The bean plants have pretty much stopped growing, and the pods are drying on the plants. The borlotto beans (beige with red flecks) have been very good, a row of about 3 metres giving enough for several cassoulets. The smaller white beans were less prolific, and I like the flavour of the borlottos, so I'll just be growing borlottos next year.
It was a mistake to plant sweet peas in amongst the beans - I thought they might usefully share the climbing supports, but they just interfered with each other. I have harvested some sweet pea seeds for next year, but I'm not sure yet where I'll plant them.
The fennel that I planted has just run to seed. No harvest at all. I'll have plenty of seed for next year again, therefore, but I might just be selecting for a variety that bolts. I'll try planting them later to see what happens. It was also a mistake to plant strawberries around the bases of the gooseberry bushes. It's much harder to hoe around them, and you really have to weed by hand. And you risk hoeing or pulling up the strawberries by mistake. I think that for strawberries, planting through a tarpaulin is the way to go. In the mean time I have put cardboard around the gooseberries to keep the weeds down. We buy a remarkable amount of bulky things for the gîte and they often come in cardboard packing. Seems a useful thing to do with it. It will let water (and nutrients) through, and, hopefully stop at least the annual weeds. You're apparently supposed to cover it with compost. I might try that; it looks pretty ugly right now.
Carrots are doing fine, and the parsnips will make a good harvest. Scorzonera looks to be OK too. The butternut squash are also doing very nicely, threatening to invade everything around them. The tomatoes are adequate - they didn't like the hot and dry weather, so the harvest is small. I have enough for us, but not enough to give any away. And I don't like the flavour of the cherry tomato variety I tried this year. I'll be back to Sweet 100 next year. I am trying winter radish for the first time; it's one of the crops you can plant mid-year.
The potato crop was good, even allowing for the ones with hollow heart. There are two heavy sacks in the shed. Next year I will grow only Miss Blush, and perhaps a baking variety. I'll see if I can keep the smaller ones as seed potatoes over winter. The bed that had the spuds in is now empty, and the next crop according to the rotational plan will be beans. I'm going to overwinter broad beans. I did a small experiment this year with reasonable success so I'll plant up the whole bed this Autumn.
Had bean soup this evening. Good to hear they’re healthy.
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