Monday, 23 June 2014

Harvest Monday - 23rd June 2014

Last week I reported that I had picked the first few of my Strawberries, but had been unable to show you a photo of them. Well, this week I have real evidence!


I have only a small number of Strawberry plants, so I am never able to harvest them in large quantities, so the ones I do have tend to be eaten immediately or perhaps added to a batch of bought ones. I think you will agree though that deficiencies in quantity are compensated for by superior quality. Those ones are certainly fine specimens, and oh did they taste sublime or what??


I have been continuing to harvest Lettuce - by the barrowload! This is another of the "Green Oak Leaf" ones, and it was absolutely enormous:


As well as the "Green Oak Leaf" I have harvested "Cervanek" and "Can-Can". I like to mix several varieties into the same salad if possible, to give a nice mix of colours and textures.

This week has also seen me harvesting the first of my Broad Beans:


That is 552g of Broad Bean "Stereo". This variety produces small pods - these are about 10cm - and they normally have 4 or 5 beans in them. However they are reputed to be the finest-tasting Broad Beans of all. It is often advocated that you eat the pods very young, as if they were Mangetout peas.

I have harvested more potatoes. This lot is "Red Duke of York", the last of my four First Early varieties:




For the record, that is 781g, the produce of two pots, each with one seed tuber.

Since I need the space for my rapidly-expanding tomato plants, I dug up the two pots of "Sharpe's Express" potatoes too. These were the ones I left to grow on after manually removing most of their tubers. The second crop was small, and the tubers nowhere near as clean and blemish-free as the first ones, but it still produced 325g, which is worth having. They will look better after I've given them a scrub.


In addition to all this, I pulled my first few Turnips. These are mostly "Purple Top Milan", but the big, flatter one at the front is "Atlantic":


I'm very pleased with the harvest this week. It's nice to have a wide variety of crops, rather than lots of the same thing.

This is my entry to Harvest Monday, hosted as ever on Daphne's Dandelions, so why not go across and see what everyone else has been up to...?

17 comments:

  1. I love this time of year when all the harvests start coming in. You may not have many strawberries but they're perfectly formed and look at those Red Duke of York, what a fabulous colour. I hope they taste as good as they look.

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  2. Wonderful harvest, and such gorgeous lettuce and potatoes. Yay for strawberries!

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  3. Those red potatoes look so perfect. When I grew them mine were never as pretty.

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  4. Nice shot of the reds in the burlap bag. That's's a nice harvest Mark.

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  5. The strawberries are amazing! It's not surprising that they often don't make it to the photo opt. I imagine I would be eating them off the vine. Lovely variety this week.

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  6. Such a wonderful harvest! The strawberries must be delicious! As for the potatoes I have seen that colour here only in the small variety that floods the markets in winter.

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  7. Beautiful veggies. You can't beat fresh, just picked strawberries - and their fragrance is intoxicating...it's like they're giving you a heads up on how yummy they will be! I hear you on the lettuce - I only planted a small section of one bed - I didn't think it would be enough but have since found that it is more than enough for our family of 4.

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  8. All your harvests look so perfect. Those strawberries are huge and that is a ton of lettuce. I've got to get some strawberries planted next year so I can stop drooling over everyone's strawberry harvests!

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  9. It's another one post Mark, that's making me envious about the plants you've grown. Especially the giant lettuce, I wish I had such a big lettuce! Mine are way smaller.

    Great harvest!

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  10. Taters, now I'm envious. I missed the window here for them. Hoping my sweets do ok this summer instead.

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  11. I bet you can taste the difference between yours and shop bought strawberries. The last lot I picked were warmed by the sun which works wonders for the taste.

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  12. Beautiful spuds. And that's an impressive lettuce plant.

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  13. Such a lovely mixed harvest Mark. That lettuce is huge!

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  14. Red Duke of York are pretty boys! And that lettuce is perfect. There's something so satisfying about harvesting such beautiful vegetables, such things are impossible to buy. Like the perfect strawberries...

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  15. That looks great Mark! I agree that it is better to grow a little of everything and you are a master at that. Those spuds! I bet you polished them for hours before taking a photo Ha Ha.

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  16. Those strawberries are beautiful... I feel hungry just looking at those photos! And I can't get over your wonderful potatoes.

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  17. Great harvests. The Red Duke of York potatoes look lovely. Your lettuce is so big and looks so healthy. I've a million slugs eating my seedlings as they appear - all my beans eaten, and of course lettuces get nibbled too.

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