Bean tastic

We have had a bumper crop of green beans this year. And just when we thought the "Purple Queen" plants were finishing up, I noticed that many of the plants have a new flush of flowers:

We pick the beans every 2 days and typically our harvests have been looking like this for the past couple of weeks:

This is probably about 60-70% of the total harvest. The rest didn't even make it past quality control and ended up on the compost heap. We can afford to be ruthless given the sheer quantity! The "Blue Lake" plants, and their flowers, are now at the top of their 7 foot canes, so still plenty more beans to come:

In other news, the pumpkins "Jack O Lantern" are beginning to ripen:

We have about 4 decent sized fruit. We are getting a small punnet of "Polka" raspberries every few days:

And large quantities of tomatoes from our greenhouse at home, again harvested every day or two:

Definitely peak month for harvesting thus far!

Name that apple

So, last year we planted a birthday present apple tree, which had "Golden Delicious" written on the package - we've already doubted the heritage of this, but now suspect that it may well be a discovery however any ideas welcome! The fact that it came from Tesco originally, and Tesco sell discovery made us suspect this may be one:

Spent a while on apple ID before the more direct route to identification occurred to us! This does however mean that the apples are probably nearly ready 😀

Lotta lolla rossa / fractal dimensions

Just harvested a lettuce from the allotment which, thanks to the fact that it is a lolla rossa, is not slug damaged 😀 which is pretty unusual for allotment grown salad. One of the things it got me thinking is how big is a leaf... stupid question you may think but...

... they are kinda crinkly around the edges:

(this is the edge of that one leaf). When you open them out to wash you find a lot more square inches of leaf than has any business being in such a small space. This was looked into before [1] regarding the coastline of Britain... anyhow, I haven't actually calculated the fractal dimension but I know there is a lot of leaf in there - so much so that one little lettuce can comfortably fill the salad spinner:

and, quite honestly, it would not surprise me if the total surface area is the same as four tennis courts! 😱

Even better, it tastes good!

[1] Mandelbrot, B (1967) Science Vol. 156, Issue 3775, pp. 636-638 DOI: 10.1126/science.156.3775.636

Not allotment: tomatoes back at home

Following on from the sewing post... we've been harvesting tomatoes for a little while but this weekend they have got into their stride - two days harvest of tomatoes and chillis:

Little red ones to the left are Garden Pearl; dark ones are Black Cherry; big ones in top tight are Falcrosso F1 and there are some Bejbino mixed in there somewhere... The chillis are Cherry Bomb - pretty mild but tasty :o)

Changing seasons / overdue update

Things "ticking over" at the allotment at the moment, but we are feeling the change of seasons already. The purple beans have largely finished, supplanted by the green French beans (Blue Lake) and the pumpkins are starting to look fully grown if green. The courgettes are still producing (7 this week?) and we have started getting our autumn fruiting raspberries though they are not really going fill swing yet. Today's harvest was pretty modest:

... but it has only been 48 hours since the last visit. One interesting thing this year is our new apple tree seems to be doing well, though if it is a "Golden Delicious" it is of dubious provenance:

That said, the apples are looking pretty good, particularly for a first season:

Very much looking forward to eating some, though currently a little small at around 50mm across...