Saturday 1 August 2009

The Harvest Begins!


I bought a bag of mixed chilli pepper seeds to sow this year, so I am not sure what any of these varieties are, but I have about 8 pots of peppers in my greenhouse, all which a rich crop of chillies! There are fat, lime green upright peppers, like the ones above, and long green curly fingers, which I suspect will be fiery!

And many sorts in between. None of them are ready to ripen yet, but I don't expect it will be long before the first ones begin to change colour.

We have masses of beans. The large purple ones shown here are the best ever! Prolific, large, and completely stringless, they are a variety called 'Cosse Violette'. This is the third year I have been growing them ( still from the one original pack of seed!). This year I have grown one tripod of them in the greenhouse, and so I am hoping I can save seeds from these as they should be isolated enough from the other varieties. The other ones here are 'Cherokee Trail of Tears', but I am a bit disappointed with them. They haven't been nearly as heavy cropping, and they are a bit stringy and tough, even when picked small.

I dropped one on the way into the house - Beetle is sure it is a small wiggly snake!


Disater struck in the fruit garden, probably because of the sheer volume of water everywhere. One of my young apple trees was so weighed down by the apples, that a bough snapped off, and it broke much of the tayberry bush on it's way down. Luckily the tayberry was nearly over, so we stripped all the berries off it, but I am sad about the apple tree.

It is a variety called 'James Grieve', and we did manage to rescue the apples from the broken branch. They are very nearly ripe, and I will keep them for cooking.

6 comments:

Sarah Sullivan said...

Oh wow what a bounty!! The yellow peppers are Banana's I think, they look ripe..the green ones will turn red and get hotter..my hubby loves to grow peppers. We have had such a cool seson things are just starting to fruit a bit..taken forever this year. I do have pumpkins this time - whoo hoo!!!! Sarah

Linda said...

Your garden always looks so delicious and full of wholesome food, love the puss shot. Lindax

Carol Anne Strange said...

Your garden is a real bounty of goodness, Danielle, and it's so wonderful to see the start of the harvesting. That's a real shame about the apple bough. It must have been so weighted with fruit. Wishing you plenty of all what you need. x

Kim said...

The chillis look wonderful and you are lucky with your beans. Mine have been appalling this year at the field. I'll grow them at home in future as it's too windy and the animals have been hard on all the crops! It's been inspiring though ;)

Kim x

Carolee said...

It all looks so delicious, especially those peppers! And your cat is just adorable. :)

~ Carolee

Rima Staines said...

Hello Danielle! It was very lovely to meet you on the hill yesterday :)
And we so enjoyed the fruits of your garden which we ate for dinner with cous cous as the only addition!
Thank you for being kind.. and see you again!
X Rima

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