It’s been a while since I’ve blogged and I’m sorry for the gap, but the weekends have been super busy and it’s basically it’s been weeding, watering, weeding, side shooting, weeding, feeding and more weeding. Not a very interesting thing to show you.

But this weekend I’ve been able to do something else and that is starting to harvest various bits. The Runner beans and French beans I’m starting to harvest, and they taste amazing. I’ve harvested this years garlic, although I wasn’t that impressed with it this year, but it’s ok, maybe my standards are just too high. They are now drying in the garage on the metal shelves and I’ll leave them there for about 4-6 weeks before I bundle them up. You can use them before they’re dry, so I’ll keep popping out to get a bulb.

The next job was to harvest my Broad Beans. They did very well this year and I have been harvesting them as and when we needed them. But the plants have now started to loose their green colour and some of the pods have started to go brown so I need to get them all out and harvest all the beans. Once I’ve harvested them, I’ll give them a wash and then put them in a bag and freeze them. I don’t blanche them before freezing, to be honest I don’t have the time. Then when I need some I’ll just take out what I need and put straight in the dinner I’m cooking.

This video I made 9 years ago so please don’t be confused by the background which was when I had an allotment, but the principle of harvesting is exactly the same.

My Courgette plants are whizzing along very well. I always check and see how they’re doing when I go and feed the chickens in the morning. The fruits were about 3 inches long, so not really large enough to harvest. For a couple of days I didn’t look at them and they must have known because they suddenly grew and I harvest one that was 12 inches long! Maybe it thought it was a marrow. So I sliced it horizontally, scooped out the seeds and filled it with some mince, onions and tomatoes. On the top I put a mixture of bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Wrap loosely in foil and roast in the oven for about an hour. It was very tasty. There are another couple of large ones still on the plants so I’ll harvest those, cut them in chunks and freeze them. To stop courgette going soft when you take it out the freezer it’s best to cook from frozen and not let them thaw out before.

And finally I’ve started harvesting some of my Onions. I sowed some from sets (little baby onions) and some from seeds. The ones from the sets are now ready. You know when your onions are ready to harvest because the stems fall over. You can leave them in the ground until the stems start to go brown, but once the stems have toppled then the onions won’t do any more growing.

This video was filmed 2 years ago and so far my onions are much larger, but it shows you how I harvest mine.

The two varieties grown from sets are now drying in my greenhouses. They’ll need to dry for about 6 weeks or so, but if you need to use any you can. You only need to dry them if you’re going to store them in a sack. If you don’t have a greenhouse then any cool dry place will do, a garage or cellar is perfect…..but who had a cellar these days? If I had one it would be full of wine and beer. I’d most probably be making my own beer and wine, maybe even some cider.

So that was this weekend and the first part of the week. Let’s see what next weekend will bring…..more weeding I expect.

Don’t forget my Claire’s Allotment Gardening Essentials Book Park 1 is available HERE. Everything you need to know to help you on your gardening journey.

And Lottie and Dottie are still available on HERE.

Happy gardening xxx