Lots of produce coming in this week. My first ripe outdoor tomato -Latah. This is a peculiar looking variety with sparse leaves. I also have some variety Cougar growing. These are reputed to be able to be stored a little like apples. As long as the dreaded blight stays away it should be a good crop, and I'll be saving some seed too.
The second lot of barley is ready, but the weather is too wet to cut. We are overflowing with beautiful fat red blotched borlotti bean pods. People in Britain don't seem to be aware you can grow and eat this as shelled beans like broad beans. They have a great taste better fresh than dried (or tinned, ugh), and any we don't pick now will go for dry beans in winter. Similarly there's loads of thin purple pods of the royalty variety of french bean,. Cooking turns the deep purple to the usual green colour on cooking alas.
The summer raspberries have finished,and the first few autumn ones are ripening. The damsons are a disappointment. The deluge a week ago just as they were ripening cause many to split, and the quantity is low. Those that survived are delicious and are being avidly eaten by the children. The figs are just ripe now ,and handfuls have been handed out to visitors and neighbours. I've picked a couple of kilogrammes of blackberries from the field hedge and we'll swap some latter with our neighbour who's apples are looking pretty ripe
- In the field
-
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
st_ouennais- 17th August 2008
- In the field again
-
- st_ouennais
- 19th July 2008
This week in the field has been tricky with lots of decisions. Finally I decided to lift the garlic. The bulbs are of a similar size to last year - smaller than you might buy in the shops, but that may just be variety.
I have also cut the oats. So unless they get wet while left to dry (!) I should be in porridge for the winter. Cutting grain is always a tricky decision, you want it to dry off enough to store well, but you don't want to leave it too long else you loose a lot of it. Its the same at the sowing end -put it in early and the birds devour it, put it in latter and you have to hope for a dry end of season to get it harvested. On my small area of grain I sow early and use a mesh to keep the birds off.
RIPE OATS
45 minutes later -porridge in waiting. They still need to be dried and threshed.
And the strip where they were growing.
2 strips of barley sown a couple of weeks apart. The one on the left is golden and near ripe, the one on the right still green
Ripening barley heads change colour to a golden yellow and turn downwards.
Completely unrelated - the damsons are just starting to change colour too.
- In the field again
-
- st_ouennais
- 6th July 2008
Well thats the rest of the shallots lifted, and the last of the overwintered broad beans harvested. I am concerned about the garlic. Usually I would expect to lift it at the end of July or early August. However they are already very yellow and a decent size. Shall I wait and get even bigger bulbs, or lift now before there's any chance of them splitting and reshooting? For sure I won't be doing anything to them until we get a dry spell.
We've had the last of our main strawberries, though there wil still be a few of the tiny alpine ones until October. I have started picking the blackcurrants, and the summer raspberries are still coming too. Oh and the damsons are just getting the first faint blush of red colour.
The barley is also changing colour rapidly and the golden heads are starting to turn down. It wil be ripe for harvesting soon. I just hope my replacement part for the broken scythe arrives in time. The heads wave wildly in any decent breeze in a mesmeric wafting shifting pattern. It 's captivating in a similar way to watching rolling crashing waves are down at Grève de Lecq.
Just in time I have this morning found my small packet of yellow carrot seed, to compliment the white ones I already have growing. I've sown some climbing black beans at the foot of the established maize since I don't have enough canes to support them any other way. Shortly I'll be sowing endive, kohl-rabi and leaf beet.
À bé
