This Year’s Harvest

All but a few Leeks remain to be lifted from this year’s harvest so it’s a great time of year to look back over the successes and challenges of the growing season and here are the pick for #sixonsaturday.

The biggest success this year was by far the onions and there was plenty of them! I bought 40 Stuggart bulbs from Glasgow Allotments Forum for 40p and set the onions back on 1st March. If I was to use one onion a week, potentially, I have 40 weeks of onions in front of me which works out at 1p per onion.

I also bought five varieties of potato at Glasgow Allotments Forum‘s Potato Day: Pentland Javelin for a First Early, Bonnie for a Second Early variety and Golden Wonder, Desiree and Kerrs Pinks for a Main Crop selection. I added a row of Charlotte potatoes too. My favourite by far was Bonnie which was just a a delicious potato when cooked and a definite on the list for growing next year.

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For this year’s Broccoli, I decided to outwit the slugs and planted plug plants in pots and it worked – 4 pots of Broccoli heads enjoyed slug-free!

Delicious as it was in many a dinner, after a few hot days baking in the sun, the Broccoli went to seed quickly. I was about to uproot it and replant the pots when I saw the broccoli heads literally buzzing with wasps as the heads opened into lovely, yellow flowers so I left it for a few weeks. So the Broccoli was a great success on more than one front but lesson learned that it needs to be grown in a shadier situation next year.

Cabbage was as it always is, strong and reliable in my heavy, clay soil. This year’s variety was F1 Candisa and although it didn’t grow as big as the previous year’s cabbage, it always makes a welcome dinner and always finds a place in the veg bed.

A huge success this year was the apples, not an abundant crop but apples nevertheless, growing finally after four years and it was a sight to behold!

I grew tomatoes outside this year, a variety called Totem, and they grew large enough and firm – they just didn’t actually turn red! I brought them inside and had some bathing on a windowsill and some snuggled inside a brown paper bag with a banana in hopes of them turning red. Can you guess which method worked better? Yip, the banana inside a brown paper bag worked better at turning them red!

I’ve also had strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, lettuce, rocket, spinach and leeks all growing this year. All homegrown, free from pesticides or chemicals, racking up zero miles in my carbon footprint and making dinners a delight! What have you had success with in your harvests this year?