Summer is here! Although you wouldn’t know it to look at the weather records of late. But the crops are starting to come in down on Plot #59 and we’re beginning to enjoy a wider range of the fruits of our labour.
Here’s a quick photo-montage of the foodstuffs that we’ve been able to harvest recently:
Last year adverse weather conditions meant we harvested a total of three ripe strawberries. This year we’ve done much better, although the grey mould has ripped through the patch, so we’ve thrown away three times as many as we’ve picked, but it’s still a good result. A lot of these were a tad mushy, and so they went in to a batch of mixed fruit jam. The rest went into us, with a dollop of natural yoghurt and a handful of early summer raspberries.
Having spotted blight patches in the second earlies and lifted a plant to make sure we had tubers to rescue, it would of course have been daft not to enjoy the spuds. Many, many more to come, all being well. Those radishes are called ‘China rose’ and are probably a bit bigger than ideal, but have a good, peppery kick.
Our summer veg is in full swing now, with broad beans, Swiss chard, peas and the inevitable courgette glut kicking in. I’ve been thinning our < a href="https://allotmentnotes.com/2016/04/24/we-need-to-talk-about-carrots/">carrot patch and we’re eating any thinnings big enough to crunch in a salad or chuck in a stir-fry. And having lifted garlic t’other week and saved a few bulbs from allium white rot, we had some green garlic to cook with as well.
All of which went into…
…our first allotment medley stir-fry of the year. That was our Sunday dinner, along with a few sausages, those new potatoes and steamed chard leaves – delicious! And of course there was far too much there for just two of us, which meant allotment bubble-and-squeak for my lunch today – bonus!
Harvest Monday is a GYO meme hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.
4 replies on “Harvest Monday for July 4th 2016”
That is a great looking stir fry! It’s one of my favorite ways to use garden veggies. I don’t think I’ve seen white carrots before. I wasn’t sure what they were for a minute. Those are some lovely potatoes you have there too.
Cheers Dave! It was very tasty indeed. We’re growing both white and purple carrots this year: ‘Creme de Lite’ and ‘Purple Sun’. UK TV Botanist James Wong recommends them both in his book ‘Grow For Flavour’ as being among the sweetest-tasting varieties he’s tried.
You’re getting so much variety from your garden, those potatoes and strawberries look amazing. We’re just getting courgettes, cucumbers, and a tiny bit of snap beans and cherry tomatoes at the moment.
Hi Phuong – We have a full allotment plot (250 m2) so there’s plenty of room to grow a wide variety of crops. A lot of what we grow is Spring / Summer fruit and veg, but this year I really want to make an effort to grow more winter veg as well, so I have a few varieties I’ll be sowing in a couple of weeks to hopefully grow on later in the year.
You’re still getting more tomatoes than me, by the way. Mine germinated really late and are still at the flowering stage. Not helped by the mainly dull weather we’ve had for the past few weeks, I’m sure.