Guess who likes jostaberries?

Last week there was another first in our harvest box.

Our first cauliflower from the collection of early brassicas bought from D T Brown. It's the first time we have bought plants from this company and the first time that we have grown this variety of cauliflower - Helsinki. The only downside is that it looks as though the cauliflower heads will all come at once so some will have to end up in the freezer. Lack of moisture means that the large brassica plants are flagging.

12 July

We are still harvesting cabbage although they are starting to split. The splitting so far is only affecting the top layers of leaves so there's plenty of usable cabbage.

14 July

The first row of Casablanca potatoes have now been lifted. Incredibly we haven't come across even one spoiled potato, no form of damage whatsoever.

We have sown another row of peas into the space that the potatoes have vacated.  

We have a row that we are picking at the moment, a row that is just starting to flower, one row that isn't yet at flowering stage and now this one. The aim is for a long lasting succession but this may be wishful thinking. The pods of the peas that we are harvesting at the moment are rather tatty looking but the peas inside are fine which is all that really matters.

The mangetout didn't germinate well but last week we managed a small picking.

The sweet peas are now starting to produce more flowers. I'm hoping that the pollen beetles that seem to be everywhere this year don't home in on them as they will cluster inside the keel petals and spoil their use as cut flowers. When that happens the beetles have to be in some way evicted before the flowers can be brought indoors.

The sweet pea stems are incredibly long this year. Maybe my watering regime has suited them more than in previous year when I have watered less relying more on natural irrigation.

15 July

The first of the three dahlias that we bought for the perennial border at the allotment is flowering.

It's lovely but ... which of these do you think it is?

It will be interesting to see what colours the other two plants will turn out to be.

We are managing to harvest some bits and pieces of salad ingredients including some watercress which so far hasn't made it in front of the camera but I will be giving it a post of its own shortly.

16 July

Hidden in the plastic bag on the left of the photo above is a selection of radishes as shown below. after pulling these were quickly popped into the bag to keep them fresh and crisp.

We're still picking berries. Every couple of days there is at least one large punnet of Tulameen raspberries. I'm still picking blueberries from our earliest fruiting bush and the second bush now has berries ripening. The bushes are performing well this year and producing some strong new shoots.

The Malwina strawberries are providing more delicious berries.

The berries are still a good size.

We are being kept busy picking blackcurrants ...

... and continuing the black theme, the blackberries are starting to ripen. The canes are loaded with fruit. Fortunately, as the canes are thornless picking is painless. 

We now have more them enough jostaberries in the freezer and so now the wildlife is enjoying the leftovers. The blackbird hardly bothers to fly out of the bush when we pass by.

It isn't surprising that the birds are attracted to the berries but someone surprising seems to enjoy browsing on the jostaberries that have fallen from the bush.

Just to prove this, I filmed a short video of the little one above in the act.

I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

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