What I’ve been mainly harvesting or what has been ready for harvest for the last month of September. September at the beginning of spring is usually another tricky month as it is highly variable each year. 2015 we had a very cold period with a lot of rainfall, sudden storms and strong winds etc and then a couple of heatwaves that got top to 30c Plus for several days in a row. This year it has been ‘crazy’. However the heat means that germination of seeds for some summer crops could start very early.

The specific varieties available will vary on the seasons selection and the weather. But these are all examples of what have been harvested at some stage during September.

Some perennials are just pulled as needed and there are more specialist items that will come to mind… I’ll keep this up to date as I remember…

Best of the month – Broad Beans!! and broad bean leaf tips – new shelling Peas, Artichokes!!, Rhubarb, last of the field aged winter pumpkins, Daikon Radish seed pods, Wasabi leaf & flowers, new herbs like Anise Hyssop, Mint, Origano & Marjoram, Rocket, Fistulosum Onions, Kales, Turnips, Beetroots, NZ spinach, Parsley & Mitsuba, field aged pumpkins, new leafy greens like Minutina, red vein sorrel & Dandelions, sprouting Broccoli, Lemon Balm, Prostanthera leaf & flowers.

Leaf

• Endive – green curled leaf
• Raddichio & chicory – Red & Green Grummolo, Treviso, Red Orchid, Catalogna
• Winter Cabbages – Red Tete Noir and Green Savoy & Filderkraut
• Kales – Lacinato Nero, Jagallo Nero, Red & Blue Russian, Green Curl, Frisada
• Collards
• Lettuce – various – Deer tongue, Devils ear, Romaine, Buttercrunch etc
• Mizuna – purple & green
• Mibuna
• Mustards
• Land Cress & Water Cress & other cress like plants
• Pak choy & other related brassica greens – various colours (Komatsuna, Choy sum, Bok choy etc)
• Broccoli – mainly purple sprouting varieties – Rudolph etc
• Sorrel – Lamb’s Head & Red Vein
• Rocket – Eruca & Wild rocket
• Spinach – various
• Silver Beet & Chard & other perpetual leaf beets  – green and coloured
• Salvia Sclarea – new leaf
• Mitsuba – Japanese wild parsley
• Red Stem Celery, Alexanders & other related
• Minutuna – Plantago coronopus
• Sow thistle – leaf
• Stridolo
• NZ spinach – Warragul Greens
• other selected salad greens

Allium family

• Chives – poly and garlic
• Leeks – Carentan
• Garlic – new shoots
• Shallot – new shoots
• Onions – bunching var and new shoots – Ishikura, Red Firenze & Tropea
• Rakkyō

Roots & Shoots (Root crops where typically leaf material is possibly also used seasonally)

• Potatoes – various
• Skirret – new leaf
• Salsify & Scorzonera – roots and  shoots
• Burdock – gobō – roots
• Beetroot – roots and shoots
• Mangelwurzel – roots and shoots
• Daikon and other radishes – roots & shoots
• Carrots – roots and leaf
• Turnips – roots and shoots
• Sunchoke or Artichoke Jerusalem –  tubers
• Dandelion – roots and shoots
• Horse radish – new shoots
• Fennel – green & bronze leaf
• Hablitzia – new shoots and leaf.

Legumes

• Peas – peas and shoots – Telephone
• Broad Bean – new leaf shoots and full pods – various

Assorted

• Winter Pumpkins – various – last of the aged ones
• Sugar cane – new growth
• Chili – Santaka, Aji Chanca & Amarillo & Serrano
• Wasabi – fresh Wasabi leaf, stalk and stem & flowers
• Citrus – last fruit – lemon, blood orange, mandarin, Tahitian Lime & Makrut Lime leaf – native limes of various sorts
• Pepino
• Cardoon – shoots
• Rhubarb

Herbs

• Anise Hyssop – leaf
• Lovage – leaf
• Australian native pepper – leaf
• Mints – various
• Lemon Balm – leaf
• Coriander – Cilantro – seeds and leaf
• Parsley
• Oregano & Majoram
• Salad Burnett
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Nasturtium flowers and leaves
• Calendula – new flowers
• Rose Geranium
• Field balm – Calamintha nepeta & various
• Prostanthera – Incisa, rotundifolia
• Winter Savoury

 Broccoli – Romanesco

 Lovage

 Hablitzia

 Artichoke

 Daikon seedpods

 Marjoram – Golden

 Anise Hyssop