What are you harvesting today?

Isn't it weird? - mine won't eat raspberries at all!!

Very weird. These girls won't eat cherry tomatoes yet my other girls loved them!

No chance of me giving away raspberries to chickens!

freebird wrote:No chance of me giving away raspberries to chickens!

I don't have lots to spare - it's just when there's an odd one or two which are ripe, not worth carrying down to the house. I eat them myself now!!

I picked my first Brussel sprouts this week. They're very tasty but not as big as I expected them to be in comparison with my other brassicas which are all in the bed that had copious amounts of muck last year.

More salad leaves from coldframes, 3 strawberries from greenhouse, also 16 peppers ranging in size from golf ball to large tennis ball, many of which were almost ripe.

Yesterday for Christmas dinner I had carrots, sprouts and red cabbage from my exceedingly soggy garden to accompany a home reared chicken.

Yesterday's strawberries may have been red but had absolutely no flavour. Think I will cut off any new developing ones to give the plants a rest.

I always cut back the foliage and chuck the baskets outside for the winter.  They like a good bit of cold and frost - that's why Scotland is one of the major strawberry growing areas in the UK.

Oh ok. Thanks for that Ploshkin.

I am still harvesting carrots, of which I have a good crop. There are still parsnips and kale.

Hello frankbeswick. I can see you're a long-time member but as I'm relatively new I'd like to ask if you grow under cover, in raised beds, no-dig, allotment or what?

I have two allotment plots near where I live in North West England, an established one and a new one that I am in process of getting ready. I use a combination of ordinary beds, raised beds and greenhouses [glasshouses.]

In the raised beds I grow peas, carrots, parsnips, and on the new plot,on which I have put larged raised beds, I will grow onions, potatoes, and brassicas. On the ordinary beds I grow onions, leeks, potatoes,salads and brassicas. I grow rhubarb, apples, plums and have just planted some dwarf pears. I grew no beans last year, but will grow them this year,planting at the end of May after the threat of frost has gone.I grew pumpkins, but am swapping over to butternut squash.

In the greenhouses I grow tomatoes and peppers.

I am thinking of turning the rear of the new plot to soft fruit.

If you have any further questions, just ask.

I forgot to say, I use minimum digging, but reject total non-dig as I think that some digging is necessary at times. Nothing is completely banned, but some things are preferred.

I'm harvesting carrots from the garden which I am sharing with the slugs.  I also have carrots in the polytunnel which are pristine.  I have Savoy cabbages with very slimy outers but the middles are  still ok and Brussel sprouts that I seem to also be sharing with the wildlife.
I do seem to have cracked the winter squash storage.  I have 3 tall, upright fridges and freezers in the boiler shed.  I put newspaper on top and spread the squashes out on the paper.  So far every one I have used has been perfect.

I have two dwarf pear trees, frank, about three years old, I think. I shall be interested to hear how yours get on. The Comice flowered prolifically this year and I let about 6 fruit remain. They took ages to even think about ripening and eventually, in October, I picked one to take indoors. After three weeks it hadn't progressed much. We then had a very blustery night which must have blown the other fruit down and, by the time I realised what had happened, the local wildlife had carried them off!
I am also very interested in Butternut squash and it looks as if you and Ploshkin will be able to give tips!

My butternut squash are mostly still good - a couple succumbing to rot at the stalk end, but have plans to use them in soup before they get any worse. This is my first year growing squash, and opted to store them in my calligraphy studio, which just has frost-protection level of heating.

Still completely delighted by my fresh salad leaves, having gathered more today.

Sounds as if I'll have plenty of B.Squash expertise to call on!
Glad the leaves are a success, freebird.

I thought the trick to storing squash was to get the skin cured well. Harvest them fully ripe, leave in the sun or a warm place for the skin to harden. Then I line them up along the top of the kitchen cupboards - they don't need to be kept cool. Pumpkins don't store so long like this, but butternuts last get well - we've only just started using ours.

My dwarf pears only were planted this season, so there is little yet to report. As for my expertise with squash, I have been taking some storage ideas from Ploshkin! That's the great thing about horticulture, you can always learn something more from someone.

The only thing I harvested this week was some swedes, which were an utter disgrace. I think it was because last year was so dry here, and even though they were watered a couple of times a week, they must have needed more. Just to give you an idea - six swedes produced enough swede mash for two of us!! They were small, pathetic and not very round; more like carrots

Today more salad leaves from the cold frames. I notice that, despite the cold, the plants are starting to grow away more strongly - I presume this is in response to the increasing day length. These are one of the most worthwhile crops I have ever grown. Freshly picked salad leaves at this time of year seems nothing short of miraculous.

Remind me what you grew, Freebird?

Spinach (a winter hardy variety), endive, land cress, lambs lettuce, salad rocket and claytonia. The winter hardy lettuce failed to germinate three times. I also have a salad burnet plant which is pretty much evergreen, and adds a nice cucumber flavour to the mix.

That sounds like a good mix. I've only eaten salad burnet and rocket - what do the others taste like?

Land cress is very, very peppery and I don't much like it on its own, but a little is good in the mix. I have grown far too much of it (each variety had 1/2 cold frame, about 2 ft square). Next time I will just grow a 2 ft row.

Lambs lettuce is very mild, spinach is well, spinach. Claytonia is faintly peppery

Endive probably has a stronger flavour as it matures - they may be bitter. I think they needed to be sown earlier than September as they are very small. The leaves of my variety are pale yellow-green, so look pretty in the mix.

They are all harvested as baby or medium sized leaves.