Harvest Monday - PSB at last! And winter salads finishing

There's a lot of green this week, it's quite surprising. The winter salads are all starting to go to flower so it's time to pick most of them in bulk and let some go to seed.

Corn salad sows itself all over my allotment plot so there's masses to pick at the moment. The stems have started to elongate as it heads towards flowering. But the stems are still nice and soft, and I find it also makes them easier to harvest, as the upper leaves have less soil-splash on them. I cut the whole plant off just above soil level (to leave the roots in the ground to compost) and then simply cut off all the top leaves in one go. 

The winter purslane I sowed in August and planted out early autumn didn't do amazingly well on the allotment (but was excellent undercover in the lean-to greenhouse at home). It was time to clear the allotment plants and get a small harvest. With all the rain we've been having, there were plenty of tiny slugs at the base of the plants, so it was good to clear these onto the compost heap too. I've also cleared all the purslane from the lean-to because aphids had started to run-riot. Out on the plot the other day I did notice ladybirds becoming active so I'll have to coerce some home to munch on the aphids.

After getting severely munched by pigeons during the snowy weather (the mesh had come off), my purple sprouting broccoli has finally made a comeback, yes! It's funny because I've recently sowed this year's PSB which has germinated nicely. I think it's worth a year's wait to get this tasty harvest though. 

I harvested an even larger load of corn salad on Sunday. That'll probably be the last that I pick and the rest will go to flower. They have beautiful tiny white flowers. This all went into a big batch of pesto (with cashews).

And there was a second harvest of PSB as well.

We got the train up to Cromer on the north Norfolk Coast yesterday, and did a lovely circular walk. Right near the start of the walk, past an area of woodland, the wild garlic (ramsons) was looking delicious so we picked a few leaves (as far from the path as possible to avoid potential dog wee!)

We had a few leaves last night, mixed in with the corn salad pesto, and with extra toasted walnuts on top. I meant to steam some PSB too but forgot, so may have that with poached egg tonight.

We've been trying to get a few walks in recently because we're having a couple of days walking with Jan's mum at the end of the month and need to get our walking-legs in shape. Yesterday's walk via Felbrigg Hall (National Trust) was really lovely and really felt like an escape from our usual day-to-day activities.

Jan's fancy photo of the hall.

We did a bit of geocaching too, which was fun. There was a cache hidden at the base of this incredible beech tree.

And I found a new home for us. Maybe it's a bit draughty. 

At home, I've been gradually getting through the seed sowing. Most things are done now and germination is on the whole ok, phew, though I've still got beetroot to go. Then there'll be some things to sow a second crop of later, plus direct sow beans etc straight into the garden and allotment in May and June. My tomatoes are about half the size they were at the same time last year, the light has been so poor. But flowers are starting to appear on my Autumn-sown broad beans and on the fruit trees. Looks like I might get some plums this year, mmm.

Thanks for reading and sorry for being a bit sporadic with posts recently...life seems particularly busy at the moment! I'm linking in with

Harvest Monday, kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.