Monday 1 September 2014

Harvest Monday - lotsa veg

Hey it's been good this week. The weather warmed up and we've had some rain too, to get things growing. It started a bit slow but here's most (but not all) of the harvests, in order through the week, starting on Tuesday....

Sleepy clown. The dwarf French beans are on their way out, this was the last of my pickings for the year.
Blackberries are running down. Eyebrows are hazel nut windfalls.
The gherkins have put on another spurt.
My first ever little calabrese harvest (two spears!). The little leaves are vine leaves for the gherkin pickle making. Also the first load of plums.
 
I've been foraging elderberries to make jelly
Back garden beans and parsley seeds
Hmm not sure what happened with this photo! Second big bowl of plums and a lonely bean.
Back garden harvest, beans and toms. Still lots of beans to come and we have a new fridge freezer arriving later this week so at last I can start preserving more! Our current freezer only has two drawers

Plum chutney being made...now only have to wait a few weeks for it to mature
I tried my third lot of pickled (fermented) gherkins...the upper gherkins in the jar had gone all soft, I'm not sure why, I think I made them in the same way. They didn't smell any different either....just hoping the rest of my million jars don't go the same way.

But to end on a positive, I made a plum cake (see previous post) that turned out well, yippee! Recipe from Shaheen at Allotment 2 Kitchen.

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's dandelions

 

 

6 comments:

  1. That is a lotta veg and that cake looks yummy! We are getting another freezer soon too - just waiting for a sale. When my husband asked where we were going to put it, I just shrugged my shoulders and told him I would find a spot somewhere - a bigger veg garden necessitates a larger freezer..everyone knows that ;)

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  2. Ooh, yes, the new freezer is very exciting, over double the capacity! Been meaning to order it for weeks but we didn't get round to it til the weekend...and it was £80 cheaper, so there's sometimes a silver lining to procrastination! Now we just have to work out the logistics of swapping from one freezer to the other :/
    Hehe, hope you manage to find one and squeeze it in.

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  3. Lovely harvests. And that cake looks so delicious. I don't think I could live without my freezer We picked one bigger than I thought I'd need, but then I fill it to the brim every year. I wish I'd gotten the next size up.

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    1. That's because your harvests are so good Daphne! :)

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  4. We have nuts on our Kent cob and are trying to decide when we should pick them - before the squirrels.

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    1. I've picked most of mine now, my first year for them. They came away quite easily, I just left a couple that wouldn't 'give'. We don't seem to get squirrels, though I know they're nearby but we do have jays. Maybe we don't have squirrels.....yet.

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