Behold the bounty from a lazy organic garden! We’re a long way from being self-sufficient and I’m not quite sure what we’re going to make out of this particular combo of apples, vaguely rude carrots, peppers, courgettes, borlotti beans and a handful of cucamelons, but it does go to show that you can still grow edible stuff without resorting to pesticides. Of course we are also growing a lot of greenfly, slugs and caterpillars (the Large White butterflies in particular have a penchant for kohlrabi it seems), but their need is probably greater than ours. We should also get a good crop of blackberries if the birds don’t beat us to it and chillies if I remember to water them in the greenhouse.
We would also have had a lot of globe artichokes if, in true lazy fashion, we hadn’t let them get way too big. They would now be too tough to eat, but on the plus side, I think they look great like this with their crazy purple hairdos and the bees absolutely love them.
We did get a good crop of asparagus this year – traditionally you stop harvesting this on the summer solstice, then leave the stems to grow to lay down nutrients for next year. The result is this fluffy asparagus forest, which the insects love too, although we could do without the asparagus beetles getting jiggy in it!
Impressive harvest basket. You need to keep pigs then you could do a pork, Apple and veg casserole!! Apples near Edinburgh still have a few weeks to go before picking but the crop looks quite good – unlike the plums , not 1 to be found. Have you tried nematodes for an organic control of slugs. I find them really effective and saves you wasting beer in beer traps which in my experience caught everything but slugs!
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Funnily enough the deeds to our house specifically prohibit us from keeping pigs in the front garden! So guess it will have to be a veggie casserole. Might try the nematode thing next year (although I do actually quite like the slugs too) – probably too late to save most things this year.
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