Pick produce at the right time or risk losing crops
Autumn is setting in and daylight hours are slowly but surely reducing. We have had a series of mild autumns, almost extended summers, in recent years, but right now anything can happen, so it’s best to be prepared. Hopefully the first frosts will be some way off, but we can’t get complacent none the less.
The timing therefore of when to harvest remaining frost tender crops is debatable. Certainly with the gently fading sun, produce grows less vigorously and hopes of an Indian summer might be a mere mirage on the horizon that soon fades. It’s best not to get our hopes up and then get caught out unawares, so do harvest remaining tender produce sooner, rather than later. Before the grimmer weather rolls on in.
That said do hold out a few more weeks at least for sweet potatoes as it helps tubers to bulk up so much more. You can cover plants with a cloche or plastic sheet as the weather gets cooler. If they are being grown in containers, simply take them under cover. Seriously, another couple of weeks growing adds loads to your sweet potato yields.
Ordinary potatoes though should in the main be raised from the ground outside, if not lifted already, because if the weather turns wet the slugs will turn them to lace. If you can’t lift them straight away, keep the rain off until you can with a plastic sheet then store your spuds in a cool dark place, I find a broken deep freezer in a shed is the most suitable place.
Hang tomato plants
A repurposed clear plastic sheet is also handy for covering pumpkins, butternuts and other squashes on cooler nights, though a blanket or even newspaper will do in an emergency. When collecting any of these cucurbits for storage, detach them with a few inches of stem attached and sit them on something soft somewhere in the warm and dry.
Tomato and pepper plants in containers can go inside, because if left outdoors their fruits are more likely to rot than ripen when the weather turns. Pull plants in the ground up, roots and all, and hang upside down in a warm, dry, airy, ideally light, place and green fruits will ripen better on the vines, than if taken off.
Fruit harvests
Pears are a tad awkward. Too hard today, perfect tomorrow, gone over the day after. As soon as pears start to drop, pick them all, stand them where you can watch them daily and as they colour and start to smell wonderful, I say eat them straight away.
Apples are easy to store, and in a cool place many varieties will keep for months, but only if they are picture perfect. If they have any hole, bruise or rot they will not keep, and they really need their pedicel – the little stalk – to remain attached. Never try to store windfalls as it’s a waste of time, and it’s better to turn them into puree, juice, apple rings or pies there and then.
Fortunately you can keep picking blackberries to add to the apple pies, and for jelly, right up to October the 10th “Old St Michael’s Day” when the ‘devil spits on them’ as the old saying goes.
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