Our friend Sue gave us this lovely wire produce basket, which she found in a local market. I think it is going to be very handy for collecting produce from the garden. It’s quite sturdy, made of hexagonal weave wire around a rigid frame, with a wooden grip where the two handles meet.
I’ve been using whatever comes to hand to collect from the garden, but this is definitely the best so far. Calico bags are handy to carry but everything gets jumbled in, which means that the delicate things are easily bruised and you have to tip the lot out on a table when you get home. The great thing about this type of container, and I suppose the classic wide flat cane baskets that you often see keen vegetable gardeners carrying, is that you can keep your tomatoes away from your potatoes, or whatever.
Our Autumn harvest is a mix of continuing Summer crops like the tomatoes and loofahs, with some new season ones. The chinese cabbage (wom bok) shown here were volunteers in a bed I prepared for climbing beans. They happily sprout wherever some seed has dropped, an advantage of letting some flower for the bees and then seed, and they are so quick to mature that I will be picking them before they compete with the beans. Likewise I’m happy to let coriander and endive grow of its own accord in beds I have dug over.
With the cool climate vegetables starting to grow now, I just have to remember to make sure Sue’s produce basket is always in the tray of our UTV so I can collect whatever of the new crop is ready.