Harvest Monday - 18 July 2016

Latest post from MARKSVEGPLOT – a blog about food and gardening in England”

My Broad Bean harvest is coming to an end. I picked a batch of 450g on Monday this week, and another 350g on Friday.

The Monday batch finished up in a Spanish-inspired dish which I made with potatoes, chorizo and tomato sauce with plenty of paprika.

That dish was accompanied by a lettuce salad, made from this “Ice Queen” lettuce:

It’s basically an Iceberg-style lettuce with frilly edges. It has a nice crunchy heart.

This is the Friday batch of beans. It was the very last, because after picking it I cut down the plants!

This week I upended another of my pots of potatoes. These are “Charlotte”.

This was two plants in one 35-lite pot. Jointly they yielded 1.21kgs, which is more than the last pot, but leaving them in the soil for that much longer has meant that the skins are not quite as blemish-free. One or two of them have quite rough skins, though to be honest I’m probably being too picky here; they were lovely potatoes!

The peas are still trickling in…

I never get many at a time (that batch was 345g), but overall, the yield has been very good – much better than I had dared to hope for, given my previous lack of success. By the way, a few days ago the pea plants started to develop mildew, so I sprayed them with a milk and water solution (50:50), and it seems to have stopped the mildew spreading. Our current weather conditions are unfortunately very conducive to fungal diseases like this.

I picked the first of my climbing French Beans this morning. This is 146g of “Cobra”.

I think you will understand why this is an old favourite of mine. It produces early crops of lovely big, tender, straight pods, and it has a long season.

As usual, I’m linking this “Harvest Monday” post to the weekly linkup hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

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