A Harvesting Afternoon

Once again it was mostly cloudy but we did have some sunny spells and it felt very warm in any sunshine.

We spent all afternoon harvesting on the plot. We didn't go with the intention of just harvesting but with such a variety of fruit and vegetables to pick we just couldn't help ourselves. There’s no point going to the trouble of growing it if you can't be bothered to pick it.

Not a bad afternoon’s work. We even managed to pick a few runner beans from Lady Di and St George before summer turns into autumn. The stars of this little bounty are undoubtedly the greengages. We haven’t so many but the sweetness is unbelievable coming from such a small green fruit. 

These are our greengages, a variety called “Reine Claude”. The only problem is deciding when greengages are ready to eat. These still look very green and are quite firm to the touch. I did cheat before picking and we had a couple of testers with our afternoon coffee. They were absolutely superb.

I’m expecting a good carrot crop this year if our early “pullings” are anything to go by. So far we've only tried the Early Nantes variety which have produced some very good sized carrots.

They've had the taste test which is excellent. These are as lifted without any washing or sprucing up. The soil is very dry and the carrots have come out without any soil needing to be washed off for kitchen use. 

Our first few Victoria plums are in the harvest picture too. 

Our Oullins gage cropping has just about finished but it’s provided us with 33kg of plums most of which have gone into the freezer.

I might try some of the Himrod grapes in our home greenhouse today and see if they’re sweet enough to eat. Gardening can be tough at times.

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett