Harvest time

The garden is now flinging out produce at full pelt. Fortunately, given we are vegetable-eating fiends, and our plot isn’t the largest in the world, we are just about managing to keep up. I pulled up the spring onions today to make room for a late sowing of carrots to take us into the autumn. Here they are, sea anemone-like and ready for the chop.

The rain has been enough to make anyone grumpy, not least sun-loving vegetables such as tomatoes. But our ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes are now producing ripe, sweet fruits every day, and plenty more are beginning to blush as well…

Meanwhile, the rain has been a godsend for our cos lettuces, which were threatening to bolt any day. Although a bolted lettuce is truly beautiful, and has its place in a potager, you can’t eat it. So when the hot weather ended and the rain came, the salad plants began wriggling their toes with glee. We’ve been eating armfuls of ‘Lobjoits Green‘, ‘Marshall‘ and ‘Little Gem‘. ‘Marshall’ has been the most successful, not only because of its black-red leaves, but also because it seems to resist slug attack a little better than its green relatives. We’re also growing oak-leaved ‘Red Salad Bowl’ as a cut-and-come again crop.

After taking careful precautions against carrot fly earlier in the season, we have been digging up carrots for about a month now. These are mostly ‘Nantes Early’ and the fun ‘Yellowstone’, but yesterday I dug up an ‘Autumn King’ which was as thick as my wrist. Now is the time to sow more carrots in the place of those harvested to prolong the season into autumn. You could sow quick-maturing ‘Nantes’ or ‘Parmex’ for an early crop, or ‘Autumn King’ for over-wintered carrots to take you through to early spring.

We’re also harvesting: garlic, raspberries, perpetual spinach, kale, chard, rocket, nasturtiums, courgettes, shelling peas, mangetout, blackberries, herbs and onions. Not bad for a tiny vegetable patch.