It's early July when, if you are winning most of your battles against the weather, the weeds and pests, you start to enjoy the simple pleasure of bringing something back from the plot, or the garden, everytime you visit.
Generally, harvesting will fall into one of two categories; the seasonal harvest where your produce tends to arrive in a fixed and short window, and the succession harvest, which if you have been sowing seeds on a regular basis earlier in the summer, you'll be keeping your crops coming for a number of weeks and even months.
The seasonal veg or fruit will be 'seasonal' at different times in the year. In the last month, I have harvested all the onions and garlic which I had planted last autumn and overwintered. They are now storing in the garage at home, drying out ready to be used over hopefully the next 3 months or so.
The blackcurrant season lasts around 4 weeks and I've finally taken off the netting to let the birds have what's left of the harvest. I've put at least 6 chinese take away containers worth of fruit in the freezer, had blackcurrants with my Corn Flakes and in smoothies in the morning, and given loads away too. It's been a good year for blackcurrants!
The rhubarb and asparagus season has been and gone too. Now asparagus, that's something I keep saying I'll do, but you have to wait 3 years from sowing before you get a crop and each year I say I'm not waiting that long so don't do anything about it. If only I'd done something when I first thought about it about 10 years ago now!
I'm also heavily harvesting green beans at the moment too. These plants, like peas and runner beans will start producing 'fruit' until they get some to seed, at which point they've achieved their goal and start to die off. So the trick is to pick little and often, making sure the plant has to keep producing flowers and beans/pods to try and fulfill its own death wish. The longer you frustrate the plant to this end, the more beans we get on our dinner plates!
And for most of the brassicas (cabbages, sprouts, kale, broccoli etc) and leeks, the growing season is so long (upward of 6 months) that you have to wait until they are ready. You can't rush them. Hopefully with brassicas they'll all come into their own at different times - cabbages and kale first (some kale will cut and come agian though), calabrese, red cabbage and sprouts just in time for Christmas and purple sprouting broccoli after the first frost of the new year.
The we come to the succession harvest. These tend to be the salad crops such as lettuce, and radishes or root veg like beetroot and carrots. These veg tend to have shorter growing times and the key to succession is sowing a small amount of seed every few weeks so that once your first crop is done, the second sowing will be ready to pick...and with good planning, so it goes on.
There are also a few examples of seasonal veg that you can make into successions harvests because they can 'store' in the ground. Potatoes for instance. New potatoes (the first or second earlies as they are known) are due now, but rather than dig them all up at once, you can leave them in the ground to take as you need. There is a risk to this though, as there's a whole army of under soil insects that are partial to the odd spud including slugs, snails, wireworm and in our plot's case moles! I'll start digging up plants as I need them, leaving the rest in the ground for as long as I can, but when they do come up, they will also store pretty well in the garage for a different type of succession picking.
The other common succession veg are the ones that, once they start producing, will keep doing so for a good couple of months or so. I'm talking cucumbers, courgettes, tomatoes, chilies and peppers. All of which I'm growing this year and which I've already had healthy harvests of the first two. If there is a downside to these type of veg, it is that they don't always store as well, so when they do start producing, they can 'glut'. I still have my 'no more courgettes' Tee shirt from a few years back, made for me by my daughter, when I nearly put the family off courgettes for life. Two plants is probably plenty to keep a family going as they only take a week or so to grow from flower to a perfectly edible size. And once going, they will fruit till the first frost,
And finally, to complete our top picture, there's Spinach. The thing about spinach is that you can sow it in succession at any time of the year but it always knows when July is...and promptly bolts (goes to seed)! So sow it early in the year or after the longest day to create another cut and come again supply.
So there you go. My short guide to make sure that after mid June, every time you visit the fruit and veg patch, you come back with something. Here's hoping you do...
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