Show us your harvest!

[ojay54]

Firstly,great to hear from you Keith.

I've seen seeds for those purple carrots,and often wondered about them.Taste wise?,ease of growing ?carrot fly?? Advise Please!!

[KathyLauren]

I've seen seeds for those purple carrots,and often wondered about them.Taste wise?,ease of growing ?carrot fly?? Advise Please!!

I couldn't resist the urge to chomp into one or two straight from the ground (rinsed, of course). They are orange inside, and taste like ... carrots! No doubt the subtleties of the flavour will be more apparent upon cooking.

Ease of growing? Well, if I can grow them, it doesn't get easier than that! I seeded them in May, remembered to thin and weed them a bit, watered them a couple of times.

No sign of carrot fly. I don't know if they even have them here. I have heard that the fly isn't a problem if you keep the tops of the roots covered, and if you keep Queen Anne's lace away from the garden. At my old place, in an area where the fly was known to be a problem, I kept the garden and about 100 yards around it reasonably free from Queen Anne's lace, but let it grow farther away as a decoy. That seemed to work, as I didn't have any trouble with it.

[ojay54]

Sounds like they're worth a try.I get quite a problem here with the fly,do all the usual tricks,only enviromesh really works and I hate that stuff when it's wet.I grew 'Resistafly' this year,they DON'T taste like carrots!
My thinking is..the kids will grow them 'cos they're a strange colour' and save me the bother!(seeing as they've got a rabbit and 9 bloody guinea pigs,they use most of them).The tunnel will be clear in a week or so,I'll see if they'll be OK inside.Cheers Keith.

[Odsox]

Various different shaped butternut squash reclining on the conservatory windowsill.
Not bad for a single plant. (plus 3 already eaten !)

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[ina]

Wow - butternut squash doesn't seem to do here at all...

Just dug up the tattie harvest (one plant!) - amongst others one massive potato, but of course riddled with little holes! It'll still do for mash...

[Green Aura]

I harvested the last of the tomatoes yesterday. About seven pounds plus a few that I didn't weigh that needed using straight away. We got some of the best crops from side shoots I'd removed and stuck in the ground! The supposedly early tomatoes called Tamina were dreadful - very little harvest and poor flavour, in our opinion. The best cropper was a black cherry, which never got anywhere near black (they're the strange dusky pink ones) but but tasted good too - we'll try those again next year. The Marmande were delicious but I think we only got about a dozen off the plant - another one not being grown next year, although I think we were only using up a few old seeds anyway.

The last of this year's tomatoes. 5lb here.

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2lb of cherry tomatoes for making lacto-fermented green tomato and hot pepper pickle

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[doofaloofa]

despite sowing late and not thinning, my carrots are full of fly

[Odsox]

I've never had a crop of carrots here that wasn't infected by root fly until this year.
I even bought expensive tasteless Flyaway seed and sowed them in the centre of my tunnel with a row of sacrificial ordinary carrots either side, and they still got 'em.
I grew some surrounded by 2 foot high windbreak (as the fly is reputedly to fly only 18" above ground) and they still had about half of the crop.
This year I sowed them in troughs about 4 feet above ground and they are perfect. So I'm now thinking of making up a container from lengths of 6" x 1" and screwing it to the outside wall of the barn, 4' 6" up, and growing stump rooted Chantenay Red Cored

[ojay54]

Way to go Tony,saves your back as well.
I've had a lousy year,the garden's in a state,and I can barely do anything about it,as yet,but there's always something good.This year,it is Tomato F1 'Sweet Million',Massive,massive crop,great taste,still going strong.I have literally given up weighing them.These will be my 'go to' tomato from now on.

[Odsox]

Last year I grew Finesse everbearing strawberries and was quite impressed by them, but last winter I couldn't find any replacements. So I bought a dozen Buddy plants which arrived in terrible condition and only 1 survived. I complained and they sent me another dozen and they were exactly the same, with only another one surviving. So, not an auspicious start with a new variety.
But .... I am even more impressed with the survivors than last year's Finesse. The Finesse fruited quite well and were full of flavour but fruited in flushes with a couple of weeks in between.
The Buddy have fruited continuously without a break from April and still going strong. They are equally flavoursome and are still producing large fruits where the Finesse got progressively smaller after the initial flush.
But, the Buddy only threw two runners, although I did get 4 plantlets from each of those runners, so I have 8 for next year, and as we got many pounds off those 2 plants we should get ample in 2015.

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[doofaloofa]

I've never had a crop of carrots here that wasn't infected by root fly until this year.
I even bought expensive tasteless Flyaway seed and sowed them in the centre of my tunnel with a row of sacrificial ordinary carrots either side, and they still got 'em.
I grew some surrounded by 2 foot high windbreak (as the fly is reputedly to fly only 18" above ground) and they still had about half of the crop.
This year I sowed them in troughs about 4 feet above ground and they are perfect. So I'm now thinking of making up a container from lengths of 6" x 1" and screwing it to the outside wall of the barn, 4' 6" up, and growing stump rooted Chantenay Red Cored

They were sowed as pig food, the plan being we would have plenty for the kitchen, so not too much of a loss

Now i'm tempted to leave them as a forage crop

[Odsox]

We decided as it's an awful day (constant drizzle and quite windy) that it was time for a winter type Sunday dinner.
So, roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast parsnip and sprouts.

.... and just to wind up a certain gentleman on here, I photographed the parsnip.

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[ina]

Nice one!

I picked my last handful of runner beans today... I had wrapped them in fleece when I discovered there were a few tiny beans left on it! The storm almost got them down, though.

[MKG]

Mutter mutter frazzle gnumph mutter steam ..........

[Odsox]

Next year ?