What's bright yellow and plum shaped?

Each time we visit the plot my first task is to pick over the peas and when we arrive back home my first job is to shell them. It's been a good year for peas. Maybe the fact that we haven't had a prolonged run of hot days has suited them. Pea growing hasn't been all plain sailing though. One batch of seeds germinated patchily and only in small patches at that. I resowed the bare patches but they didn't germinate either. I suspect some small creature found them and made a meal of them. The earliest sown peas had to battle through weevil damage when cooler than average weather meant the plants grew very slowly. The plants that I am harvesting from at the moment have the beginning of mildew so I hope they survive until all the pods are picked.

Like last year we used up the remaining pea seeds in a late sowing. Last year this wasn't a success but as all gardeners know no two years are the same and this year we may be lucky. If not we have lost nothing and produced some green manure.

23 August

The All Gold autumn raspberries are producing more fruit now. The one failing of this variety is that the berries spoil quickly if they are not picked when they first ripen. Does anyone else find this or is it just out plants? Next year this bed is due for complete renovation so like Joan J that received this treatment this year we are likely to have only a few fruits next season.

As is probably the case for many other gardeners we are being inundated with climbing French and runner beans. The variety of yellow beans - Coronna d'Oro has produced a much better crop than the variety grown last year - Sungold - which didn't live up to the name it shares with its prolific tomato namesake.

25 August

Our plot visit on Thursday ended almost as soon as it started as we were rained off and so I only managed a sparse harvest. 

Martyn was trying to set up an area where we could leave the onions and shallots under some cover to help them dry off but the rain put paid to that and the said vegetables were rained on yet again. His goal eventually was achieved on Sunday. We are hoping that they recover from the soakings they have suffered.

To keep the rain off we have had to use polythene and so this will be removed whenever we are at the plot to let air in.

28 August 

We are now  harvesting a steady stream of tomatoes from outside on the plot and both greenhouses.

One variety of tomato is a puzzle. We knew when the tomatoes on what should have been Gardeners' Delight started to swell, that something was amiss. Gardeners' Delight should be a small, red and round tomato. As the fruit began to swell it was apparent that they were plum shaped. Now they have started to ripen we find that they are bright yellow. We've no idea what variety they actually are but they are certainly not Gardeners' Delight.

The blueberry and Japanese wineberry harvest has now just about come to an end but both have produced fruit over quite a long period. The four blueberry bushes were sold as a collection which would extend the fruiting period but the wineberry has done it all by itself. You may also spot a couple of Malwina strawberries that I found when I was tidying up the plants. The two greengages were picked as they had started to split and would quickly attract the attention of wasps. They are more or less the only fruit that the two greengage trees have produced this year.

Finally we dug our first carrots of the season.

They had greenish shoulders where they had peeked out of the soil but this didn't prevent them from being very tasty.

Today I am linking to Harvest Monday over at Dave's blog  Our Happy Acres

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett