I can't stop harvesting!

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This is one of those times when I’m quite glad not to be away on holiday. My garden is groaning with ripe fruit and veg which needs to be picked!

This basket contains just a representative sample of my recent harvests, because I’m picking little quantities very frequently.

With Runner beans, for instance, it seems that the more you pick the more they produce. With so many pods available I’m discarding any that are misshapen or very bent, and just keeping the good ones! All my “Harlequin” mixed colours carrots are finished now, but I still have half a row of “Chantenay” and a complete row of “Autumn King”. There is no danger of us running out of carrots any time soon.

I’m still picking a few “Boltardy” beetroot every now and then. We don’t eat huge quantities of beetroot, but it is nice to have some on hand for when it’s required.

The tomatoes are ripening thick and fast, and I have basketfuls of them on the Dining Room table, waiting to be processed. The “tomato forest” is quickly being depleted…

Before long I will start picking fruit from my Second Crop cherry tomatoes. By this I mean the plants started off very late, using self-seeded “volunteers” rescued from the shingle outside our kitchen window. These ones look as if they are “Losetto”:

While these little plum-shaped ones look more like “Montello”.

Actually it is highly probable that they are hybrids, because both “Montello” and “Losetto” are F1 varieties and their self-seeded progeny are unlikely to “come true”.

We have eaten a few of the “Golden Sunrise” yellow tomatoes now (a couple are seen in the basket photos in this post), but our verdict is that they are not as nice as the red ones. Somehow all the yellow tomato varieties I have tried seem to lack flavour and the balance of acidity and sweetness that makes a good tomato. I have one more variety to try this year – “Little Lucky” (seeds from Craig LeHoullier). The first of them are just turning colour, though I see that the very first one is already splitting. I often see tomatoes split when a spell of hot dry weather is followed by heavy rain, but we have only had a very light sprinkling of rain.

Yesterday I pulled up the very last of my onions. These ones were the few that I hurriedly stuck in where the Parsnips that failed to germinate should have been.

They have not grown very big because they were swamped by the luxuriant foliage of the neighbouring carrots, but I’m sure they will be good to eat. Since my onion harvest is very modest in quantity we have been keeping the home-grown onions for Best, and continuing to use shop-bought for “ordinary” requirements!

I’ve been itching to harvest some apples too, but I have resisted so far.

Looking back at my records, I see that I usually pick the “Winter Banana” apples in early October, so I suppose it would be best if I waited a little longer.

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