Managing the vegetables has been hard going whilst keeping a tiny Lyra happy, but today we all headed out and harvested my favourite crops – garlic and onions. The garlic has its roots trimmed off, and the muddy outer skin removed, and after a few days drying in our cooler small tunnel, it will get plaited up and hung in the kitchen to dry fully. We’ll keep the largest bulbs to replant in October, and I’ve already vowed to make sure I keep on top of the weeds next season – it really made a difference to the size where the ground had been kept well mulched and weed free.
Our onion crop wasn’t as large as I’d hoped, but its quite respectable, and we learned a lot about how best to mix other crops with them (or not). Certainly there is a big difference in size between the largest and smallest. They’ll dry on the rack for a week or so before we move them to continue drying for a couple more weeks. Hopefully they’ll then last us well into the new year.
Here’s something we weren’t expecting – round cucumbers, aka Crystal Lemon. This heritage variety needs really high temperatures >21 degrees C to germinate, so it came as a surprise to find it in the big polytunnel, hiding in amongst the winter squash, which is providing an ideal support for it.
Some drastic weeding has got the outside beds almost under control, and Claire has managed to turn the tomatoes from a wilderness into an amazingly tidy looking series of plants, which are heaving with tomatoes, that are now slowly ripening as they are getting some much needed light.
