As I came to write this post, I discovered that I haven’t taken many harvest photos as in previous years. I mean there are only so many angles from which to photograph a carrot or beetroot but still, I’d like to share with you my highs and lows for 2019.
My stand-outs have been:
Fennel – I grew proper fennel bulbs for the first time. I sowed direct in June, kept well watered and I have been rewarded with bulbs since September. We ate the last one this evening, finely sliced in a salad. Yum.
Cauliflowers in the polytunnel continue to be magnificent. I cut the last of the current crop today and four more plants are growing away.
I’ve grown a row of flat-leaf parsley in the carrot bed and that too has been brilliant, the more I cut the more it grows. That was also finely chopped and in this evening’s salad.
I sowed winter lettuce at the start of September and they have just started to heart up. Looks like there’s a lot of lettuce in my immediate future unless the mollusc munchers beat me to it.
Here’s tonight’s harvest salad
The lows have been not too many
Dwarf french beans – it was a good crop but I just couldn’t keep up with the picking and they went over really quickly. The answer could be to grow fewer plants, but where’s the fun in that…
The carrots were so, so. I think the mollusc munchers mowed the rows of seedlings and then it got a bit too hot and dry for the seeds to germinate. Carrots used to be easy and I’m not sure why they have suddenly become difficult. However, sown early in the polytunnel beds and they are fantastic.
Strawberries are another crop that I used to have no trouble growing and getting great harvests from but in the past 3-4 years, it’s been traumatic. I gave up on the strawberries in the tunnel and composted them and I’m ignoring the outside weed-infested bed. They are on their final warning…
Allotment Life 