What are you harvesting today?

I've learnt few things about cherries today - having ended up with 4lb in the fridge (and having a husband who doesn't like cherry jam) I needed to be lateral. The cherries are desperately sour, but I've discovered that they are prized in the States, so have tapped into a rich vein of recipes and tips. I've frozen most of them in sugar, cooked some to have with ice cream for tea (with lots of sugar in, I'm afraid), and also tried a variation on an almond cake, but putting a big handful of chopped sour cherries in before baking. It worked very well. I also discovered, having bought a cherry pitting tool for £5.95, that a paper clip works just as well, and avoids the blisters which were beginning to form as I pitted the fourth pound of fruit!

Nobody's mentioned the C word yet (that is courgettes not Christmas).

Slow to get going this year but have harvested my first one (from the seed swap) - no laughing now please

I did just sneak a mention of the 'c' word on the list of stuff in my veggie curry. We are not awash quite yet, but tonight's dinner plan is a courgette tart that looks a bit like a pizza but with puff pastry, pesto and courgette and garlic as a topping.

The yellow courgettes look quite pretty, don't they. A mix with a dark green one would be nice.

One year I grew a courgette called someting like "Yellow ball" - it was supposed to be about the size of a tennis ball. Some got forgotten until they were the size of a melon. But cut in half, roasted then put back in the oven filled with a pre-cooked beef chilli and a cheese topping, they made a really good Mexican evening.

I should mention again the Dragon's Egg cucumbers from the seed swap. I have them in my cold frame at the allotment; they are scrambling everywhere and producing nicely; very refreshing fruits. Looks like a "grow again" variety to me.

It was I who put the dragons egg in the seed swap. I grew them last year & really rated them. I kept back a couple of seeds from the packet but they failed to germinate as did my other cucumber seeds. I ended up having to buy a couple of plants. The seeds came from Heirloom Tomatoes.

As well as Dragon's eggs, I have a bit of a glut of cabbage Precoce de Louviers, and some wonderful heads of calabrese that are the biggest I've ever grown. I've had to give some of each away as they came all at once though. Hopefully the calabrese will throw out secondary heads or spears to keep us supplied for a while. I think the trailer load of manure that went on the lotty in spring was a much needed boost to my plot.

Now, if my courgettes had come in at that size last year, I would have grown them again. Only had two plants - a round and a long - but far too much for us.
Have been really pleased with the broad beans, picked the last lot today.

As well as the seed swap red cabbage I mentioned on another thread, today I harvested red and yellow peppers, chilies and Italian rocket for pizza topping, potatoes, carrots, calabrese and the first few Greek Gigandes beans. Quite excited about these; I am very partial to Gigandes Plaki and this year with a bit of luck I can do them with the authentin variety of bean.

Kohlrabi - tasty bulb but atrocious leaves full of caterpillar holes. It always makes me laugh when I read that the leaves can be stir-fried,as mine always end up looking disgusting!

We had my Victoria plum (yes, singular) in a crumble today. I put it in with some of last year's plums that I had frozen in syrup.

Have been eating freshly picked sweetcorn - yum! Was wobbly for quite a while but I think the roots got to the bottom of the raised bed and discovered two years' worth of chicken poo after which it took off like crazy.
Far too many cucumbers and not as tasty as I'd hoped though quite nice.
Sungold tomatoes are ripening fast, dog is enjoying them straight off the plants. Luckliy my main lot are in the no-dog zone.
Spring onions finally got big enough to harvest - has taken forever.
Shallot and garlic harvest very good. Golden Gourmet are eye-watering to use.
Wish I'd grown French beans. Glad I din't bother with runners though one plant might have been nice.

Cucumber (greenhouse) in September! There has been an absence of fruit for about 3 weeks but one plant has started producing again & there are 6 coming on very nicely - cut one today.

This really is a first for me to get cucumbers beyond the first early flush. I will be repeating the combination of self watering pots (thank you Freebird) and high nitrogen feed (thank you Chilli Head) next year.

I picked another Paper Lantern chilli today.  Getting hotter    Fortunately I have now re-gained most of the chilli tolerance that I lost a bit when C-H Jnr was younger and I wasn't eating so much hot food.  Back to being a proper Chilli Head

I'm planning to use these hot ones for hot sauce; I do use quite a lot of it over the year. I have also got a pretty good haul of Pasilla and Jalapeno ripening nicely.  These I will preserve by smoking in the kettle barbecue to make Pasilla de Oaxaca and Chipotle respectively.  These will be for Mexican dishes;  I've got some Ancho and Mulato - large, mild, fleshy red and brown Mexican chillies - to dry for winter mole.  The latter add a lovely rusty colour to the dishes.

There's still quite a few to eat fresh though; I may have to chop some up and freeze to have fresh chillies over winter too.

I've been tidying up at the allotment today,  and picking over the remaining crops: red cabbage, carrots, broccoli and the first celeriac.

I also brought back a couple more butternut squashes,  some beans - Greek gigandes and french bean soissons which are now drying in front of the woodburner.  

Amongst the beans I pulled up a volunteer potato.  Despite the blight on other potatoes,  this plant was completely healthy.  Five perfect red potatoes  came up with it,  no slug damage at all. Funny thing is, it is years since I grew a red potato,  so no idea where it came from.  I am tempted to ignore the usual advice and plant these again next year - they seem to be very resilient !

Ho,ho - spuds are one of the few things that have done well for me this year. I only did first and second earlies and harvested my last row of Kestrel yesterday. They are excellent. I'm also overdosing on carrots which have done well despite the fact that I didn't get round to thinning half of the rows. I've got big bunches of really good sized carrots in the unthinned rows. I haven't used a cabbage yet but have some passable looking one's which went in quite late after the great brassica failure.

Sneaked down to the greenhouse today to pick some of my remaining chillies. 4 paper lantern, the odd sweet nardello, a couple of ohnivec and pasilla, and 40 Bolivian rainbow for the freezer. Still a fair few chillies left to pick yet

STILL picking chillies in mid December. Might be a record ! What's more, they seem to be getting hotter !

Lifted the last of the carrots at the allotment. I know they ought to be OK in the ground, but I fear the slugs might get hungry. Only some parsnips and leeks lefty there now, oh, and some not terribly good celeriac - it seems kind of "wooly" in texture. Don't know what went wrong; it looked to be growing well enough.

I've still got celeriac in the ground - I've only lifted enough for one meal so far so I'm hoping the rest will be OK for a bit. While the ones I cooked weren't woody, they were oddly flat when I dug them up, with little growth having gone on under ground. I'm blaming the exceptionally dry weather we had in the Midlands over the summer.

I left some beetroot in the ground, reading that they would be OK in mild weather. They roasted nicely in the oven this evening (with some rosemary) and weren't at all woody. The only fault was that algae had started to grow on the skin because of all the rain!!

I normally harvest my beetroot in autumn, and store it in tubs of spent compost - mostly so that we get to eat them rather than the wildlife. This year they are starting to grow, but still taste ok.

Today I picked Italian rocket. Not at all normal to be picking it now, but it is producing fresh growth, so may as well make the most of it.

I've still got plenty of carrots in the ground, the slugs seem to concentrate their efforts on particular ones and leave the rest alone. I've been digging some very long parsnips too but the tops of my parsnips are always manky and brown - is that canker? I've always assumed so. If I cut the brown bit off the rest is just fine.

Sounds like it may be canker. Normally rusty brown decay, mostly at the surface. I sometimes get streaks of brown inside too - don't know if that is related or a separate disease.

What parsnips do you grow ? I have pretty much settled on the good old Tender and True. I tried a few of the modern F1's without significant advantage. One of them (Albion ?) gave me blisters all over my arms when I brushed against the foliage whilst weeding, I've heard of the effect but never experienced it with Tender and True.

I've grown lots of different varieties, f1 & non f1 and have grown from saved seed too but I don't think I have ever had them without canker. Reading about it, one of the possible causes is drought - ha ha. Also too rich a soil or damage from hoeing, but I don't hoe near them. I think in my case it's most likely to be excessive wet. I have heard that Gladiator is the most resistant, don't know if I have ever grown that one but perhaps I should give it a go (I have done tender and true).

My last two parsnips, and a few leeks. I have just four leeks left in the allotment now, then that's it We never seem to have enough leeks.

I'm on my last row of carrots - one or two split but mostly undamaged and a good size even though they didn't get thinned.

Leeks and chives. I have lots of leeks left and no freezer space, so it will be leek and potato soup a couple of times a week unless the leeks go to seed first....

I'm a bit envious. I dug my last few leeks at the weekend; they are a favourite vegetable in my family.

Welcome unmadebed - if you want to there's a place to say hello and tell us what you're interested in here - entirely optional though, you're very welcome to just dive in !