This week In Stephanie’s Kitchen Garden we will be continuing the Autumn Harvest. The haulms on our maincrop potatoes have now all but died, so we will cut these off to the ground and leave the tubers for ten days before digging them up. This time in the ground will toughen their skins so that they will store better. Digging up the autumn potatoes is one of my favourite Kitchen Garden jobs. It is immensely satisfying to end up with a bag full of lovely potatoes and a neatly dug and raked patch of ground.
We will also be moving our one of our pot grown mint plants in to the greenhouse to extend the growing season. The plant will be chopped back and well watered and it will provide us with fresh mint well into late autumn and early winter.
Our apple rack will be dusted off ready to receive this year’s crop of cooking apples. Our dessert apples don’t usually last long enough to store before they are eaten, but our Bramleys will sit happily in the cool of the shed to be used as and when we want them.
In the greenhouse, we have got the propagator out ready for our autumn broad bean sowing. We have a greedy mouse population in Stephanie’s Kitchen Garden, so our beans are grown in rootrainers, rather than in the ground. These will then be put into the propagator with the lid on to prevent any opportunistic mice digging them up and stealing them before they have a chance to grow.
This week we will be continuing to harvest blackberries, raspberries, French beans, runner beans, kale, spinach, chard, broccoli, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, apples, pears and squash.
