Start of the tomato harvest and autumn weeding

Tomatoes ready to pick
I picked a couple of orange tomatoes last week as we were going away for a few days and I didn't want them to fall on the ground while we were gone. They were a bit bland when we ate them, too excited to wait until they had ripened fully on the window. The sun has been good to us over the last week despite the huge downpours of rain that we have had. The tomatoes are all starting to ripen. It will be a good harvest this year I reckon. I picked the three ripest ones today, but will wait until the others ripen and will pick them as needed. I think I will try to make a tomato ketchup this year. It's something I have always wanted to have a go at and it looks like we will have enough ripe tomatoes this year. A big batch of chutney is on the cards too along with a batch or two of tomato soup.

Parsnips
The parsnips are still growing strong. Waiting for the foliage to die off until we start eating these. They are mainly a winter veg though, so probably better to wait until they get a couple of frosts before we make something nice and cozy with them. There is a great temptation to take a peek to see how they are doing. All I know at the moment is that the foliage is big and healthy. That's gotta be a good thing I suppose.

Weeding
I weeded the whole patch today. There wasn't a huge amount of stuff. When the vegetables are big they tend to crowd out the nasties. But better to keep the weeds in control anyway to stop them getting a chance to go to seed.

Slugs
I did not see many slugs on my travels today. My collection effort a couple of days ago must have gotten the bulk of them. About a week ago I threw a batch of spent hops from my recent brew onto some cleared ground in the vegetable patch. It is effectively cooked (boiled for about an hour) so I did not want to put it into the compost heap. It attracted a load of slugs. I picked all these up and killed them, but I don't think this is a great idea as unlike the beer traps that I normally put down the spent hops don't kill them. They get to breed with a nice supply of food. Not good. My wormery arrives on Monday, so from now on cooked stuff including spent hops can go in there.