Monday 21 August 2017

Harvest Monday - aaand they're stiiilll coming

Summer harvests are continuing nicely. Tomatoes in the lean-to at home have been pretty good. I've lost a few, where they've split at the base and gone a bit mouldy in the split - basically I should have picked them sooner - they've got overripe and taken in too much water. But on the whole I've been quite pleased. There's still lots more to pick too.
 
I've been adding them to stew-type dishes, plus we have them in sandwiches and something a bit more special, with mozzarella and drizzled with olive oil. I'll have to get a photo next time.
Ooh and they're nice slow-roasted too. I've frozen some of these for later.
I hadn't taken many harvest photos so thought I'd get this one today...just a few pickings from the lottie. I hadn't been down since Thursday so after finishing a couple of small gardening jobs earlier today I headed to the plot to have a lookee. The blauhilde purple climbing beans are really getting going....not sure why I sowed so many, I have five wigwams of them! You don't really get the scale from this piccie but that bigger 'courgette' is over a foot long.
I love the colour of the kale when it's chopped up.
Rather tasty dinner tonight, mmm.
I've now sliced up all the purple beans and frozen them in portions. What with these and the runner beans from the back garden that I've been picking all week I think we're sorted for now. I've also cooked up all the chard this evening too (thinly chopped the stems and cooked them for a bit first before adding the leafy parts) and am planning on making a big pesto with them tomorrow, probably freezing some.
So the freezer is gradually getting stocked up, hopefully supplying us with tasty food over the winter. Fingers crossed there's enough sweetcorn to freeze some as well.
 
And to end today, here's the inside of one of those blackberry cakes I made last week...I may have to force myself to make another one tomorrow.

Thanks for reading this swift post, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

8 comments:

  1. You must have a large chest freezer, you sure have a lot of produce to pack away. The amount of berries you have harvested would fill a good portion of mine.

    Congrats on such a great harvest - I love seeing so many veggies all in one picture!

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    1. Hi Susie, ooh I wish we had space for a chest freezer! We just have an upright fridge-freezer, with 4 drawers - an upgrade from the two drawer freezer a few years back. It fits a surprising amount in though. It's not very well packed at the moment, the bags of berries are a bit bulky, but I'll start to make cooked fruit mixes with them soon once the cooking apples start coming in, which will pack in better.
      Thanks! We're eating loads of veggies at the moment, another big curry tonight :)

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  2. There's lots of variety coming out of your garden and it looks like your corn filled out nicely. I wondered what you thought of that variety of kale, how does it compare to chard or leaf beet?

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    1. Thanks Phuong, yes I got good pollination on the corn. I have about 20 plants and gave them a bit of hand pollination help, just in case, as I wasn't sure if the wind would do it so well! The cobs are really big too, that's half a cob in the close-up. Variety is Sativa Early.
      I prefer the kale to the chard / leaf beet actually, but I have so much chard because it seeds itself around the plot. The kale is pretty easy to grow though, but it does get whitefly and caterpillar damage unless protected.

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  3. We grew some chard but it has gone to seed. I sowed some more yesterday

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    1. Hi sue, ooh good luck with the chard. I have it popping up all year and all over the place so have plants at various ages / stages. In fact, I should really remove some of the plants in the leek bed as they're probably being detrimental to the leeks. Two of my best chard plants grew up in the raspberry patch!

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  4. It's so nice to have the freezer stocked up with homegrown goodies! Those purple beans are really purple. I'll have to give it them try next year. The ones I've been growing (Trionfo Violetto) aren't that dark.

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    1. Hi Dave. Yep the blauhilde are a really lovely colour (which go green when cooked though). Also, if the beans rub against something as they're growing, they get green patches, which is interesting.
      I'm trying to stock up on more savoury meals than usual (i.e not just a freezer of fruit!) to make meal prep easier / more interesting over winter. I need to get more glass containers as I don't like using plastic....they'll be on my birthday list again this year!

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