A bumper year for growing food
Gardeners across the UK are reporting big harvests
Up and down the country I’m hearing food growers celebrating 2025’s growing season as one of the best and I’m right there with them. How’s it been for you?
After two fairly abysmal years due to excessive rain and lack of light, this year is a bumper one. The sunny, warm and dry spring meant insects and wildlife could begin to recover and plants had a near perfect start to the year. For many it ended up being an incredibly dry summer but if you could keep your crops watered, the hard work paid off.
It started for us with ‘Early Purple Sprouting’ broccoli, one of my all time favourites for flavour and early homegrown nutrition. Closely followed by asparagus, foraged leaves of fennel and wild garlic, plus the flower buds and leaves of ox eye daisy.
Kales have done well, as did potatoes! One of our best years, the dryness kept the ground dwelling slugs at bay for a higher percentage of perfect spuds. Delicious. I grow ‘Anya’ for nutty new potatoes, great for salad, potato salad or buttery as a side. As well as red skinned ‘Sarpo Mira’, good for roasting and chips and said to be more resistant to underground slugs. I certainly find that is the case.
When courgette 'Latino Romanesco' began cropping they did not stop across five whopper plants. They’d grown supersized in the warm sun, our ground retaining a good amount of moisture and then rain in summer here kept them going. Winter squash are still to come and they look beautiful down on the plot - I’ll pick the winter squash in a couple of weeks. I like this cultivar of courgette because it is a little drier and firmer, which gives them more substance and flavour, to me. But of course, take your eye off the ball and a week later, you have marrows…
Then joy of joys, we’ve had the best tomato growing season yet. This is largely down to the excellent sunny and warm weather but also significantly down to the tough cultivars I chose. Four cherries, four salad size and four beefsteak, all excellent! I’ll be reporting on these in Gardeners’ World magazine next year. I even sold a few boxes locally, one to the local whole food shop, another to a local chef and more to friends.
Padron peppers are a favourite of Chris and I, we love them seared in olive oil with a little sea salt. The plants are huge this year and our main crop is yet to come, though they’ve provided a few dishes already.
One of the most exciting crops has been our aubergine, by far our best crop in Yorkshire and more to come! I’m afraid I stupidly didn’t write down the cultivar, which is not like me, but I think it was ‘Czech Early’ or ‘Black Beauty’ - I can find no record of buying the seeds! Last year I grew ‘Black Beauty’ so it was probably that. They’re both reliable cultivars that taste great. We are two good harvests down with perhaps one more to go, that’s about 15 or so aubergine - wow! Thank you 2025.
In among the many crops from chard, rhubarb, turnips, beetroot, beans and more, eventually the raspberries started - and they’re still going! We love raspberries and I prefer the autumn ones. ‘Polka’ has been phenomenal for us, they are beyond delicious..
And now for thing I am most excited about: apples!! Look at these beauties...
Finally, finally we have a good apple year! I love apples and we inherited many trees (I’ve planted a few more myself) but the last two years had wet springs which meant the blossom barely set. This year however, in the warmth it is a bonanza! First to ripen was ‘Discovery’, an early cultivar with lovely blush pink apples. They’re really tasty and I’ve been enjoying walking out in the morning, picking and crunching into one on my daily patrol.
One of my favourite things to happen this year was longtime social media buddy Darren Turpin popped over. We’ve known each other online for years and bumped into each other at gardening get togethers, so it was lovely to spend some proper time walking around talking about fruit trees with him. Darren runs Orchard Notes and is a fruit tree pro. I’d become a bit overwhelmed by our many apple trees, Darren helped guide me (and made me feel much calmer about them!) He also helped identify this apple as likely to be ‘Discovery’.
I’ll end on our giant tomato, beefsteak ‘Brandy Boy’ weighing in at 780g! Our biggest ever.
Growing food is hard work, when it pays off it can feel both a surprise and a joy. These delicious food items that just appear on plants, it truly is the greatest gift.
There are still a number of other crops to come including another fave, the winter squash, which I’ll write about in the coming weeks - but that will make it feel like autumn proper, I need another week or two to ready myself for that!
Further reading...
10 essential plants for mid-September
September is one of my favourite months in gardens thanks to the mix of dieback and a final blast of late-flower power. Flowers now can be some of the most vibrant and colourful against the duller backdrop. Shapes are often highlighted too by rain drops, dew and amazing sunrises and sunsets.
Prunus spinosa | blackthorn
Blackthorn, Prunus spinosa, is a small deciduous wild tree that can be maintained as a shrub or hedge. I have to admit, Blackthorn is a plant I wouldn’t have planted a few years ago, put off by its savage spikes, but as the years have gone on, especially since moving to our farm full of them, it has become one of my garden essentials.
Rubus fruticosus | bramble
Is there anything more appealing at this time of year than a bunch of shiny blackberries warmed in the early Autumn sunlight? The perfect snack for walker and gardener alike. Sweet when fully ripe, slightly tart if not. Needs absolutely no help growing, which we’ll see is also bittersweet unless you grow it as I do, discussed below.
Tomatoes, drying grasses, autumn raspberries, chamomile tea
What is it about the garden in autumn that I love so much? Is it the cricket warming itself in the sun by our door? The pollinators luxuriating on the late flowers? Is it the flowers themselves and the fading colours? Or the effortlessness of the momentarily abundant food harvests?
Fungi finds, field maple, hawkmoth caterpillar
I believe this is Laccaria laccata, the deceiver mushroom, but I’m not totally sure yet. Identifying some fungi is really easy because they’re distinctive, while others are really hard because they look similar to tens or even hundreds of other species!
13 Asters for naturalistic gardens
I’m looking at the little pose of asters on my desk thinking, ‘how did it come to this?’ The pale lavender of some remind me of talcum powder and blue rinse hair dye. I promised myself once to never like asters, and yet, here we are, not only liking them, but loving them.
Thank you Jack, your observations are always helpful. Can you advise how to know when to pick pears, and the best way to ripen them? We have a massive crop but we’re told they have to be picked green. But when? Until now we’d never had a successful pear tree, and didn’t know about this problem.
Thank you, Jack! I thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and your trees. The garden you're developing, and your plot as a whole, is hugely inspirational, I just love the fabulous combination of carefully curated cultivation and allowing nature the freedom to express itself that you're achieving. And a polytunnel full of tomatoes is always an impressive thing to see!