Harvest time...

[AE-NMidlands]

Seeing as the current biomass topic has migrated into garden produce, I thought I would bring it back here... What else are you eating or putting away at the moment?
We are eating runner beans, cabbage, but french beans are now being left for drying. So many runners in fact that I am wondering about going back to our old method of salting them for the winter. Probably better to blanche and freeze them like we do with surplus purple sprouting (broccoli) in the spring.
Spuds, of course, except that it was a bad blight year and we have had to sort through the sacks and throw away quite a few already - and use up their neighbours quick. This year has been a bad one in lots of other respects and I didn't get round to spraying the Bordeaux mixture... big mistake.
Early-ish eating apple varieties and windfalls of cookers, blackberries...
Tomatoes have been nice, but not up to the usual standard of volume or flavour. We have one from Italy handed on to us (which we think is probably Costoluto Fiorentino) which is fabulous sliced thickly and grilled. Saving the seed (about 10 yrs now) is very satisfying - except you don't know if any of the fruits has any seeds in it until after you have left it to rot!
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[Bugtownboy]

Bit further south - Tom’s have had a late flourish after a really poor start, Apples and Pears have had a really good year. Raspberries reasonable, Goosegogs ravished by Sawfly larvae.

Olives (sorry) have not done as well as previous years (usually get 1-2 Kg, but perhaps my pruning wasn’t up to much.

Figs, as always, have done well.

Some of the planted stuff (multiple salad items) has been more affected by slugs and snails, which we thought we weren’t badly affected by. Again, I’ll blame it on the cold damp Spring and damp Summer.

In the wild, Blackberries are looking lush at the moment, Hazel and Chestnut looking very promising and, interestingly, Hawthorn is very productive - berries already red, very plump and soft.

[Joeboy]

Olives, figs!!! Excellent! Here at CasadeInglis we have had rhubarb, apples, plums, onions, tatties and chilli's. All in abundance, whatever memory or similar in the genes speaks loud that growing your own is enormously satisfying and the thing to do.

[Bugtownboy]

Terroir, it’s all in the terroir Be the man of your land.

[CrofterMannie]

Squash are looking good but I'll leave them another week or 2.
Dessert grapes are about peak season but the Gewürztraminer is going to need a while longer.
The early apples have started this week.
Loads of potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage, leeks.
The sweetcorn season was ended a bit prematurely by rats climbing the stalks to eat the corn. Oh how I hate them.
Kiwi are still rock hard.

Not bad considering we had 20cm lying snow on the 6th may.

...and beef, 2 steers went to the butcher last week so we should have about 400kg beef in the freezer before long - it's part of the harvest from the croft just as much as the potatoes are and just as the venison will (hopefully) be next month.

[nowty]

Strawberries went in late but were reasonable, but finished early as the weather went off. Supermarket ones are now so cheap and quality so high that I may stop growing them which is a shame as I do it because they were a treat when I was a child and remember my grandfather growing them so want to keep up the tradition.

Raspberries were quite good.

Blueberries were looking good but in a short heatwave I forgot to water them and they shrivelled up, not even the pigeons have touched them when they sometimes strip them bare in a few short hours.

Grapes, reasonable yield but only a few nice and sweet because of poor late summer weather.

Runner beans as always were superb, I refuse to buy supermarket ones as they are rubbish in comparison to home grown. I left some pods last year to mature and dry out and have used the seeds this year so I didn't need to buy any from the garden centre.

Marge tout went in late and took ages because of cooler spring, yield not so good but quality were very good as always.

Potatoes went in late and have been as good as ever, ate some this evening, far, far better than supermarket ones.

Tomatoes went in late and yield has been low because of the weather, but good quality. I'm not sure if I can be bothered in future as they need quite a lot of maintenance and quality supermarket ones are very good.

Herbs - Thyme, Rosemary, Mint, Coriander, Basil as good as ever, they seem to grow in any weather.

Onions, they are so cheap in supermarkets, but they are also so easy to grow and keep for ages, so I am almost self sufficient most of the year round.

[Mr Gus]

Pears have not been sufficient round here, no perry pressing this year.

[AE-NMidlands]

We are coming to the end of our greenhouse tomatoes (gorgeous beefsteak and other varieties) with just a few still to come. We shall really miss them: whatever anyone else says, home-grown are always better than anything we have ever been prepared to pay for at a market or supermarket. Strawberries were good here, SWMO froze lots too as they remind her of tinned ones, apparently a childhood treat! Ours take a place in the rotation (one third in each bed), being dug out and replaced/propogated into a different place every few years

Runner beans have just finished, some of the later climbing French beans are still out there to dry off for haricots and/or seed.

Onions were astonishing this year and hopefully the less-than-giant ones will store well, but stored potatoes are being hit by tuber blight (no time to do the Bordeaux mixture this year.) Some of the winter cabbages have bolted but otherwise most are pretty good.
Good crop of cooking apples for storing and dessert pears, some still being picked although some early ones are ripening now. Eating apples being picked and consumed in succession,
Broccoli and kale look promising for next spring, but we missed a trick sowing the "spinach" (leaf beet) and only have a few spindly plants to look forward to. Luckily, or unfortunately, my late mum didn't eat all the blanched and frozen purple sprouting broccoli I took her, so that is a nice meal or two to look forward to (with memories!)
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[Tinbum]

I hate supetmarket tomatoes. I really don't think anyone now knows what tomatoes should taste like.

[AE-NMidlands]

Nowty says

quality supermarket ones are very good

but I disagree!
At one time I wondered whether a business could be made on one of the Canary islands by growing a moderate amount of tomatoes the way we do at home and selling them at a premium price.
I couldn't decide whether it was the varieties they used, the "soil" (or hydroponics) under the plants, the grey water used or just too much heat, but what was on offer in the hotels was crap. I was trying to work out how you could use hotel (vegetable) food waste and some other stuff to make massive amounts of compost to provide the growing medium.
To be fair, if we had had easy access to Spanish city-centre markets to buy our lunch provisions I guess I might have a different perspective on the tomatoes available out there!
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