Harvest home....

Have a look at the couple of photos with the same title.

The rhubarb will be my last picking for this year as it has to have time to feed itself before the winter but we've had a nice crop for a couple of months or so - lots of rhubarb crumbles and I made some jam (with lemon zest and juice) which is delicious.  Small amounts of Jam are very easy to do in the microwave and using 1 or 2 lbs of fruit is enough for us.  I'll post the method in the recipe section at the top of the page. If you want recipes for microwave marmalade and the best lemon curd ever just email me.

Runner beans are always a very easy success - never failed me yet and as long as you keep picking they keep coming - very tender and tasty and so much cheaper/better than store bought plus mine don't get any nasty sprays and stuff.  That said the varieties do seem to vary a lot and these (the most common and basic Scarlet Emperor) aren't that prolific; although they are plenty for us two.

I did say I was dubious about planting brassicas when I did it and 'm not so happy with the cauliflower.  In the photo it is soaking in some slightly salty water to get out any bugs - by the time I'd done that and seen how many bugs came out I couldn't eat it!!!  How pathetic.  It also looks a funny colour in the picture but it was a perfect head of cauli.  It has a purple tint here and there which is typical for the variety it is.  We ate a couple of baby ones I picked a couple of weeks ago that seemed to be caterpillar and bug free.  Where crops are coming out (lettuce, peas, etc) and leaving spaces I have planted some spring cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli to go through the winter, so I'll see if they fare any better.

The potatoes in the photo are new to me - Red Duke of York.  They boiled into a mush so weren't deemed a great success.  I decided they were far too floury for boiling so we had them roasted today and they were absolutely delicious.  Anyone who makes their own chips would find them good for that too; so I guess it is just a matter of getting to know your spud! Great colour, flavour and texture.

Whilst thinking about spud-taters...... it is worth a mention that I didn't get any better yield from my perfect (quite expensive) ground planted seed potatoes planted at the right time than I did from the three lots I bought for 25p for 5 tubers for each variety.  The tubers were a bit shrivelled and were planted a month later in large bins.  So it just goes to show where gardening is concerned it is always worth a go at something and try not to get too precious about what is and isn't 'right'.  The other pluses for bin-planting are that 1. they are easier to harvest - just tip the bin out (!) 2. slug, bug. water control is easier, 3. it doesn't leave tiny tubers that keep sprouting up through your other veggies next year (I rotate my stuff).  I am under oath 'not to have pots all over the place' next summer but it is awfully tempting as far as the spuds go.  I might do a really daft compromise and plant in tubs and stand them on the area where they would have been planted in the ground.  It just seems such a shame to waste sixteen square feet of garden space......  but then it would only have potatoes in it!!!  There's a kind of logic there.

Strawberries are a bit of a pain as far as I'm concerned.  I've come to the conclusion you need a field of them to be able to go out and get a dessert for two when you want it.  You really do need a lot of plants to get any usable crop.  They just appear in dribs and drabs and generally only for a very short period.  I have got a huge pot of six ever-bearers (two varieties to spread the cropping period).  They produced maybe ten reasonable strawberries between them in May which ripened one at a time over a couple of weeks so they were just picked and eaten in the garden whilst doing chores. They are now back in fruit again and this time in earnest - some really large berries (many the size of this one) and they taste as good as they look BUT again they are spacing out their 'pick me' times.  Lovely though they are they probably aren't worth the trouble of feeding and watering and inspecting for such a little gain.  The one in the picture is an ever bearer variety called Calypso;  I also have Albion which performs in very much the same way.  I have a large pot of a rescued (cheap!) Elsanta which has thrown up about four fruits this year (!) and six Mignonette plants - the teeny wild ones - which fruit fairly consistently but half a dozen teeny berries at a time doesn't do much to satisfy a strawberry lust.  I wish I could abandon them all and resign myself to Tesco only fruits.