Harvest Monday - autumny harvests and a glean

Brr, it's gone more autumny now, and a bit rainy today too. But there's still some reasonable harvests coming in. I managed to get a few much-needed hours in on the allotment before the rain came along....the paths are really overgrown so I'm working my way round them with the shears, and doing a bit of weeding in the beds as I go too. I also spotted some other jobs which need doing, like moving one of my dwarf apple trees, which is getting shaded out by the two hazels. I'll wait until it's dropped its leaves before I move it though.

 

In the back garden there's still some beans slowly growing, with a couple of pickings like this during the week:

And in the lean-to I've been picking pairs of peppers (both are sweet varieties. Oh the Quadratos (right hand side) didn't turn out to be hot like the first one, so I guess that was a fluke).

Just a few tomatoes this week

I've set aside some of the green tomatoes together, for ripening. I cut down most of the plants but there are still a handful left standing, that have some toms on too.

I did get a couple of cukes from the lean-to aswell, and there may be more if the plants hold out.

The rest of the harvests are from today at the allotment...some nice chard and beans. These are actually quite big but the scale is hard to judge.

A few last summer squashes (though I should get a couple more courgettes). The little yellow ones weren't going to get any bigger because the plant was past it, so I thought I may as well pick them.

And I decided to bring back all the butternuts...not as many as I was hoping for but they'll see us through for a while. The biggest one is around 4 - 5 lbs (my scales don't go up high enough)...it's a shame they didn't all get that big. I also dug up all my potatoes today...a nice big bagful, but no piccies!

Meals this week have included a nice stir fry by Jan (carrots aren't home grown unfortunately...I have none whatsoever).

And yesterday we roasted-up a big orange squash that I brought home from the allotment a few weeks back (might be a Hubbard variety?)

Before

After

(With garlic and pumpkin seeds)

With roastie potatoes and topped with a curried veggie mix (plus crushed chick peas)

The potatoes came from a glean I helped at on Saturday, just over in Cambridgeshire, in the fens (I brought home some damaged potatoes which wouldn't have been good to include in the proper harvest).

 

Here we have a rather large, rather flat field (typical of the fens). The soil had absolutely no stones in it...incredible. So, the potatoes had recently been harvested by a machine, and we were kindly allowed by the farmer to go through finding any that had been missed or dropped.

It wasn't a very quick process as the potatoes were quite spread out, but every now and then there was a good spot...it's funny how excited you can get hunting for potatoes.

We were a smaller group than the last time I helped, but we still harvested around half a tonne of food that would've gone to waste. Here's some of the loverly tatties....

Once again, there were so many more potatoes that could have been harvested if we'd had more volunteers, but at least we saved a good load from going to waste. The gleaning days are organised by Feedback, and the harvests are then distributed by FareShare. It's really worthwhile taking a look to see if they're active in your area...plus it's a nice day out with nice people. They're active in the U.S. as well as over here.

 

That's me for the week, thanks for reading. I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

 

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