Garden Update

We're now getting to my least favourite time in the garden, namely the end of the summer growing season.  Everything starts to look a little scruffy and overgrown and I'm always tempted to pull everything out before I really need to. I'm so far resisting the temptation, although on Monday I did harvest the last of the lettuce in the salad bed as we were running low.

The bed looked depressingly bare once everything had been pulled up, but then that's a good excuse to sow a few more seeds.  There's a couple of varieties of mustard seedlings growing in places, plus the kale plants I transplanted and the remaining spring onions, but more seeds do need sowing when I get the chance.

In spite of the sad looking consequences, I did manage to procure what will be our last full bowl of homegrown salad leaves this summer. I'm grateful that we've not had to purchase any salad for the last three months and glad that I didn't pull them all out when we went on holiday, as it would have wasted a good few weeks worth of food. They were still very edible, despite almost going to seed, right up to the last minute.

On Sunday, there was a definite need to harvest as much of the sweetcorn as I could, mainly because something had been eating it.  I think it was a squirrel. because one kept coming into the garden on Monday.

At least 3 cobs had been attacked. I stripped the outer leaves away from the half eaten cobs, and left them on the stems, hoping that whoever it was would go back to the already damaged ones and not eat any of the other cobs that are still too immature to harvest.

I did harvest approximately 10 cobs, which was pretty good. I put it all straight into the freezer to use at times of the year when it is expensive in the shops.

I also harvested a few more dwarf beans, which I ate with the Toad in the Hole I made us for supper on Sunday evening. I'm the only one in the family that really likes to eat them on their own, so they tend to get put in casseroles or stews throughout the year.  There aren't really that many of these left growing on the plants, so they will probably be coming out in the next couple of weeks.
 
Finally, I've also been harvesting a few tomatoes here and there this weekend.  Many are still green, but some have or are turning red or orange, as in the case of these small tomatoes here.

There remain quite a lot of trusses on various plants, that are still completely green, so I'm hoping they will all ripen before blight sets in.

I'm still keeping track of the monetary value of what we are harvesting and logging it each time I take anything from the garden.

We're not talking huge amounts of money, but it's interesting to see how quickly we earn the cost of the beds back in produce.  I'll post about the total at the end of the growing season.