Garden Tool Set

Harvest - the highs (and lows) of the season

Spaghetti squash, ready to be picked.

We raised our squash this year following the 'Three Sisters' planting methods of the Native Americans. There's more detail about the Three Sisters here, but the general idea is that sweetcorn, squash and climbing beans are grown together, the beans providing anchorage for the corn, which provides the beans with a climbing frame. The squash ramble at ground level, providing cover which suppresses weeds and keeps the soil moist underneath.

The squash plants didn't give us a glut, but we harvested good-sized spaghetti squash, Connecticut Old Field, the Italian Berrettina Piacentina with its dense orange flesh and chestnutty flavour, and Futsu, a compact Japanese variety. The courgettes were planted elsewhere in the garden and gave us a steady of not particularly prolific supply (it's not often you can say that: usually one courgette plant is not enough, and any more than one is a glut).

Courgettes and squash seeds should be sown indoors in pots: two seeds to a pot and then the weaker seedling thinned out once they’ve germinated. Once they have true leaves, they’re ready to be moved outside to be hardened off, ie, the plants are allowed to become gradually accustomed to the colder, windier air outside. Then they can be transplanted to the open ground. They like a rich soil so if you have manure or, better still, fully composted kitchen waste, dig that in before you plant out the squash. They do have a tendency to ramble all over the garden – if you don’t have the space for this, you can train them up a fence or trellis. The stems of pumpkins and squash are remarkably strong and will bear even very large fruits without them falling.

We sowed climbing borlotti beans in May as part of our Three Sisters plan, and harvested a small but tasty crop last month. Most of the plants managed to entwine themselves around the corn stems satisfactorily, although several made for the fig tree and climbed up that instead.

Borlotti beans do well here in London, the bean pods are spectacularly beautiful, as are the beans themselves. The fresh bean pods are bright crimson, housing creamy beans splashed with purple. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t pick borlotti bean pods to cook and eat fresh. They’re delicious, especially served with a squeeze of lemon, some salt and a drizzle of olive oil.

But leave at least some on the plants to keep for use later in the year. As summer wears on into autumn, the pods will change from bright pink flecked with cream, to a dark purple papery husk.

Pick the pods once they’ve turned dark and dry, but before the first frost, usually sometime in October. Thread the pods together and hang them up somewhere airy until all the pods are dried out. Then shell the beans. They should be dry already and clatter when dropped on the work surface. If they land with a soft thud instead, they need more drying.

Finally, freeze the shelled beans in a bag for about 48 hours - this quick freeze just ensures that if the beans were harbouring any bugs, mites or insect eggs, they are killed off.

Once out of the freezer, spread the beans out briefly on kitchen paper just to check they’re dry again, then pour into a jar with a tightly fitting lid.

Keep in a dark cool place and they will last for months – until your next bean harvest, in fact, if you haven’t eaten them all by then.

Beans, whether you grow them for green beans or to dry the mature beans for use in the winter, are a fast crop. They don’t like the cold and should be sown when the soil warms up in April or even May. They will catch up very quickly.

The trick to making your fig tree bear fruit is to restrict its roots. Find a sunny sheltered site for your newly-bought fig tree, and plant it in a pot sunk into the ground, or line the planting hole with stones, so that the roots are contained and you get a bushier tree with more fruit. Our summer season isn’t really long enough for a full crop of figs. When the frosts come, remove any immature fruit left on the tree. It is the very tiny pea-sized fruit which will develop into mature fruit the next year.

Brown turkey figs harvested in London.

We planted our first blueberry plants in the Secret Garden just a week ago in anticipation of harvesting our first fruits next July. We have four 'Goldtraube' blueberry plants, which have a reputation for being heavy croppers and highly flavoursome.

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Labels: blueberries, borlotti beans, cavolo nero, figs, Jerusalem artichokes, kale, pumpkin, squash, Tuscan kale