Tail-End Harvests

The elderberry harvest in full swing

Because this year has been all over the place, weather wise, we're finding some odd results. You may remember that we've only just harvested the sweetcorn. Today, we have had another strange bit of timing - harvesting elderberries, which are at least 1 month late, and nearer 2 months late based on last year's timing. We were joined by volunteer Merion for the session, as well as Mark's daughter Mia, who was keen to get involved with every job going. It is quite satisfying though, as you pick the whole head of berries in one go, which makes the picking go fairly quickly. The birds also love them, so you can leave the berries that are out of reach in the knowledge that they won't go to waste.

Mia provides extra labour!

We also harvested a crop of marigolds (calendula), which we will dry and use to make hand-cream. They are edible as well - with a scattering of petals making a colourful addition to any salad. Tracey reckons they smell faintly of oranges, so everyone had a sniff.

Mark wasn't convinced the marigolds smelt
of oranges, but Tracey is sure they do.

Calendula look beautiful, but they are also tasty and useful

Still more harvesting had to be done. Some of it was to provide the raw materials for a soup making session at the Nottingham University Samworth Academy after school session, so Charles who is a group leader there turned up to take away some goodies (we later heard that the soup was amazing).

Charles gets his gourmet soup kit

 We pulled some of the parsnips for the soup, and were delighted to discover that the row we sowed into a narrow sand trench were clearly very happy. We pulled out one that was probably 50+cm long - very impressive!

Merion with the giant parsnip!

The last harvest of the day was the coriander crop. We deliberately left a lot of it to go to seed, because this is a great addition to many different foods and we're hoping to use some in our green tomato chutney. We all smell fabulous now

Mia with the coriander harvest