Autumn

Written early-mid September.

So somehow a draft entry was deleted. I have no idea how that could happen, but it's quite upsetting, as I note down my harvests that way, rather than on paper. So precisely what I picked in the last week of August is now lost. I've tried to reconstruct it below from tweets and photographs, but this is once again life slapping me in the face for thinking I could rely on anything. I'll put harvests down somewhere else before tallying them here in future.

What did happen? Well I picked my first aubergine. A second one broke off much too small, but there are a few more to come. Sadly, blight has started attacking the plants, so I doubt the dozens more flowers will get a chance - a pity, but I have at least proven to myself I can grow them from seed. Next year I'll start them much earlier, in January or February instead of April, and that will give them a head start.

I had sown shallots back in spring, and they were in small pots waiting to be planted out for several months. In the end, I decided there was no chance they would grow any more, so I harvested them as individual bulbs. A small quantity, but again I'd never grown them this way before. I'm hoping to pickle them, if I can locate a recipe similar to the one I used with great success on my homegrown shallots back in 2011 or so.

Back in the greenhouse, the tomatoes have plodded along. I tied a couple of bananas in socks and suspended them near to unripe trusses of fruit, in the hope they would encourage ripening, but that remains to be seen. There is a lot of fruit, but only now is some of it starting to take on colour - the suppressed temperatures throughout August really hit them badly. The weather has improved since then somewhat - not so relentlessly cool, grey, and rainy, there's actually been some warm sunshine, but still lots of showers and nights are increasingly chilly. As for the chillies, they remain green, and I haven't always watered them as much as I should - they were behind the aubergines, a little awkward, I'll need to revise my setup next year. But there are enough, and I don't use masses, so it should be sufficient - and again, I've never grown these from seed to harvest, ditto the peppers.

Elsewhere, things are growing but nothing is abundant, apart from plums. We didn't plant the trees, and they usually produce very little fruit, but this time both have, especially the formerly barren tree right by the house. I left the highest ones as they've attracted a range of birds, including what seems to be a family of four blackcaps, but all the same, I have plenty to process into treats. I made plum sauce to a recipe I used again in 2011, and although it lacks the deliciousness of that year (different plums), it should mellow as it matures.

I found a lot of leek plants in pots that I'd forgotten about, so they were squeezed in next to the last of the outdoor fennel, which will be harvested very soon as it's all bolting. I've pricked out pak choi, Chinese cabbage, and celery, all of which are healthy and abundant, but where I'll fit them I have no idea. In fact, this is the lesson of all my years gardening - I never prepare the space first, and often crops fail because I haven't managed to get them planted at the optimal time. It will get easier as beds are cleared and maintained, but I'm not there yet.

Much is still uncertain. The outdoor sweetcorn is in full bloom, but did the female tassels emerge too late? I keep brushing broken off male flowers onto them to encourage pollination, but I won't raise my hopes. The borlotti beans sown amongst them are just starting to flower. Courgettes are robust but not cropping much.

Harvests
26/08 - ~150g shallots*
27/09 - (2kg+ plums)*
29/08? - 85g tomatoes*
30/08 - 35g aubergine*, 300g courgettes*
(unknown date) - (2kg+ plums)*
02/09 - 5g aubergine
04/09 - (630g plums)
07/09 - 730g tomatoes, 610g fennel, 35g celery
11/09 - 345g courgettes
12/09 - 135g spinach beet
15/09 - 565g tomatoes, 65g courgette

YTD total: 18.005kg
*all estimated from memory, photographs, and tweets