April Harvest

The Summer vegetable garden is slowly drawing to a close. Yesterday I pulled out the last of the zucchini plants and most of the tomato plants. Only the Amish Paste tomato is still going strongly now. I also took out the entire northern section of corn (flop!) and the remains of the butternut pumpkin plants (almost a flop: I got one lonely, very little baby butternut from them). The veggie patch is starting to look a little bare now. The Lebanese eggplants are still ticking along, and we ate our first broccolini recently, although some of it was so insect infested I had to throw it straight out.

Yesterday we also harvested our last pot of potatoes. They are Desiree, and were planted way back in Spring last year. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the leaves to die down, but they were showing no signs at all of doing so and I was impatient for the big pot (so I could plant my kiwi-fruit into a bigger pot), so we upended the pot onto the lawn, and look at them all! OK, so perhaps not so impressive to seasoned potato growers, but I was very happy with our little harvest, almost 1kg worth (2 pounds). Next year I will plant more, all into pots (to avoid another in-ground failure), Kipflers maybe, and those purple ones Digger's sell....

Speaking of Digger's, my seed and garlic order arrived the other day so I got cracking, planting lots into where the old lawn was. Lots of broad beans ('Aquadulce'), peas ('Greenfeast'... and then I read the label properly and realised they're supposed to go in during Spring. Oh. Oops! An Out-Of-Season trial?). The Garlics I bought were 'Early Purple' (a hardneck variety) and 'Early White' (a soft-neck variety), I have never grown garlic before but how hard can it be? (Say she who can muck up with peas!)

And the Piece de Resistance: Our Watermelon!
It was a potted variety. The first time I planted it, it was promptly eaten by a marauding creepy-crawly, so I tried again. It made a lovely big plant, but only one watermelon ever grew properly on it. This is one expensive melon! I will try again next year, but make more of an effort to hand-pollinate it (I did this year, but only half-heartedly). The plant had shrivelled and wilted to naught, so we picked our melon and admired it;

We felt it's hefty weight;

We cut it open with an old knife, on what was once the foundation of the laundry wall;

Tasted it, and deemed it delicious!