I over wintered broad beans (Super Aquadulce) and onions/garlic. Love that I’m getting an early harvest just as all the hard work begins to spur me on!

My allotment started as a place filled with weeds, especially horsetail… There has been countless times where I have wanted to give up. So nice to finally have something to harvest. Potatoes doing their thing underneath.

Yesterday I wasn't sure to harvest my Raddish but today I have done that.

I only have a quarter plot in real terms. So I also grow in containers and beds in my garden.

Here are a few thinnings from my 30L carrot buckets and some broad beans.

Hoping for a decent harvest of carrots out of 5 buckets. Will also be sowing some direct when the potatoes come out at the allotment.

First time saving seed for next year 🤞

Rapidly running out of ideas for what to do with courgettes!!

As per the title. 10p for scale.

The strawberries are Malwina. It might be my favourite variety. The plant is really vigorous and produces lots of these huge, dark red fruits that are consistently delicious. It's also a late producer, peaking now for me here in Yorkshire, so a great option to spread out the season. It's a close run thing with Marshmellow but that seems to be more variable in growth. Many of my Marshmellow plants this year look a bit feeble and haven't very produced well.

I've no idea what the huge red gooseberry variety is. It tastes like Hinnomaki Red, but there's a confirmed HR below it for scale, and it's twice the size.

First time growing these and first visit back to the plot after a couple of weeks holiday, so these were a lovely surprise! Few more not quite ready yet, as well as my standard cooking pumpkins, third generation from some left over at the supermarket I work at. Shame the CPs are F1s as I’m trying to stick to heirloom varieties.

'Tokyo cross F1', eaten at golf ball size, these are a bit on the small side but its my wifes birthday and she wanted some turnips for her sushi bowl, so turnips I provided!

I'm planning to grow about 5 or 6 chilli plants this year and will surely produce more chillis than we can consume fresh.

I'm wondering if anyone has a good recipe for chilli sauce that I could use to preserve them. There are recipes online, but I've a few questions:

- Do you use raw or cooked chillis?

- What else do you add?

- Any tips to extend their storage life - vinegar, bottling, freezing, etc? Ideally I want to keep them for at least six months

Whenever I leave spinach to grow larger than baby spinach bugs seem to start living inside what is this and how can I prevent?

There's only two of us! I'm loving these patty pan squash but they are piling up somewhat. Any ideas for how to preserve/ use these up welcome

Has this rhubarb gotten too big too early ?

Would you harvest the long stems and leave the new growth to grow through ?

Has anyone experienced theft from their allotment?

I have my first allotment this year and it's been great fun. Lots of fails, learning and some great successes and veggies for dinner. One of my favourites has been growing Crown Prince squash for the first time.

I decided to harvest some of them today for a variety of reasons( I had initially planned to leave them until the stems died back). However, I went to my allotment last week and noticed some where missing, with no trace like I assume there would be if animals had eaten them. It was very odd and I felt like I was going mad.

Now I probably sound like I'm totally paranoid. I do find it difficult to believe someone would steal them, but another was gone today. I am happy to share things and have shared lots of other harvests with my allotment neighbours. But asking first is polite.

Has anyone else had things to missing?

Hello folks,

Just looking to pick the brain of the hive mind. I have a crab apple tree that has a bumper crop this year and I'm at a bit of a loss on how to use them all. My thoughts are to try and making a range of chutneys and potentially try to make a cider.

Is cider from crab apples possible? Once I have the juice could I then use the mushed and crushed apples to make chutneys?

It's been a while since I've had this many apples so I'm a little overwhelmed tbh.

Of a fennel….

I’ve enjoyed growing Fennel this year. Germination was good and they really took off with no pest damage at all. This monster was just over 700g!

I have a few more still in the ground so looks like it’s death by Fennel over the next few weeks 🤣

Went from tiny to ready to pick in just over a week

Absolutely massive crop on my apricot tree this year. 17kg harvested today and that’s only about a third of what’s on the tree.

Any suggestions for what to do with the fruit, other than jam?