Harvest

It's the season when we're beginning to take stock of the success of this year's garden produce.  We've just harvested the first bed of carrots - minus the ones we've been taking out on a daily basis - and these have now had their green tops removed and have been buried in boxes of damp sand, in the hope they'll keep us in carrots at least until Christmas.  Last year we had a disaster with the carrots, when a whole box of them came out rotten.

The potato crop has now been lifted and is drying in racks in the back yard before being stored in an old gunny sack.  The variety we've grown this year has again been Anya, and very good potatoes they are.  The experiment of growing them in terracotta chimney liners has been a huge success.  We'll use them again next year, but it means removing the 'used' soil and replacing it with fresh.

Our greenhouse has produced tomatoes and cucumbers which, along with the outdoor salad leaves and rocket, have been more than enough to keep us in salad through the summer.

Meanwhile, we're also picking a good second batch of fruit from our raspberry canes, enjoying a constant supply of courgettes, and struggling to keep up with the best harvest of broad beans ever.  There have been disappointments.  The peas didn't produce much, and we now know why: a cock pheasant was getting to them in the early morning before we were up.