Harvest Saturday 18 July

Leaf beet -         most of the big plants have gone to the hens now.

Baby leaf beet - there are just two left from last year to provide me with baby leaves for my                                          lunchtime salads.

New leaf beet - this year's self sown plants are popping up all over the place. I am letting them grow                            a bit and then picking the whole plant to eat as spinach for dinner. Yum.

Rhubarb -         there are a few new stems growing and I am looking forward to them stewed and                                 served with greek yoghurt

Raspberries -    very few raspberries around now until the autumn ones start fruiting.

Strawberries -   just literally one or two stragglers and that is it until next summer.

Mixed baby lettuce leaves - I have eaten the last of those little leaves this week so it is a good thing                             that my friend has too many lettuce all coming together and is very happy to share.
Gooseberries - We did not have a very good crop this year and ate the entire harvest for pudding last                           night. They were very tasty but I was hoping for more than one pudding : (
Courgettes -     I ate our first courgette in my lunchtime salad yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it.                              The flavour is fabulous compared to the shop ones.
Potatoes -         We dug up one volunteer potato plant yesterday. It has yielded enough potatoes to do                           our dinner today. The plant was growing a bit close to some of the things we had                                   planted so we felt it was time to pull it up before it interfered with the "real" plants.

I am quite pleased with the quantity of things we have harvested this year so far. It has certainly made a noticeable difference to our grocery budget. And I love the feeling of satisfaction that I get from eating things that we have grown. We have not bought any seeds this year other than one pack of seed potatoes that my daughter spotted and brought us. Compost is made from trimmings and from rabbit and chicken poop (and also leave/bark mould from the leaves and bark that I put in the hens' runs to keep their feet out of the mud in wet weather and which needs scraped out of the runs every so often) and so is free. In fact our son and both daughters have all requested bags of compost this year and we have been able to supply eveybody's needs. I am looking forward to the next offerings from the allotment!