2022 harvests

[Stephen]

Similarly light crop of potatoes (but I don't weigh them) and very scabby. Supermarkets wouldn't sell them.

[tigerburnie]

I stopped growing main crop tatties both because of blight risk and damage, first and second earlies only, which tend to used as "new" and not such a heavy crop, my 10 seed produced less than 10kg.

[peter]

That’s disappointing, Geoff…..my Kestrel has had a very light crop this year.
I used to grow Cara for baked potatoes, but although I would get a good crop of large potatoes, nearly all of them had slug holes in them.

OH Charlotte live up to their "salad baker" description, are clay compatible and slugs don't seem to go for them . I'm on sticky London/Hertfordshire clay soil, with patches of underlying chalk in some areas.

Even Foremost can achieve a bakable size

[oldherbaceous]

I do grow a lot of Charlotte , Peter but, have never thought to leave them to see if they get to a bakable size…I do like a big potato.
I haven’t grown Foremost for quite a few years, as Kestrel have been so reliable for me, up to the last couple of years.

[Geoff]

Charlotte did well and some are baker size. Got 70kg on 24th July from 33 seed, like I've said before, well pleased at over 2kg per root

[tigerburnie]

All our leeks went to seed, so I've lifted the lot and will see what can be salvaged for the freezer, some are in the slow cooker for tonight's dinner.

[Primrose]

Our four butternut squash plants have produced only one fruit between them. Very disappointing but it,s being watered and nurtured until it reached the stage where it can be picked and allowed to harden off.

Incidentally I read the other day that one should avoid eating pumpkins which have been commercially grown for Halloween carving because they,ve probably be fed with too many fertilisers to make them deliberately grow larger. Seemed a rather odd item to read , my only comment being it's a shame that so many items grown for food should just be vandalised in this way and then thrown away to rot.

[Colin2016]

Got 3 large buckets of king Edwards unfortunately they had scab.

Sweet corn has been got at, suspect by a very fat pheasant, loads of French beans most of which are going to the community fridge.

Onions & garlic good this year as was the calabrese, Kohlrabi took off eventually.

[retropants]

sweet corn looks so small that I haven't bothered harvesting it. All the lettuce have bolted this year, despite copious watering. Garlic was tiny, french beans never really got going as it was too hot for them. As soon as they started to recover, the slugs got hungry. They have been climbing all the way up the sticks and clearing the entire plants. Leeks still look ok, carrots are hanging on, but did get spider mites when it was really hot. Broccoli (only 2 plants survived the great mollusc attack) look like they are forming, although no idea if they will be a decent size. Tomatoes are good, especially the basket cherry ones. Peppers have been very slow and the plants have remained small. They are starting to pickup, so hopefully, I'll get a few late ones. The Kalettes have been plated out - they too suffered the mollusc attack - hopefully they will be as good as they were last year.

[Primrose]

With all these disappointing results, makes one wonder what the national vegetable growing harvest will be like later this autumn and winter. Sounds as if we,re going to be in for a lot of shortages.

Sounds at least some sanity is returning to certain supermarkets though in that they,re finally resorting to selling "wonky" fruit and vegetables. . How fussy some customers have grown over the years expecting perfection all the time, . These are probably people who,ve never grown anything in their lives. Ironic in that when things are chopped up and cooked you wouldn't know the difference anyway.

[Cider Boys]

I have been very pleased with my potatoes this year, produced a good yield of large although a little scabby potatoes. I think we had a rainfall at a crucial time because my soil if very light and sandy. I will be interested to know what one of my son's neighbour's yield is like as he grows fields of seed potatoes for commercial use. My runner beans were a complete disaster in the dry weather and I did not water them and they suffered badly. Everything else hasn't done too badly and my greenhouse tomatoes were excellent I grew Tamina this year and I highly recommend the variety

Perhaps vegetable gardening will become a little more profitable due to the ever increasing inflation of food prices.

Barney

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Barney, I reckon we will get the hang of growing this stuff, one day…

[tigerburnie]

Just lifted our first few carrots, look very nice too.

[Geoff]

Harvested some squashes, pumpkins and gourds for drying today. Also picked another tray of Victoria plums for bottling and about 8kg of Grenadier apples.

First vaguely productive job I've done for a week. We have both had a horrible snotty, runny, sweaty cold probably given to us by our little grandson; his dad reckons he brought it home from nursery. It's been so awful we got a friend to bring us a Covid test kit but it came up negative.

Now we are waiting to see if my brother-in-law's funeral booked for the afternoon of the 19th will get cancelled. He should get precedence he died first!

IMG_4643.JPG (3.28 MiB) Viewed 9647 times

[tigerburnie]

Autumn Raspberries are very good this year as are the thornless Blackberries, the wild ones are tiny after the drought, but my garden ones are impressive.