Today's harvest from the allotment, it was not very colourful until I added the carrots and beetroot from the raised bed.I cut down the Broad beans and stripped the pods which are filling the bag on the left.I just cut the stems leaving the roots to rot down in the ground as legume roots are rich in nitrogen.
There are 7 courgettes! Time to start making soup I think.
The carrots from the covered raised bed are really tasty, these are the Sutton's baby veg which we are using while young and tender, leaving others to mature.
We are coming to the end of our new potatoes, these are old reliable Home Guard, there are more beetroot and 2 nice size heads of Broccoli. A few weeks ago we didn't think we would have anything much to take home as we started so late but the heatwave helped and dare I say it , those nice soft summer showers!
The tomatoes in the lean to tunnel are just about OK, not a lot to harvest at all.I have almost stripped all the leaves and branches now as they don't need them to ripen and hopefully the plants might put on a spurt.
3 Kgs of Broad Beans when shelled yielded just over 1 kg of beans, which will be blanched and then shelled again before freezing. Broad Beans have a very short season in the summer, I have frozen them each year and instead of trying to use a glut of them I enjoy them during the winter months.The 2 jars of baby beets were pulled last week, they were roasted and just put into jars with red wine vinegar to be used almost immediately
One of the first heads of broccoli or to be more precise its Calabrese which is what we buy in Supermarkets as Broccoli. Calabrese has one central head while Broccoli is usually sprouted.This was one of the first be used last week,they have matured to a good size.
After cutting the head with a sharp knife, cut a cross in the stalk and give a liquid feed and with any luck we will have some tasty side shoots in a few weeks.
I sowed Golden Globe swede turnips and last Sat they were up nicely
Ditto the baby turnips which will be ready to harvest in approx 10 weeks from sowing. I also sowed more beetroot and carrots so a little good weather over the next few weeks should keep us in veg for another while.
I had noticed what looked like side shoots on the Sweet Corn so today's mission was to investigate. There were no cobs on them , I think they were just side shoots or suckers. I removed them from the plants they were on, hopefully the right thing to do!
The cleaned up Sweet Corn bed,there are now 2 good sized cobs on each plant as I also removed any small undeveloped ones from some of the plants as they would not mature at this stage and would only be using up the plants energy. If we get 2 cobs matured on each plant we won't be doing too badly as again they went in late due to us changing allotments and then the wet Spring.
A ladybird nestled in the top of one of the plants.
A lot of the onions were already bending so I bent over the remaining ones in this bed. I think the idea is that the onion does not waste energy on the green part and the bulbs bulk up a bit before pulling to dry in a couple of weeks.
Comments
What we grow ourselves tastes so much better than anything you buy in the shops untouched by chemicals!