Monday Harvest – November 5th 2012

I harvested the first of my broad beans this week.  I always get a bit excited by broad bean harvests – they are one of the last truly seasonal crops, best enjoyed cooked soon after harvest.  Aside from frozen you can really only get them here for a brief period in Spring and even then they are only really available at markets or of course from your own garden like these ones:

I cooked them with some tiny potatoes and some fresh garlic.

I don’t know what to think about my garlic this year, some of it is starting to die back – a month early in my opinion and frankly the heads aren’t really big enough to store yet.  They are great to eat fresh though, so I am enjoying pulling the occasional one and eat it with other Spring produce.

Everything seems a bit small at the moment.  This is my first beetroot harvest for Spring.  I sow beetroot seed in seed trays and then pot them on once before planting out so I do get a few bolting early (like these ones), as I think they prefer not to have their roots disturbed.  Its worth it though as I the turn around time in the beds is really quick growing them this way.  I reckon these couple have only occupied space for about a month.

Smaller still were these carrots.  Mr 3 recognised the foliage in the garden and decide to get himself a snack.  It took my longer to photograph them than it did for him to eat them.  I have suggested he waits a little longer before pulling any more – he’s unlikely to listen of course but you have to try….

Continuing the small veg theme was the first cucumber of the season.  I bought some Lebanese cucumber seedlings, as the slugs/snails got many of the ones I sowed.  In retrospect I think I probably both bought and planted them out too early as they seem to have rushed to fruit without much leaf growth.  I have taken off a few of their fruit to try and encourage a bit more growth.  This one was big enough to eat (just).

One thing that is putting on loads of leaf growth are my lettuces.  I harvest enough for a big green salad each day and still the leaves come.  Yay for lettuces is what I say!

For more veg (much of it a little larger than mine) head over to Daphne’s Dandelions and see harvests from around the world.