It’s a great time to store up a variety of fruit and veg...and ensure you’ll be full of beans
Beans are one of the most versatile vegetables.
You can eat them fresh or store them for use in soups and stews during the winter.
If you plan to keep your beans for later, then allow them to ripen fully and dry on the plant before harvesting them.
If, however, yours are not yet ready for picking, then it could be that you waited too late in the season to sow them. Ideally they should be sown under cover in April, ready to go into the ground as soon as the last frost has passed.
When picking them for storing, choose a dry day and place them on a tray in a warm place to allow them to dry out fully. Then, once they are hard, store them in an airtight jar.
All kinds of fruit and veg are ready to be added to the store cupboard at the moment, from freshly-made raspberry jam to carrots for the freezer.
Sown regularly, carrots have a very long cropping season, but it is always worth storing some for later in the year.
And freezing isn’t the only option. One method of storing all kinds of root vegetables that was commonly used before the advent of refrigeration, is called a ‘clamp’.
Basically this involves digging a shallow trench and then placing potatoes, carrots and parsnips between layers of straw and dry soil.
Stored this way, the roots will remain in good condition for many months, however it is essential to store only unblemished vegetables as otherwise rot could set in and spread through the whole lot. The last couple of years has seen traditional techniques such as this become popular again and many more gardeners are also attempting to remove all plastics from the veg patch.
This can be challenging as both black polythene and fleece, which is also made of plastic, are affordable, readily available and effective at suppressing weeds and protecting plants from frost, pigeons and insects.
But in the same way as the withdrawal of onceubiquitous chemicals from the plot has forced gardeners to rethink their approach, older methods of dealing with problems are making a comeback and its not uncommon once again to see strawberries covered by jam jars and mulch rather than polythene being used to smother weeds.