloes and blackberries, which it will be my evening's work to make into something  

Dandelion wrote:I have a sad story.

A few years ago I planted a pear tree - it's a family tree, and has a Williams and a Conference grafted on to the same stock. This is the first year it has fruited. It has four pears: I have been regularly assessing the pears to check for ripeness, and had decided that they were still much too hard to pick. Yesterday I went to look, and discovered that three of the pears had been blown off in the wind we had, and had been eaten by something!  

Someone at school brought in a huge bag of pears last week, from a tree in their garden, and asked us to help ourselves. I ended up with far more pears than I'd lost!

As the weather is forecast to get much colder with possible frost I've harvested my squashes. I've managed 11 Uchiki Kuris off 2 plants - a couple of small ones but mostly about 8" diameter and 12 butternuts (Hawk) off 2 plants - the majority pretty small but a couple of decent size. I've done Hawk before & they have very small seed cavities so even the smallest fruits give a reasonable amount of flesh.

Picked all the rest of my outdoor tomatoes yesterday, regardless of their ripeness. I think the plants are now succumbing to blight and the rapidly cooling weather. It's been my best outdoor tomato crop in several years, and I think growing blight resistant varieties may have helped.

Still picking a few tomatoes out the greenhouse, and chillies, and the peppers are ripening at last (those that have survived the snails). They are easily the best peppers I have ever grown - lovely chunky, thick-walled fruits.

And I'm still picking courgettes and a very few autumn raspberries.

Two courgettes! Also a few greenhouse tomatoes and peppers.