Selfsufficientish.com

Sshh, you weren't supposed to tell.

Yeah,I was thinking if you grow regular stuff in the tunnel,cos of dodgy conditions,you'd do well to bung the cordons there as well.Most of the commercial cherries planted recently round here have been in tunnel,not so much for the climate as to control P&D.These though are a high value crop.
Tony,if you're providing apples for 10 months of the year,then I'm not going to presume to suggest ANYTHING to you. 10 months won't kill you,puree some Bramley and bottle/freeze it,or better still make do with bloody gooseberries!

I'm talking about eating apples fresh OJ, every evening we both have an apple each.I don't think a gooseberry would be quite the same.
There is no problem with processed stored apples, we have loads of dried apple rings, bottled apple purée and frozen mixtures (apple & blackberry, apple & raspberry etc)
Storing apples in a non-working freezer keeps Winstons fresh until May no problem, it's the June and July that's the problem.

I was lucky enough to get some heavy duty tunnel hoops for nothing, I got enough to make a huge (tall) fruit cage that I plan to cover with windbreak material to about 6' and bird netting over the top. That should be an improvement for soft fruit growing and cherries.

Where is that like button we requested?

I can eat in season quite happily - well mostly except when I just fancy a tomato or two around the winter solstice. Perhaps I can cure myself of that little idea. Vegetables are not a problem as I've grown up eating with the season.

False teeth ensure that you can't bite apples (oh and I don't like them except in apple crumble). My downfalls are grapes and kiwi fruit. Which are both imported in and out of season. Quite like nectarines too.

My problem is lack of storage or I would have been collecting blackberries this year for the winter.

Coming back to this one - I know it's an old discussion but I've been eating seasonally most of this year. Not too sure how I've managed it but it could be that I've been picking my own vegetables and fruit so that I've not been buying any. Quite without realising it has happened.

I've come to the conclusion we can't live seasonally up here, not well anyway. Even our veg box providers (based just the other side of Inverness) buy in to stop the boredom. Otherwise it'd be neeps, tatties and kale from about February to about now.

I could do...if only everything flourished! But when a staple fails due to flipping mole crickets chomping on them....or chafers.

My onions FAILED...devastated, i had over wintered go to seed, red and seed sown whites chomped and replacements didn't grow. Keeping fingers crossed that whatever it is is happy with all the weeds and eaves the leeks alone.

We have a small bed of onions and leeks side by side. The tops of the onions have all been nibbled but the leeks are untouched.

It would appear we have some very picky pests.

We seem to eat with the seasons, the only things I buy are frozen peas and sweet pepper (except if I have a good crop and bottle some). We are happy to eat sprouts and kales, of course there are carrots in store, salads from the tunnels and plenty of spuds. It really is a treat when something else comes along

With permission to keep the second allotment that I have cleared, I'm busy drawing up and planning how to do more next season so that two households can be covered for more for a longer season. I now have enough room to do lots of tatties which will be good! Pink Fir Apples and King Edwards here we come at least.

diggernotdreamer wrote:the only things I buy are frozen peas

I missed this earlier.
I have to say that if I could only grow one vegetable it would be peas. I can't stand the horrible over-sweet winey taste of commercially frozen peas.
Plus they are so easy to grow, and apart from weevils nibbling the first few leaves they have no pests over here. (Meaning that we are not pestered with maggoty peas here like you get in S.E. England )

I grow them in succession and freeze several kilos for winter.

It's the harvest and shelling that kill peas for me