Gathering seed

       Time to gather seed for next year. I have gathered chocolate sweet pepper seed, Jens Orange tomato seed, parsnip seed, haricot vert seed, woad seed and moss curled parsly seed. More will follow once the squash has ripened. The weather has been very good with some overnight rain but mostly sunny during the week. 

       Despite the poor start to the year as expected the autumn is proving to be very productive. The more damper cooler spring has meant crops like summer cabbage and successive sowings of lettuce and haricot have actually worked this year. The strawberries have been just amazing and some of it must be down to the wetter conditions I am sure. My experiment with the spacing out of Desiree potatoes was a success and I will be following that up next year. The sweet peppers looking so sorry for themselves earlier in the year are now coming into their own. Plenty of good sized peppers and I reckon as long the temperature holds up there will be many more. Carrots. Man, never had such a good succesive sowing of carrots. Six lots and all producing nice sized roots at a sensible interval. Have to say  a good year despite the poor start. Of course there has to be a down side and the tomatoes outside the polytunnel were all blighted and lost as they had fruits ripening. Those plants in the poly tunnel have produced a good quanity of nice sized fruits. Melons. Well, I have had better years with the 5 Dessert but the Blackwater Mountain water melons are looking good and on course for producing upto eight fruits. Onions. Not good. The onions did not like the damp conditions and a few were lost to rot. A harvest was gained but not as good as other years. Shallots were good and probably about the same as last year.

       The last of the 5 Dessert melons have now been picked and the plants are pretty much done. The strawberries continue to give, another five hundred and eight grams picked. As are the straight and round courgettes which have also done very well. Much to my surprise and pleasure the sweet pepper plants are producing well as are the aubergines. The Golden Bantam sweet corn has done well as have the three sowings of haricot vert. The haricot buerre are in flower and I am hopeful for a crop before it gets too cold. Cucumbers have been a disappointment this year with only a few produced and those have been small. Well, one cannot win on everthing! Butternut squash is good with a surprise Crown Prince plant appearing amongst them. There is one good Crown Prince squash. 

       With my youngest grandson, Toby, we went and picked blackberries. It is a good year for them and I really need to get out and pick more!

      Chickens are still not laying well and I suspect that will be the case for a few more weeks yet. Daily average this week is 2.1 eggs per day and it is an good improvement on last week.

Aubergines

Picking blackberries with Toby

Selection of sweet peppers