We're off!

A sunny day at last after a long, cold winter. My parsley has overwintered really well and the broad beans, sown in a plastic storage box in January have been in the ground for over a week.

I have peas in the garden too. Growing under fleece, I took a first cut for salad as I planted them out. I'm hoping for several cuts from them and there are more to sow for later in the year.

November Carrots

I harvested my first pot of Flakkee Gigante carrots today. It was very successful. A good crop even if they were rather odd shapes! There's one here for the strange vegetable show. But it weighed eight and a half ounces!

Two pounds of carrots  from a ten inch pot is not bad in my book.

Veggie meal

We had a meal tonight which included 10 vegetables from the garden! Stuffed courgette with salad and potatoes. The courgette was no 1 stuffed using tomatoes and poblano pepper. The salad included pea shoots, radishes, radish pods, chives, garlic chive flowers, strawberries and my Nicola potatoes, which were very good.

Potato harvest

I harvested the potato crop on 26th August. I was very pleased with the result. I gave them no real care and they were in the worst corner of the garden, using the mound from the old haybale which had been full of tree roots. Five pounds from ten seed potatoes may not seem much but for that unproductive patch it's worth repeating.

First apple harvest

Stormy weather and apples looking like they will be windfalls soon, so I picked the harvest off my James Grieve tree.

Seventeen good apples this year. Apple crumble tonight with the four that have small blemishes and the rest into store, wrapped in paper towels and contained in a paper carrier bag. They are in the summer house assuming it's not going to be very hot any more!

The Lord Derby apples were picked a few days later. Its first harvest was 4 apples and one left for the wasps. (They had already started.) The four apples made a good apple pie to go with sausages for an evening meal.

Update: By 26th August the James Grieves were not looking like they store very well so they became a part of this year's chutney. It's apple and blackberry chutney this year with blackberries from the garden and apples from ours and David's gardens. It is already being eaten, going well with cheese sandwiches!

Wallflowers

Seed collected from plants, sown on 10th July, pricked out and potted up today.

Garlic harvests - first courgette

The elephant garlic was ready in mid June so I harvested my 4 bulbs. All good. They are hanging up to cure in the old greenhouse.

The two garlic cloves planted last winter solstice grew well and looked ready to harvest on June 30th. Each had a good firm bulb but they were less than an inch across. Maybe it's not a good variety for my conditions. Still they are curing with the elephant garlic now and will be used in the kitchen. The scapes have been saved for use in the kitchen too.

I might try another variety next winter.

First courgette was picked today, good size from Verde d'Italia in the bed.