Harvest Monday - summer harvests

So the lovely yellow tumbler tomatoes in the lean-to greenhouse at home are coming along nicely. We've had quite a few handfuls like this. These types of toms seem to ripen earlier than the cordon varieties, so growing a couple of plants gives an earlier crop. It's also quite surprising the number of fruits from relatively small plants. I have issues with the other tomatoes though...I don't normally get any problems (apart from a bit of blossom end rot) but I think there's a virus going through some of the plants, wah.

The little yellow toms are nice in sarnies (gap left down the middle for easier slicing sandwiches in half without contents immediately falling out). Used a bit of purple basil and parsley in these too. The parsley in self sown in the back garden.

The courgettes are still coming steadily. I realised I got the variety wrong before...it's actually coucourzelle (apparently an unusual Italian heirloom variety). I really like the flavour, and it slices well.

A few more larger ones.

Aaand another (plus little cucumber)

The first couple of gherkin fruits were ready too. We actually ate these like cucumbers (peeled) as a snack rather than fermenting. They had a nice flavour.

There were more crystal lemon cukes plus even more courgettes and burpless evergreen cukes. (These are from the other day, I've harvested more today as well).

 

I have masses of self sown chard, I like picking the soft young leaves and making them into pesto (slightly cook the leaves first).

I add a bit of basil too...and for the last batch I used toasted cashews rather than walnuts.

The pesto is lovely with pasta, or spread in sandwiches.

Or with a Sunday nut roast....these were the last of my early potatoes, and were delicious mixed with the pesto. I stuck a few of the tumbler toms in for roasting too. And the nut roast (made by Jan), included parsley and rosemary from the backgarden and allotment.

Tonight we had the rest of the nut roast with Nero kale and a courgette lightly steamed together (and only just picked this evening too), more of the pesto, homemade marrow chutney and home-sprouted lentils....not bad for a Monday night dinner, yum. I'm enjoying having kale so early but hope it keeps cropping into the winter...there are plants at different stages of growth, so hopefully the smaller ones (only recently planted out) will spread out the harvests.

Oh I also made a gooseberry cake yesterday using a different recipe to the one I made recently but it didn't turn out that well! And after a huge harvest the fresh raspberries are finally running out but we're enjoying the few that are still cropping (and have frozen loads).

 

I was hoping to share some photos of the Bishop's Garden, near Norwich Cathedral, which had an open day yesterday. But it chucked it down with rain all afternoon, so we didn't get there in the end (we actually got halfway there when the heavy rain started, so stood under a tree for ages with our brollies, watched some canoeists paddling by on the river getting rather wet, then we took shelter in the nearby bowling alley arcade, played some arcade games, rain wasn't stopping so we soggily came home.). Not quite the naturey planned afternoon but it was fun anyway. Will have to keep an eye out for the next open garden session.

 

Waffling over, thanks for reading this week, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday and Eves Hill Veg Co

For a lot of us here in the UK the weather's become quite cool, with frosts and even possibly snow in the next couple of days. I saw a graphic of the cold weather moving down the east side of the country, right over Norwich, yikes. So this afternoon I checked on the potatoes - I could earth up the maincrops to protect the little bit of leafy growth above soil level, but the earlies were too tall already, with a lot of growth poking out and not enough soil remaining to rake up and over them. So instead I put some low hoops over the two rows and draped over a sheet of enviromesh, making sure none of it drooped onto the plants, as that can encourage frost scorch too, especially if the material touching the plants is wet. I did something similar with the strawberries, which are in full flower now, so fingers crossed.

 

The other day I noticed one of my garlics had keeled over a bit, so I forked it up to see if anything was obviously wrong below soil level. I couldn't tell if there were the beginnings of white rot, it didn't look too bad, but I'll keep an eye on the others. We could still eat this garlic though, including the stem, which is soft at this stage.

I like seeing the beginnings of cloves forming

It went into this hotpot that Jan made, tasty

In the lean-to I've still got some lettuces growing and a bit of rocket

In the freezer there's still lots of berries. I used some up in a couple of blackberry cakes, having been inspired by Dave's (Our Happy Acres) pudding last week. I forgot to take a photo until they were nearly all gone, and in this part of the cake the berries had dropped to the bottom, so not showing off my baking skills very well...tasted nice though.

Out in the paved front yard I have some tubs of plants, including a bit of mint. The mint does quite well out there as the yard faces north so it keeps cool usually. I had this as a mint tea...just add hot water and leave to steep for a couple of minutes. You might be able to spot some tiny aphids, which I did (mostly) wash off first.

I've had an exciting delivery....books! I had a voucher for the Green Shopping website, where there's loads of cool things. As I've been reading online about no-dig methods for a while, I thought it would be good to have something physical to refer to. I foresee many happy hours of browsing these beauties. I don't like getting many new things / more possessions but these were a welcome exception. I've also got my eye on some copper tools but I think they'll have to wait for birthday and Christmas combined.

Out at Eves Hill, the spring bed prep continues. Here we removed half a bed of overwintered chard and sowed dwarf French beans, then topped with mulch. The bed next door has broad beans sown a couple of weeks ago. There was quite a bit of nice new growth on some of the chard, so the best bits went to the veg bags whilst the rest came to us volunteers, yummy. (Some of it went in that hot pot and we also made a lovely chard & sorrel soup, with sorrel from the farm too).

Spring-sown salads are getting planted out, with fleece protection

The many trays of seedlings are doing nicely, like these in the polytunnel

Kohl rabi in the polytunnel looks good too

As do these lettuces

The busy seed-sowing table

I should be heading out there this Wednesday and also Saturday, when the veg farm celebrates its first birthday (there will definitely be cake), what a lot has been achieved in a year!

 

I'm running a bit late tonight as there was a Norfolk Organic Group talk on the 'Secrets of the soil' this evening...lots of interesting info...my main takeaway thoughts are: protect and feed the soil (soil life), mulch mulch mulch (preferably with organic matter), disturb the soil (and soil life) as little as possible (this also ties in with no dig), healthy soil life = healthy plants. When we harvest plants we're removing nutrients etc from the system, so it's important to replace them with compost, whether that be well-rotted manure or homemade compost etc (and preferably applied as a mulch rather than digging in). I never have enough compost, sigh!

 

And on that note, I'll bid you goodnight. Thanks for reading, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday - on repeat

So this week I've been picking lots more brassica flowers and chard. I also had a big bag of sorrel from Eves Hill Veg Co, as it was time to clear the whole overwintered crop. And as I lack any imagination I've had pretty much the same meal four times - all of the above, chopped and sautéed...

That's right, stick an egg in it, my usual (eggs from our friends' hens)

Jan was out three of those nights so she only had it once, I think she'd have been a bit fed up otherwise. As a slight variation, we had noodles one time too.

Lunches have included overwintered lettuce from the lean-to, here with home-fermented carrot and roasted beetroot humus (which Jan made).

Talking of the lean-to, there are five shelves of seedlings coming along. I hope they're OK over the next few nights, which are meant to be pretty cold.

The peas are looking alright too

Down on the allotment the red currants are already forming

And the two dwarf apple trees at the end of the plot are now in flower together, hooray (as long as they don't get ruined by frost). I've earthed-up the early potatoes which were peeking through, and covered some of my strawberries which are in flower, so if we do get a frost or two hopefully some will make it through.

My saskatoon bush is in full flower, it looks lovely (the swing is sadly not mine, it's in the garden next door)

Lots of tasty berries to come hopefully (they're a bit like blueberries).

So, aside from the frost risk, things are going ok at the moment...lots of couch-grass weeding still ongoing though, in preparation for all those seedlings which'll need to go out in the next few weeks.

 

Thanks for reading...I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres

 

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Harvest Monday - sunshine! And Eves Hill Veg Co update

We've had some incredible weather this week, sometimes even too hot to be out on the plot. Jan's been helping a bit more too...still lots to do but progress is being made. With the longer days, I've been tending to go down late afternoon for a couple of hours or so, after finishing work.

 

The overwintered chard plants that self seeded last year have been putting on lots of new growth - I might even have a big harvest session then freeze some, because I need to be clearing the beds where they're growing.

I picked a load of brassica flowers too - it's not just purple sprouting broccoli that are tasty - here are red cabbage, self-sown white cabbage, kale and Brussels sprout flowers and a few psb shoots. Ahem, we had these as a side dish to chip shop chips, so kind of healthy?

A previous PSB harvest, topped with poached eggs...

We had some of the chard with leek, plus broad beans from the freezer (and mushrooms) - a tasty quick meal. Tonight we had chard with another quick meal 'posh baked beans' - which I've mentioned in the past - basically a tin of baked beans with added veggies. Nice and easy.

Broad beans, chard and leek

Out in the lean-to, the tomato plants are fairing well. The older leaves have gone a bit pale (cold?) but the new growth looks healthy.

I've potted-on the peppers this week, they look good in their larger pots. We also had a big seed sowing session, sat out in the garden, for sweetcorn (into loo roll tubes), cucumbers, brassicas, lettuces and leeks. Still a few more to sow but that's the bulk of the April seeds done. I'd already sown the squashes and basil (which has just started germinating today).

Pepper seedlings

Down on the plot there are some lovely flowers around, including the Autumn-sown broad beans (super Aqua dulce)...

Rosemary...

Apples nearly out (red currants in the background)...

Blackcurrants...

So delicate...

I actually have a few plum flowers this year as well, so fingers crossed for some fruit. It looks like a good year for gooseberries too.

 

On Wednesday I volunteered at Eves Hill Veg Co again, there was a good group of us so we covered a wide range of jobs, including sowing big ol' trays of various seeds (I did some leeks), weeding, direct-sowing outside, managing the wildflower areas, planting out lettuces and so on. I had a go with the wheel hoe, to clear the paths, quite satisfying though difficult on the really overgrown paths.

 

The older polytunnel full of salad and seeds (polytunnel still a bit wonky after damage from storm Doris)

I found one of the trays I'd previously sown - doing ok, phew

The new, big polytunnel is holding up well (still needs its doors at some point)

More seedlings inside

And some lettuce catch crops before the tomatoes go in later (kohl rabi in the background)

If I'm not working this Wednesday I'll head up there to see how it's all going - a lot can happen in a week, especially with three new trainees getting stuck in - good on them.

 

Thanks for making it this far down the page, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres

 

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