Harvest Monday - including edamame/ soya beans!

We've had some good rain showers this week, the allotment and back garden have been loving it (me too, as it means I don't have to spend time watering, huzzah!). It also means that my water butt at home has been filling up, so the lean-to greenhouse crops can get a nice drink of rain water too.

I took a harvest of the greenhouse basil earlier in the week, I love it when the leaves are huge like this. There's still a bit of purple basil too, though I've left most of it to go to flower...the flowers are purple too!

Tomatoes have been epic, with bowl after bowl. All varieties are doing well apart from super-marmande which has been suffering from blossom end rot, though fingers crossed, a few of them are now setting fruit without signs of it, (probably as the temperatures have cooled a bit so the compost mix in the pots doesn't dry out as much). 

Tigerella is definitely my favourite at the moment. They look and taste amazing.

My four over-wintered chilli plants indoors have some lovely ripe fruits on too, so I've picked a few of them this week, to make tomato and chilli sauce.

This batch had basil in too. I've made five tubs-worth altogether, which have gone in the freezer, there's still just enough room to squeeze a few things in.

It's been a colourful week too, with the first beetroots harvested. The variety is cylindra, and I multi-sowed them in modules at home first, before planting out under two of my bean wigwams. I had little gem lettuces growing amongst them earlier in the year too, so that small area has been very productive. 

The purple blauhilde beans are still producing well too, they've enjoyed the rain and so I've harvested a few handfuls over the week.

A nice variety picked yesterday...can you spot an exciting harvest? 

The sweetcorn (not actually the exciting harvest, but still pretty exciting), has come on this week and I've picked a couple of cobs. The variety is Sativa early. I've never seen aphids on corn before, but one of the cob husks was covered in them (and ladybirds). They didn't affect the edible part though.

We've had some really tasty meals, mmm.

Here's my exciting harvest....edamame / soya beans, wow! I had 12 plants I think, initially sown in loo roll tubes at home before planting on the plot. They didn't really need any special attention apart from tying to sticks when they got a bit tall.

I cooked them for a few minutes in boiling, lightly salted water.

They were so good, with enough to last over two meals for us both. So that's definitely edamame and chickpeas getting grown again next year (see last week's post for chickpeas)

I've had some more windfall apples, these have grubs in.

So I picked more blackberries...

..to make the first batch of stewed apple and blackberry of the year. The apples are quite sweet so no need for any sugar, I just added ground cinnamon mmm.

I'll end on a guided walk at High Ash Farm yesterday, organised by Norfolk Organic Group. It's just a couple of miles from Norwich, and quite well known as it focuses on farming for wildlife. I've walked around the farm several times before but you get a much more in depth perspective with a guided tour. Here's just a couple of snaps - first, one of the many fields sown with wildflowers...beautiful sunflowers have followed phacelia in this field. Apparently a lot of the flower varieties have finished much earlier than usual this year due to the heat and lack of rain. Last week's rain has brought the sunflowers out though, lucky for us.

And second, the group enjoying a grey heron flying past, putting on a nice show for us. But most unusual was a swallowtail butterfly that tumbled through the air along the lakeside - especially amazing as our guide had never seen one there before...quite a way from The Broads where they breed on milk parsley....what a treat!

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