Poor harvest…

The dark and damp English summer has prevented many of our crops from growing well. We know we would have some problems because we were late in getting some in the ground, but the adverse weather has just compounded the problem. We had to pick all of the tomatoes green and immature as they had started to get blight from the high humidity, so Sue spent a long time turning them into chutney. We have dug up all of our potatoes now and the small haul was further lessened by slug damage. Being out in the countryside brings new problems to gardening and although it is wonderful to see deer wandering around it is necessary to fence of the allotment to prevent them from eating everything you have grown. Nevertheless the conditions have meant that we didn’t have to spend much time watering and allowed us to do other things in the evenings and weekends. We have supplemented our harvest with foraged food for free and have managed to collect plenty of blackberries, some plums, a load of apples and even one mushroom (several others we picked up were discarded as being potentially dangerous).