Despite lack of blogging activity, things have been happening at the allotment. It's not in a fantastic state, but it's not critical either.
Rather than try to update all at once, I'm embarking on a mini-series of updates. First up, our bountiful blackcurrants. Or they would have been if we hadn't gone away for two weeks just at the peak of the crop. We picked frantically the night before, and I froze 9lbs of berries. Our little camping chairs provided the perfect way to avoid back strain while picking.
When we returned, the crop was on the ground and the wasps were having a merry time. I did take another 1.5lbs from the bushes and made a few pots of jam straight away because the fruit was so ripe that it began to spoil once picked.
Difficult to know when to go on holiday as a gardener! If we'd gone the two weeks before we would have missed the strawberries. Are just-picked strawberries in smaller quantity worth more than probably unmanageable loads of blackcurrants? There is complex exchange rate of gardening which I haven't fully worked out yet.
What crops did you miss by going on holiday this year?
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9 comments:
We went away in March so didn't miss anything but we put off going away in September as things seemed as though they would be ready later.
Its been a fantastic season for growth on everything.
A perfect summer.
I'm lucky enough to have a team of 3 Garden Helpers, who between them make sure that nothing is lost. If it came to the crunch, would sacrifice the Strawberries in favour of the Blackcurrants, on the basis that you can get decent Strawberries more or less throughout the Summer, but Blackcurrants are seldom available to buy.
I have one blackcurrant bush. Picked some fruits before going away and some when we returned. But our crop was small. It's always small. I know it's only one bush but . . . how many blackcurrants should one expect per bush? It's getting old. Could that be it?
I have only one square meter of vegetable/herb garden in my back yard with nothing in it this year!
Sooo good to see you posting again. I've really missed your allotment news. Nothing glutting here this year, although the tomatoes are finally showing a decent crop allowing me to sauce & soup. Vacation? LOL I'm retired so this house/gardens IS my well-earned full-time vacation.
I'm hoping for blackcurrants next year, my newly planted bush only provided a small harvest this year. It was the sweet peas which suffered here whilst I was on holiday. I came home to plants full of seed pods, but after cutting them all off, the plants have gone on to produce more flowers.
We had one Blackcurrant bush on the old allotment which cropped magnificently every year.rather than making jam all at once we froze them in kilo bags.The year we had the big freeze up I was making blackcurrant jam! The smells of summer in the middle of the snow.
We've had such a long drought here in the desert of southern New Mexico, that nothing much (other than the happy cacti) has grown--until this year, with its abundant rains. Now we have tomatoes for the first time since 2010, and these are volunteers out by the compost heap! Not much of a harvest, really, when compared to temperate area gardens, for sure, but we'll take what we can get. We did our summer traveling early on, so haven't missed a thing.
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