Harvest Monday 23rd November 2020
Oh it has been wet here in the south of the UK and that means I haven’t been able to get out and ‘do stuff’. I haven’t even really wanted to go down to the allotment so the harvest this week is from the garden.
I started growing vegetables in the garden this spring when I decided in the autumn that now would be a good time to start saving my own seed. I didn’t want to grow the plants on the allotments because the chance of cross-pollination is very high. So, I have grown some veg at home.
On Thursday I picked the very last of my tomatoes and removed the plants. Surprisingly, these have semi-ripened so a few days on the window sill should see them completely ripe and ready to eat. The tomatoes from left to right are Black Russian, Rosella, Costoluto, Sungold and Shimmer. All are delicious and I will grow them again next year.
The lambs lettuce is grown outside and has reached a good size. It is Vit and I am going to leave a few plants to set seed to see if it is possible to save seed from it.
The really strange harvest this week is my mahooooosive beetroot. I built a hugelkultur bed in the spring and planted 6 beetroot at the short end of the bed and left them to grow until next year when they will flower and I can collect the seed. It was a sunny day and so I cut the grass but caught one of the beetroot on the lawn mower which pulled it out of the soil. They have very small roots which don’t seem to cling to the soil much. Anyway, this beetroot is a whopper.
It weighs just over 3.5 kgs and I do not know what to do with it. I am not sure it will make great eating so I think I will have to chop it up and put it on the compost heap. I don’t want seed that makes enormous beetroot as I prefer my beetroot to be tennis ball sized. The only thing we can say is that Boltardy beetroot really do not bolt.
In my next post I will be reviewing the hugelkultur bed and planning my next steps.
I have linked this post to the Happy Acres blog where Dave hosts a Harvest Monday series every week. It is a fascinating place to find out about what other people are growing.
As Rondo matures, it tends to get wider and wider, becoming like its name suggests rounder. The scales (I’m not quite sure what you all each overlap of fennel) get thicker and are quite juicy when eaten raw or cooked.
Doux de Florence seems to get taller as it matures and bolted. Maybe I should have eaten this type of fennel when it was younger and smaller. The bulbs that were left all bolted at the same time which means we need to eat quite a bit of fennel NOW!
I don’t usually grow tomatoes outdoors because of blight. I grow them in the polytunnel but this year, I put four plants an a small patch of land behind the green house as I thought this would protect them a little bit. They have grown into large plants with a few tomatoes – something to do with the compost I put on the ground before planting. The best have been Sungold, probably as they are small and much more likely to ripen. I’ll repeat this next year but only with cherry type tomatoes.
To my surprise, the garlic in the polytunnel had started to bolt. Last year, I planted all of my garlic outside and each clove sprouted due to the cold and then hot then cold weather. The bulbs were very small and it really wasn’t worth it. This year, I decided to plant half in the tunnel and half outside. The half that is outside is not ready yet but this lot was. I pulled it, strung it up to dry out and planted some aubergines into the space they left.
It is the first year that I have grown spring onions, red and white, and they are doing well. I keep thinning them and eating the thinnings in stir fries. The carrots are also bushing up and starting to thicken so these are also being thinned and eaten. My carrots outside have not germinated particularly well so my next visit to the plot will involve resowing both carrots and parsnips.
The main job this week has been planting out in the polytunnel. I have a lot of tomatoes to plant: Costoluto, Sungold, Zlatava, Black Krim, Green Zebra, Tigerella and Black Cherry. You can’t have too many tomatoes, can you? I have interplanted several varieties of lettuce and am hoping that the tomatoes will provide a bit of shade for them until it gets too hot in there. I also planted lettuce outside around my courgettes which should stagger production.