Mini fruit harvest

We went out to the allotment this morning, the rain held off for most of the morning so we got some work done.

We had some fruits to harvest too! There were a few raspberries 1/4 lb (150grms) and some pencil thin sticks of rhubarb. I thought if I pulled them they might thicken up for next year?! I combined the two in a fruit tart, as there was not enough of either to do anything with on their own.

I made a sweet pastry base, softened the rhubarb with sugar first and added the raspberries and covered them with a sponge ( 4ozs marge, 4ozs sugar,2 eggs , 6ozs flour). the two tastes complemented each other nicely!

One of our gooseberry bushes had lots of berries nice deep red and ripe. We picked all of these 1lb (500grms). The second bush had 3 berries ! Bigger and pale green, almost white so we pulled these too.Have been looking up UKTV/Food for Gooseberry jam recipe. Got one, it is 1 lb berries plus 1 lb sugar and a knob of butter. Hopefully will get it done tomorrow. Have topped and tailed them in readiness.

I watered everything in the greenhouse, there are a few tomatoes on our plants but they are disappointing, hopefully a few more will appear. I pinched out the tops of the plants to stop any more growth and to let the plants concentrate on what is there.

The peppers are coming on but no sign of anything on them yet.

The courgette/cucumber plants in the small greenhouse are doing OK too

Our first courgette plant is producing at last! There were 3 little ones and one bigger one but the end of it was soft and discoloured so I discarded it. I think that happened the week of heavy rain when no one went out to water what was in the greenhouse!

I potted up the strawberry runners into small pots, I left them attached to the parent plant for the time being. I brought out compost in a bag to fill the pots, I weighted them in the pots with a few small stones as that was all I had to hand. I got 9 new plants in all and there will be a few more soon.

The British Queens second earlies look a bit yellowed and blighted despite being sprayed regularly. I dug up 3 tubers and the pops looked fine underneath the blight does not seem to have affected them so far. The girls were fascinated picking out the pops from the ground! I did not have my camera with me so could not take photos. There were tiny marble sized ones and a some normal ones. The smaller ones can be used as baby salad potaotes. Altogether there were 3lbs under the 3 stalks.