16th September, 2008

At last some nice weather! So I took advantage of the sun to dig up and dry some of the potatoes (Lady Balfour and Cara) which had started to die back. They were a bit disappointing, they had a fair bit of slug damage but some were good enough to put in a paper sack for long term storage. The Sarpo varieties (Mira and Axona) are still quite green on top but the Markies have all died down. I'm in two minds as to whether to leave them or dig them up. It's probably best to do the latter as the slugs will only eat them.

I dug in serious amounts of home made compost into the gap that was left by the potatoes in readiness for the overwintering onions and garlic. I haven't bought the onion sets yet but I won't need to buy the garlic as I will just use cloves from this year's crop.

I noticed blight on the outdoor tomatoes (sub arctic plenty), this is what it looks like.



So I picked all the tomatoes green and red before they all succumbed. The green ones were made into a simple curry that was nice as a side dish. As you can see there were a lot, the surplus was frozen for a later curry meal.



I'm still harvesting

courgettes - more cake and curries
beetroot - more bortsch, pickling in sweet vinegar next week
cherry tomatoes - a very good yield this year but they are greenhouse grown
green chillis - a good yield too, the greenhouse certainly overcomes the shortcomings of the British weather
turnips - getting a bit woody now and they should have been eaten much earlier
raspberries - wow, a large bowlful everyday
cooking apples - loads and loads, I plan to make some jam/jelly, give some away, freeze them and store them in the garage