Good Roots

I've had some whopper parsnips so far this season, most of which I have had to fight out of the ground

Other roots; carrots and beetroot have been pretty good too, producing a constant supply

I ended up having to pull up all of the carrots at the start of October because something started eating them in the ground. These were the last ones that came up.

Swede is technically a brassica but they look and grow like roots so I'm including them here. I have only had a couple of decent ones this year but as that's more than last year I'm treating them as a success.

I have a freezer well stocked with both carrots and parsnips and also another row of parsnips still in the ground. The remaining were sown quite close together and thinning out has never been a strength of mine so at the weekend I pulled up a few of the smaller ones

Very tasty there were too.

Brassica Saturday...

... occured the last weekend in September. I harvested 2 cabbages, 2 romanesco cauliflowers

and my second batch of brussels sprouts

The first batch were picked the previous weekend: here they are with their follow Sunday dinner accompaniments

Having never successfully produced sprouts or decent cauliflowers for that matter I was pretty impressed with myself. Some of both are currently stored in the freezer.

Magnificent Peppers

I have had some spectacular peppers this summer, both sweet and chilli

The last sweet peppers were picked in mid-September. They freeze extremely well and I have a few batches tucked away to use in all manner of recipes.

In the main, chillies kept producing until mid-October and I had to pick them all at once because they were starting to dry on the plants

Scotch bonnet came in later than the other chillies; this pic was taken on the same day as the above

and I picked this very one today

I repeated my successful preserving method from last year for the excess chillies and pickled them

or turned them into traffic light chilli jam

Potatoes

I emptied the last sack of main crop potatoes today,

which reminded me (again) that I have not posted for ages. Potatoes have served me well since I emptied the first sack so here is selection of pics since then

In other potato news, the Christmas sacks were coming along nicely, but then a month or so ago the haulms started to fall over and then turn brown.

I just left them to it until today when I had a rummage in one sack of each variety (charlotte & red duke of york) and was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of decent spuds in each... which I pushed back under the soil.

I doubt they are still growing, so I might do what I did with the earlies and main crops; chop the tops off and leave them in the soil until required. Hopefully they should be okay, but I'll move them undercover if it gets too wet or cold.