Harvest Monday

This week has involved (surprise)....more strawberries...that's over 18kg picked now. I've been harvesting my friend's as well and he's had about the same amount, crikey. There are still more to go so it looks like I'm going to beat last year's 19kg. I had to take my trolley down to the plot last time I harvested them all as they're too heavy to carry back (4 big tubs at a time, phew).

 

As well as more baby chard leaves, I've picked the first lot of bigger leaves. These are from self sown chard I transplanted a few weeks back, as single plants under wigwams for cucumbers to (hopefully) climb around when they finally get going. In the meantime the chard plants seem to have liked the space and horse poo. We had some of the chard with scrambled egg and some tonight with posh baked beans (cook-up a few different veggies like chard, mushroom, onion, garlic, and then add a tin of baked beans for protein and sauce - easy)

And the posh baked beans went nicely with some of these potatoes

I'm just back from the plot actually - I've had a busy few days and not had much time to get down there apart from for a few slug patrols and strawberry harvests. The other day I noticed that my redcurrants were ripe but that some had been stripped off the strigs (presumably by the blackbird I saw nearby). I was worried the blackbird might have been really tucking in, not leaving me with many (I love fresh redcurrants, yum). So tonight, on first glance it seemed like that may have been the case, but when I began lifting branches for a lookee underneath, a mass of currants was revealed, hurray.

 

My raspberries have also started ripening (possibly my favourite fresh berry), so I've been munching away on them (none have made it home yet, sorry Jan). But tomorrow I'm planning a big harvest day - strawberries, redcurrants, raspberries, broad beans and....my first tiddler courgettes, just about big enough to be worth harvesting.

 

And it won't be long before the gooseberries are ready, I found a couple of juicy ones tonight, though the rest are still a bit hard. Plus I spied my first couple of teeny runner bean pods. Despite all the losses to slugs and snails, it's starting to feel like things are picking up now...

 

Oh, but I have found the small caterpillars of the diamond-backed moth on some of my brassicas. They munch away causing a sort of lace effect, so it's easy to notice if you have them, but it's a bit laborious to go round checking all the leaves. You can give the plants a shake and the caterpillars drop themselves down on a thread, making them easier to deal with (i.e. Squish or whatever). But do check the leaves for the cocoons as well. They're quite hard to spot and often seem to be tucked in along a vein making them even harder to notice.

 

There don't seem to be many cabbage white butterflies around this year so it looks as though the moths will be the pest to watch out most for on the brassicas.

 

In other naturey news, the cockchafer beetles were all out last night at dusk....they're quite big and very noisy (buzzy), so are easy to see. I expect the bats are having a feast on them.

 

Thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres

 

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