Monday, August 29

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

29 comments:

  1. A mystery tomato! As long as it tastes good, I don't suppose it matters much, unless, of course, you wanted Gardener's Delight for a specific purpose.
    Finally getting some reward from my garden in the way of two small punnets of raspberries, a 45 litre tub trug of apples {currently in process to apple sauce} and wild blackberries just beginning. Better than nothing.

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    1. It's one way of getting to try something new, Deborah.

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  2. Too bad about the rain on the onions and shallots. My harvests of them are so small I can bring them indoors, but you have a lot more of them. Those are beautiful tomatoes, including the Mystery one!

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    1. The onions and shallots got quite a bit of sunshine on their bscks yesterday, Dave so I hope that will have helped them dry out. We put the cover back over before we left the plot.

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  3. How odd re your Gardener's delight! I wonder what they are? I do hope the onions and shallots dry out soon, I'm sure they'll be fine. I love the pics of your varied and colourful harvests, you have carrots already? Mine are tiny!xxx

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    1. I think, Jo in the comments below has the answer to what type of tomato it might be, Dina. The onions and shallots did well for sunshine yesterday. Those were the first lot of carrots we harvested just to see how they were looking.

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  4. Wonderful harvests, Sue - and look at all those onions. A much better result that I had this year. Hopefully they cure up well for you.

    And I have a mystery tomato in my garden this year too - not an uncommon occurrence it would seem.

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    1. I was impressed with your curing table, Margaret. Maybe it's the year of the mystery tomato.

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  5. Wow, those are some incredibly long beans. I so wish we could grow runner beans here, but it's much too hot for them. Your garden is doing so wonderfully. It's good that you were able to get the onions covered.

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    1. But you have more success with sweet peppers and aubergines/eggplants, Phuong.

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  6. All fabulous Sue ( and Martin). A similar thing happened to my brother. We both buy tomato plants from the garden centre but he must have picked up a mislabelled Gardener's Delight I'm pretty sure his turned out to be Yellow Pear x

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    1. Did you both buy seeds from the same seed company, Jo. It sounds very much as though your brother has the same seats as we have.

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  7. LOvely harvest, Sue! You have lots of bean there...

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    1. We do Endah and most of them will be frozen. The ones in the photographs will have been frozen already.

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  8. You have some extremely long french beans there!

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    1. The green ones are Cobra and the yellow ones Coronna d'Oro, Belinda. They have done well this year.

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  9. Always sad to see the blueberry harvests end! They are my favorite of the fruits.

    And how does one prevent carrots from lifting above the soil?? I've always had problems with green shoulders.

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    1. I guess one way to prevent green shoulders would be to munch with straw, Sue. To be honest though it doesn't really bother us too much as not much of the carrot is spoiled. Maybe if we had a sandy soil they wouldn't push out, maybe it is when they hit more solid ground.

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  10. Dear wise one and fount of much knowledge - can a greengage be grown as a cordon? I have some space in one of the fruitcages and love g/gages, but the tree I have in the garden either produces virtually nothing or the birds beat me to it. Thanks.

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    1. There are differing views on this, Jayne. Most don't recommend this saying fan training is more appropriate. If you can find one supplied with an appropriate root stock though and it's the only option for you give it a go, alternatively what about a bush form?

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    2. Thanks Sue, great advice :)

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  11. You have such a lovely variety of harvests this week! All those tomato varieties look delicious and that is an impressive amount of beans. Hopefully your onions and shallots will dry out.

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    1. The onions and shallots had dried somewhat after being under cover and enjoying a sunny day, Julie I may turn them when we next visit the plot.

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  12. The weather forecaster let us down last night and my red onions got rained on overnight. After a dry morning I strung them up before the next (heavy) shower. (White ones still growing away at the plot.)

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    1. Hopefully you will get some sunshine to dry them off again, Mal. This seems to happen to us every year - you would think we would learn.

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  13. Oh, you’ve had rain? I guess it wasn’t what you wanted for your onions, but I would have loved some rain for my garden – we haven’t had any proper rain here in London since last week of July.
    I am so impressed by your lovely harvest, I know there’s a lot of work behind all that and especially since you are growing this on your allotment and not in your back garden so not as convenient to get to.

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    1. At least the onions are under cover now, Helene. We had a couple of days in Norfolk and yesterday it poured there and was wet quite a lot of the journey home. There must be a giant umbrella over London.

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  14. Wow what a blessed harvests pleasure to eye and blessings to health.
    Reminding me my mom'hard work in her garden and moments when i used to see her precious smile and satisfaction after harvesting

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    1. Hello baili thank you for commenting and I am happy to bring you memories of your mum.

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