Plum glut

Friday was a very pleasant summer’s day; some long sunny periods but not too hot to allow some gardening.

On the plot we spent the afternoon harvesting. There seems little point looking after all these crops if you don’t harvest them when they’re ready. So it was a case of choosing harvesting rather than preparing the ground for the winter brassicas that Marshall’s Seeds informed me by email had been dispatched. I did set the sprinkler in action to water the ground where the cabbages and cauliflowers are going to be planted. It’s a case of how to best prepare concrete for planting. Hopefully a good watering will at least give me a chance to get the ground cultivated.

Our Oullin’s Gage has produced a fantastic crop this year. It was a case of harvesting as many ripe plums as we could reach. We very quickly had 20 kg of fruit picked.

Any body following Kelli’s blog will be on the ball now and know everything there is to know about why cucumbers taste bitter. I’d not thought about it before just picked them and ate them.

But all that’s changed now. All sorts of things need to be considered, is it the right shape, is it too old or too young, have they had the right amount of water and nutrition, did the male flowers fall off? Well if a cucumber should be straight this one’s failed the test at the first hurdle, it’s been water rather spasmodically as we’ve had to do so much watering, as for its age we’ve used up our last cucumber so this one’s been picked and we want to use it in sandwiches rather than pickle it. All I’ll say it’s a bit prickly and it hasn’t grown one of those skin tight plastic skins like the supermarket ones. Perhaps our Burpless Tasty Green is just an unfussy outdoor cucumber.