Vegetable Growing 2025

And picked some of the Apricots today, the birds keep pecking them.
Probably most would be best used for jam.

 

You’re doing better than me @Loofah I’ve got six plants on the go and have had the worst year with them, harvesting maybe 3 a week. It was better before all the rain but now they have stalled and some of my runner beans have also suffered from the rain, leaves all yellow and spotty but the others beside them are okay. They are in different trugs (raised beds) and the trug where the plants have gone yellow didn’t drain the rain away. I might have noticed they were acting differently if we hadn’t had a heatwave I guess .

 

Courgettes were prolific for me this year too. I did 3 last year but only 1 plant survived to maturity so this year I grew 4 just in case and, typically, they all did well - too well actually.

 

Yes that's always the way with courgettes. I gambled this year and only planted out 1 green and 1 yellow ( I gave away the other young plants).
So far it's just right I have more than enough, we are just about keeping up with them.

I have been digging Anya potatoes, for those not familiar, they are a salad variety, a cross between pink first apple and Deseire. The flavour of Pink fir but not quite so lumpy, so easier to use.
I had already put about a quarter into the sack before I remembered to take a photo .


This next picture is a rather good potato man. There's a family story about that, maybe I'll put it on here one day.

 

Super crop @Allotment Boy ! How well do they keep? I thought salads were supposed to be harder to store. (I didn't get many Anya because of blight I think, but they have been delicious)

 

I thought Anya would have been maincrop like PFA, I never dug my PFA until early september.

 

I've not grown potatoes for a few years but I liked the Anya tho my favourite was La Ratte.
@Allotment Boy don't keep us in suspense for too long with The Potato Man story

 

I used to get Rattes in Belgium but haven't seen them here to eat or plant. Excellent spuds.

Despite the drought, ours are doing well - just pantry spuds that sprouted and were planted in spring. Lots of different sizes and shpes on one plant but good quantities.

 

Would this work for you :
25 Pommes de terre Ratte

 

The potato shop I sometimes go to in Tenterden Kent sells La ratte, but for eating not seed, but nothing would stop anyone planting them.

 

According to Alan Romans in his "Book of the Potato "
Anya bred in 1995, Scotland, Second early. " This is an odity; Bred by A Scottish Crop research Institute, commissioned by Sainsbury's to supply an old fashioned salad Potato that they could control with modern plant breeders rights. A Desiree X Pink Fir Apple, which has lost some of the less desired characters of Pink fir but still produces a pleasant nutty semi snobby salad Potato "
He agrees that Pink fir is a late maincrop, but Deseire is an early main. Quite how those two make a second early, just shows that genetic characters don't always play ball, when you cross two different cultivars, it does work though because you get the flavour and ( slightly dry) texture, but not so lumpy so easier to use.

 

Probably similar to how International kidney become an early from Jersey but classed as a second early.

 

Many years ago on a trip in South America we visited Peru. They have over 4000 varieties of potato and yet we were never offered any in any meal we had. Strange.