Plenty to pick and much to eat!

Well, we are about a 1/3  of the way through our new potato harvests, and the rest of this years crop should see us up and onwards until the maincrop are ready at the beginning of August.

We have been really impressed with the potatoes, it is so nice forking them up and seeing golden balls of luxury gleaming back at you. They are a great size for new potatoes too, we bought them as 'Charlotte' seed potatoes, but I don't think they are. They don't share many of the main characteristics of that variety, so I am adamant they were marked up wrong or either we provided such a fantastic growing medium and quantity of fertiliser that we really have encouraged them to bulk up greatly.

It's not just the potatoes that are ready. We've been picking plenty of blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries. We enjoyed some raspberries with meringue and cream on Thursday evening, it was heavenly! There is a punnet of blackcurrants in the fridge ready to make a pie or crumble tomorrow afternoon.

The lettuce are still growing well, but like quite a few of the leafy vegetables and plants they are looking a little bit scorched. Over the last few days we have had torrential rain in the mornings and baking heat in the late afternoon. It's doing the pumpkins and the rest of the cucurbits the world of good, but a lot of the other veg aren't too fond at all.

The shallots were one example of vegetables that hated the diverse weather. They really struggled when the weather changed from scorching hot in late May to wet, wet, wet in June. The leaves died back and I've decided to pull them out, because a few of them were showing signs of re-growing and dividing again. The shed currently smells like and onion factory (if such a thing exists) they are spread over newspaper on the potting table whilst they dry off. They are all a good size for pickled onions. We did actually plant some shallots in mid May when the sets were reduced at a garden centre, they have thrived and have already exceeded the size of most of the March planted shallots. It definately is a case to illustrate the case for staggering planting and sowing of vegetable crops.

Anyway, here is a picture of what we harvested this evening...



Plenty to look forward to tomorrow dinner time.

Weather permitting Amy is coming down to the allotment tomorrow to help to do the weeding which is a real God send. Knowing my luck it will definately rain.

Fingers crossed!

Martin