Harvest Monday - summer harvests and gooseberry cake

On Tuesday I harvested all my spring-sown broad beans (Eleanora Express). Looking at the bed, I didn't think there were too many pods but working along each plant they added up to a decent amount. I harvest them by cutting each plant off at ground level (leaving the roots to decompose in the soil), then when I've got a few plants in a pile, go through snipping the pods off. I noticed a real difference in size and flavour of this variety compared to Super Aquadulce (which I grew over winter and harvested a while back). Eleanora express had a lot smaller beans but very sweet...lovely. I made a massive batch of hummus (pod the beans, boil, then use as you would chick peas. The Eleanora express skins were OK to leave on, whereas the super aquadulce were a bit tough and needed slipping off). There was enough hummus to freeze some, so we'll enjoy that later sometime.

This evening I picked a couple of courgettes from the allotment. I noticed the big one on Saturday but at that time it was quite small....two days later it was a fair bit larger! I also picked a small one the other day, which we had sliced thinly in sandwiches (with broad bean hummus of course).

Tonight I also harvested some Nero kale - I have some under netting, and the leaf stalks of one plant had been snapped a bit so I think a cat or fox had jumped on it. They were still in good condition to eat...first of this year's sowing to be eaten, yum. (Here I've removed the stalks already).

So after getting back from the plot I had a quick, rather late tea (9.15 pm) - one of my 'classic' meals - onion, garlic, courgette, kale, an egg in the middle, on toast. It was soo tasty and all the veggies homegrown (I've lifted a few small onions which had flopped over, the rest are still growing).

I've picked so much fruit this week...this is just some of it...

Jan helped on Saturday and did a marvellous job picking all these raspberries, which freed up my time to plant leeks and beetroot. The leeks went into the old broad bean bed.

We've been eating fresh berries and I've frozen a lot of the fruit, to eat later. But we were heading round to friends' yesterday so decided to make a gooseberry cake, based on the Waitrose recipe (but used a bit less sugar as the berries are a dessert variety). You make the cake mix, then pop the berries on top, which then sink in.

After baking for a while, add flaked almonds on top and bake a bit longer. Very tasty.

Oh I forgot, I've also lifted all my early potatoes, so I could plant out some more winter squashes in their place. Not very exciting but I'm hoping the squashes do well, to help provide winter meals. There's masses of chard too that I've been picking, lovely soft young leaves. I might pick a load and make a pesto. And there'll be another cucumber to pick tomorrow, from the back garden. Ooh, and a couple of yellow tumbler tomatoes, hooray.

 

I did go to the farm again on Wednesday (not for profit market garden) but it was very rainy so I didn't get any photos. We had a good session picking peas and lifting garlic though...quite good fun apart from the thistles!

 

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

 

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A tour around the allotment - part 2

So last week I took some photos on my day off on Wednesday, and shared my Allotment Tour Part 1. Now it's time for Part 2! The photos are from the same day so things've changed a bit since then but you get the idea.

Continuing around the far end, in my fruity area, I have a lovely red gooseberry bush (one of the first things I bought for the plot) you can see the pretty flowers here. It's covered in them! I'm not very diligent when it comes to pruning and tend to let it just grow all over the place. This does make picking the fruit tricky as the branches are very thorny, so I stick a load of canes or sticks into the ground and tie the branches to them, trying to space the branches out so I can reach through easier.

Red dessert gooseberry

I actually have 6 gooseberry bushes! The red one which I bought, a green one given to me by a friend at work (which over the winter I moved slightly and split into two plants) and 3 green ones from a plot neighbour, which I've put in along one of my boundaries. I think they're all dessert varieties, they're very sweet anyway.

In this photo you can see one near the base of the large redcurrant bush (centre) - this is one I moved and split as it was even closer to the currant before. The red gooseberry is just to the left of this. Next to the red gooseberry is a row of 3 different blueberry varieties that I bought last year.

Here's one of the blueberries, it has loads of flowers but the leaves are a bit red which I think I means it's not that happy, I probably need to increase the acidity of the soil around it more as blueberries like low pH. I have given them some mixed leafmold mulch and I only water with rainwater but I should try and find some pine leafmold or something.

Next up is one of my 'U' shaped raised beds, made out of pallets. Across one side of my plot there's a steep slope, so I made these to try and level it up. They're 3 pallets wide all the way round, with a space one pallet wide, two pallets deep, in the middle of the U. I have two of these U beds facing each other. They're a few years old now and starting to rot, plus the couch grass has got into the beds, so at some point I'll need to do something different here. They've been good while they lasted though.

In this piccie are some short rows of brassicas I've just sown, to transplant elsewhere later on. There's already some couch grass poking through, darn. To the left is where I've had most of my over wintered chard, leeks and corn salad, under some environmesh.

Here you can see the change in height, I'm standing in the lowest spot.

Just to left are two small beds of garlic, where I had my early potatoes last year. Today I moved the enviromesh over these to protect them from leek moth caterpillars

And beside that is my new hugel bed, currently under plastic. I've made it in a natural dip: first a layer of small logs from the buddliea cuttings, then smaller sticks, then bramble leafmold, then old compost from the tomatoes at home. I took photos as I went along, so will share them another time. I'm going to plant two squshes in it this year.

Up in one of my U beds I've left a couple of parsnips to go to seed. The flowers will be good for wildlife first and maybe I'll get self sown parsnips too. Under the enviromesh behind is most of my overwintered brassicas (mainly PSB and kale)

Here you can see it from the other side, near the top of my plot. I have a bramble hedge all the way down the left (East) side which produces lots of tasty blackberries for free!

Behind me are the two dwarf Apple trees I showed last time, here they are again as a reminder

I could go even more but that's enough for now, I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of the tour!

 

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Tonight's exploits....

It's amazing what you can achieve in an hour and a half....

Fruit mush for on our breakfast (blackberry and gooseberry with old fruit preserve added as a sweetener)

A quick curried squash (our first winter squash, picked young so has a thin skin):

Cooking up some beans:

Bottling up some gherkins and making a snack pot for tomorrow (home grown beans, toms, ridge cuke and crystal lemon cuke):

Oh and I made sandwiches with home grown toms, gherkin (the wild fermented batch that I'll report on another time) and basil, plus cheese (not homemade!) And here's a pic of today's curcurbit harvest...I've never had so many ( this is my first year for gherkins). There's also some vine leaves for adding to tomorrow's pickle:

Sorry about the shadows, our kitchen light is in the wrong place for taking photos on the worktop.

Right time for bed

 

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Gherkiny #2

Well I didn't get chance to take a pic of the next stage as it was late last night. I set out some more in salt last night too, to do a comparison, this time adding a vine leaf as this is meant to keep them crunchy. Here's a pic of the two jars, see the colour difference.... fresh green for the jar made tonight and loss of colour for yesterday's, with today's curcurbit harvest in front. So for both jars I rinsed the gherkins with clean water a couple of times, patted down with kitchen paper, and packed in to the jars, adding freshly picked dill and mustard seeds plus white wine vinegar. 

With today's harvest I'm trying natural fermentation, you use salted water instead of vinegar. This process is meant to produce healthy bacteria, which is inhibited by vinegar. Pics will follow.

Here's a pic of some of yesterday's harvest, more dwarf French beans and berries! Tonight after work I picked the last big batch of red gooseberries and gave them to a friend from work who's going to make wine :)

Very berry

I'm pretty sure I've used that title before but hey ho....Got an early crop of blackberries, this pic is from mid-week and have picked another tub since then with more to harvest tomorrow. Seems very early! There's also lots of gooseberries and red currants still to pick....a good year for fruit but the freezer is already very full, we're planning on buying a new fridge freezer soon with bigger freezer capacity!