Tasty Harvest

RaspberriesYesterday I visited the allotment to pick some raspberries which are just beginning to ripen.Our Autumn fruiting raspberries are ripening at the same time?!
There is a lot of wind damage with broken twigs bearing fruit but there was still enough to bring home and leave lots to redden fully, although the torrential rain all day today is not helping!
Home Guard potatoes: I dug one tuber last week on the first row of Home Guard which had tiny marble sized potatoes underneath, we have had quite a bit of rain and we watered and gave the first 2 drills a liquid sea weed feed also.
I dug the first tuber on the second row yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find all of these underneath!Much larger than last week maybe due to the attention they got?They went into the pot and tasted more than OK, delicious!
We will leave them now until next week and hopefully this rain will encourage them to grow a little more.
We had a few flowers on our Duke of York's but none on the Home Guard so far even though there are potato blossoms all around the other plots.One of the other plotters said he was digging his even though none of his had flowered either but like ours had gone in on St Patrick's day and the 23rd (Bonfire Night/St John's Eve) would be their picking date.

CarrotsWe planted carrot seed in the blue bin in the unheated greenhouse back in Spring. I pulled a few of them yesterday which while not very large were long and a good size, more should be ready for picking in a few days.They are ready before the main crop and no sign of the dreaded carrot fly or any disfigurement as they are grown in compost only.

Onions:Some of our onions seem to be giving themselves up!We had a very dry Spring and maybe that has something to do with it.They were put in around Feb, they grew fine for a while but then slowed down and do not look like bulking up too much at this stage as the leaves are beginning to turn yellow.One or two of them are lying on the soil out of the ground every few days?

Artichoke We have had about 7 or 8 good sized ones so far with smaller ones still to come on.I cooked my usual way in boiling salted water and dipped in butter.
I have discovered they make ideal TV snack food, just take the plate on my lap and tear, dip and eat. No worries about table manners!

Dinner yesterday was all home grown veg and the raspberries went into a Raspberry Roulade for dessert. Posh name for a swiss roll with fresh cream and raspberries rolled inside!