Harvest time continues

Last week was a fairly busy week. As well as time spent harvesting, we managed to do a few other jobs on the allotment. As I mentioned in the previous week's post, beds are now being cleared.

Our first two plantings of broad beans have been harvested and so I cleared the bed. Expert wisdom says that the roots of broad beans should be left in the ground so that the nitrogen nodules release nitrogen back into the soil. The first lot of beans must have fulfilled that task ask no nodules were apparent on the roots. As we wanted to dig over the bed in order to put it to sleep for winter, I pulled up the second batch of plants. The roots of these were covered in nodules so I rubbed them off onto the bed. My, maybe mistaken, logic is that the nodules can decompose without being attached to the plants. Maybe I'll never know whether this is true or not. (Video here)

Martyn rotovated several of the empty beds and two were then replanted. One bed was planted with Safari dwarf beans. Hopefully these will provide us with a late harvest of small French beans. It's worked that way for the last two years. Some seeds were sown earlier and really had grown a bit too big so these were squeezed in amongst some dwarf sunflowers. They may produce some beans or not but nothing is lost in planting them.

You may remember the sweetcorn that was battered down by the wind when I planted it. It was almost consigned to the compost heap but look at it now!

Another group of plants that have earned a reprieve are one lot of strawberry plants that are residing in our old strawberry bed. This was due for clearance but one variety - Sweetheart - produced such a good crop that we have decided to leave the plants for at least another year and tidy up around them.

I also planted some sweet Williams which will hopefully create a colourful display next year.

We had a very unwelcome visitor on our plot. Some of our larger tomatoes have blight so it looks as though our plot tomatoes will fail to ripen. We grow tomatoes in our greenhouse at home so hopefully these will avoid the same fate.

Although the larger tomatoes are slow to ripen, we have harvested quite a few cherry tomatoes both from the allotment and the garden. We also grow our cucumbers in our garden greenhouse, and now Mini Munch is providing us with a crop.

Martyn is still picking apples from the tree in our garden.

We think these are Bramley apples.

We have some tubs of herbs in the garden and the coriander was ready for cropping as it was on the point of producing flowers. The leaves were chopped back and have been frozen for use later in the year when no fresh leaves are available.

Martyn dug more potatoes. (Video here) This time the variety was Osprey. The tubers were a good size and just like potatoes lifted earlier showed no signs of pest damage, other than some casualties of a misplaced garden fork.

 9 August - Potatoes - Osprey and a few Apache, Peas - Onward, Courgettes - Boldenice, Ambassador and Black Forest. Climbing French beans - Cobra and Golden Gate and Blackberries

10 August - Sweet Peas, Blackberries - Loch Ness, Courgettes - Boldenice, Ambassador and Black Forest, Cabbage - Mozart,  Blueberries and Runner beans - Moonlight &Lady Di

Although we are not going to have as good a plum harvest as usual, we are managing to pick some Oullins Gage plums.

13 August - Plums - Oullins Gage, Blackberries - Loch Ness and Courgettes - Boldenice, Black Forest and Ambassador

Despite our first sowing of peas failing to germinate or being eaten, our second sowing is providing a good harvest which means time needs to be made for podding and freezing. Usually a few pods are home to pea moth grubs but, this year, so far, we haven't come across a single grub.

14 August - Mixed dahlias, Runner beans - Lady Di & Moonlight, Peas - Onward, Tomatoes - Sungold, Calabrese -  Monclano, Blueberries and Carrots - Romance.

The large head of calabrese was a welcome surprise as it was hiding under leaves and we hadn't spotted it developing.

The leaves of the shallots had died back, and so we decided to lift them. We grew two varieties - Longor and Meloine. Both have produced a reasonable crop with Longor growing larger bulbs.

15 August - Mixed sweet peas,  Shallots - Longor and Meloine, Blackberries - Loch Ness, Raspberries - All Gold, French Beans - Cobra,  Runner Beans - Lady Di & Moonlight, Courgettes - Boldenice, Ambassador & Black Forest. and Plums - Oullins Gage

The summer fruiting red raspberries are over now but the autumn fruiting All Gold are now starting to fruit, so we will have a continuous supply of raspberries for a while longer.

So how have I used our vegetable harvest?

Monday we had cheesy bake that used some of the cauliflower picked the previous week and onion.

Friday we had a chicken, courgette and mushroom dish, based on this recipe and served with Casablanca potatoes.

On Sunday I made a turkey stir fry using, courgettes, runner beans, onion, calabrese and carrot.

Some of the shallots went into a batch of turkey sausage rolls.

As well as being busy gardening, harvesting and freezing, we managed walks with Ruby, one of which was, as usual, around the grounds of Nostell Priory. My sister had heard that a rare butterfly had been reported there and that Nostell was the only location this far north to report seeing this butterfly. How exciting - for a few minutes anyway. I read the article about this, only to find that the 'rare' butterfly was a gatekeeper. They reckoned that the warming climate was making them move further north. Hardly rare as we regularly see gatekeeper's on our plot and have been photographing them since 2009 and we are slightly further north than Nostell. I do wish reporters would check their facts before making sweeping statements. I even read that Nostell had listed gatekeepers as a butterfly found in their park as far back as 2012.

We didn't see any gatekeepers on our visit to Nostell, but we did see plenty of damselflies.

The cygnets were feeding alongside mum, in a much more convenient place to take a photo of them. They are now just about as large as their parents.

The only other noteworthy event was our wedding anniversary last Monday. We would usually celebrate by going out for a meal but we haven't felt comfortable enough to brave a restaurant yet. That's four birthday and two anniversary meals out that we have missed so far. With reported case of the virus still fairly high I wonder whether next year we will be dining out again?

As always wherever you are keep safe and well.

This week I   am once again joining in with Dave’s Harvest Monday collection of posts over at Our Happy Acres.

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