This batch weighed 1.25kgs. This sort of quantity probably serves us both for 3 or 4 meals, and we also put the odd one or two in soups and stock.
They were a bit of a mixed bag - plenty of nice big straight ones, but several Funnies too. The ones I pulled were "Autumn King" and "Darina", both supposedly long varieties, so I don't know why some of them decided to be short and round!
The very last of my Spring Onions came up too. They went into a "Rice and Peas" dish, served with a Jamaican-style beef curry, fragrant with sweet spices. They weren't prime specimens, but they were certainly fit-for-purpose.
This is the first time I have managed to get any Spring Onions that are other than minuscule. I have to say that they disappointed me in one respect though: they are a variety called "Rouge Commune" (Common Red) from Vilmorin seeds, but they have not really been red. They have mostly produced a brown outer skin as they have got older, but once you remove that there is not the slightest sign of red.
I had my first small picking from the late-sown French Beans this week - the ones in the plastic tubs where the potatoes used to be. I wasn't sure they would be able to mature before frosts took them down, but September and October have been pretty mild and they have produced some pods:
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| French Bean "Processor" |
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| French Bean "Berggoud" |
Looks like the slugs have found these beans too.
Well, slugs or no slugs, I did get a few pods:
Next on the list are three small Peppers. Two of them are from my Turkish Sweet Pepper (official name not known) plant, and the other (darker green one) is an immature Espelette Pepper.
Finally for this week, a wild harvest: Chestnuts.
We are fortunate enough to have lots of Chestnut trees around where we live, and this lot (just over a kilogram) was gathered from underneath some trees about 200 metres from the house.
I am linking my post to Harvest Monday, over on Dave's blog Our Happy Acres, where hopefully you will be able to see lots more Autumn / Fall harvests!
How can fresh carrots be an anticlimax? Same here with spring onions but I don't remember them taking so long to mature in the past.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful carrots. I live in apple country, surrounded by orchards, so I would be more excited if I had a carrot harvest like that than the occasional apple.
ReplyDeleteI had the same little round stumpy carrots .... and I planted Nantes!!
ReplyDeleteThis has been my first really successful year with Spring Onions, we have had bumper crops, I planted bog standard White Lisbon, but they have really bulked up at the bottom.
It's reassuring to know that it's not just me then. Maybe it has just been "A Bad Year" for carrots?
DeleteThat's a lovely haul of chestnuts! We don't often seen them around here, at least I don't. Too bad about the spring onions though. They sure don't look red at all, but at least you got some useable onions out of them.
ReplyDeleteI grew a "red" bunching onion once that had the same problem, it had red skins that had to be peeled off and the inside was white. Darn slugs, at least they ate just the foliage and not the beans. Lucky you to have a chestnut tree so close by. Chestnuts and Brussels sprouts are a very good combination.
ReplyDeleteCarrots are one of my favorite veggies, so I'd be thrilled by your harvest. That's awesome that you can collect chestnuts near your house. We killed off most of the chestnut trees in the US, at least the eastern US, with chestnut blight so that's not something I'd find around here.
ReplyDeleteOh, what I wouldn't do for some wild chestnuts. No such luck around where we live, so I have to dole out a lot of $$ at the grocery store and spend a ton of time picking them out individually to ensure that they haven't started drying out (sometimes, there are more dried out ones in the bine than good ones!)
ReplyDeleteThe chestnuts look much larger than the ones we foraged last Autumn, Mark! Lucky you. And Spring Onions I start with a pinch of seed in modules and plant out as small clumps of plants... the only was I ever have any worth eating. Do you direct sow?
ReplyDeleteKathy