Everything I Harvested From My Tiny 15m² Kitchen Garden 🌱 End of Summer Harvest
Hello and welcome back. It is the end of August here in West Sussex, late evening, and the sun is already sitting low over the fence. The weather app is promising heavy rain every single day from tomorrow, so I have come out with my trays to pick everything that is ready before it gets knocked to the ground. This is the whole harvest from my little 15m2 kitchen garden.
Picking before the rain arrives
I did not really plan to film a harvest today, but the forecast made the decision for me. Heavy rain for days on end will split ripe tomatoes and drop them into the soil, and that feels like such a waste after a whole summer of looking after them.
So this is a quick evening job rather than a tidy up. I am not clearing beds or cutting anything back tonight. I am simply going along the border with a tray, taking whatever is ready, and leaving the rest of the work for another day.
The year my tomatoes finally had a proper structure
This spring my husband built me a solid trellis for the tomatoes, and honestly it has changed the whole season. Every other year I fought with flimsy bamboo canes that could not hold the weight, so I had to keep topping the plants whether I wanted to or not.
This time I have let them run. I have three cherry varieties growing here, Rubylicious, Sungold and Sweet Aperitif, and the only side shoots I removed were the ones below the trellis. Everything above it is allowed to do as it pleases for as long as the season lets it. About a third of the row has already been picked over the past weeks and it is still absolutely covered, with small green fruit forming all the way round each stem.
It has been a strange summer for us. Normally a UK summer here means rain and around 20 to 22 degrees, and 25 counts as a heatwave. This year we sat near or above 30 for weeks with almost no rain at all.
The beefsteak that collapsed
I had two beefsteak tomatoes planted right at the edge of the trellis, and one of them is now gone. It happened during a busy stretch at home when I was only coming out to water and do a quick check, tying things in and taking off the odd lower leaf.
One day I found it flat on the ground. It was carrying a lot of big fruit, and the Femspot cucumber next to it had been leaning over the top of it, so between the weight and that one day of proper rain we had, it simply gave up. We chopped it out, though I needed my husband to reach in because the whole back of the border was a tangle of leaves and side shoots.
The good news is we saved every single fruit. Some were ripe, some were still completely green, and that is fine. Green tomatoes do not need direct sun to ripen. Put them somewhere warm indoors, cover them with a tea towel and give them time. Please do not throw them away.
Cucumbers with a mind of their own
Femspot is new to me this year and it has been brilliant, so I can recommend it if you are already thinking about next season. My beloved Merlin is doing exactly what it always does, growing and growing and turning into something the size of a marrow if I look away for a few days.
The second Femspot has been more of an adventure. It went in behind the beefsteaks, I trained it up the fence and broke the stem doing it, then it threw out a side shoot that decided to grow the opposite way to the one I wanted. It is now heading sideways over my camellia with a good number of cucumbers hiding underneath.
I want this part of the garden to stay neat and walkable, so that side shoot will have to go once I have picked what is on it. There is also a rose stem sticking out across the path. I am taking cuttings from it because I want to propagate my roses this season, and then that long stem is coming down.
Why I grow my beans over an arch
The beans are the easiest job of the evening. Growing them over an arch means I get to use the ground underneath for something else, so nothing is wasted, but the real bonus is the picking.
On a wigwam or a teepee, gravity pulls the pods to hang inside the structure, so you end up reaching into the middle of a bush and hunting for them. On an arch they hang straight down in front of your face. You just walk along and take them.
Five pumpkins from one plant
I have one Small Sugar pumpkin plant in the bed, and it went in back in June while we were away on holiday. By the time we came home it had already grown up through the netting for the beans, and pulling it back out would have snapped the stem, so I twisted it round and trained it up the fence instead.
I did not want to give up ground space to a pumpkin, because they sprawl and take over. Instead this one plant has given me five pumpkins growing up in the air, two of them ripe and ready to come off tonight. The plant is still alive and still growing, so I will keep looking after it, although I doubt anything more will set now.
There is a low side shoot that I trained up the fence too, but it never produced any fruit, so that one comes out when I do the proper clear up along with all the powdery mildew leaves on the courgettes and pumpkins.
What 15 square metres gave me tonight
By the time it got too dark to carry on I had three trays of tomatoes, one of the beefsteak and larger varieties and two of the cherries. Two enormous courgettes that have turned into marrows, six giant Merlin cucumbers, two Femspots and a whole tray of beans. The parsnips are staying in the ground until late winter, they will be fine.
The cucumbers will be shared with neighbours and family, because there is no way we are eating all of that. And this is not even the whole story. We have been picking tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and beans all through July and August, and I lifted some early potatoes to make space for carrots.
Someone did point out under an earlier video that 15 square metres is not really tiny, and that is fair enough. Compared to five square metres it is generous. The point was never that my garden is small. The point is how much food a small space can give you if you get the structure and the logistics right.
In this video
- A whole harvest picked in one evening before days of heavy rain
- Why a solid tomato trellis changed how I grow cherry tomatoes
- Saving the fruit from a collapsed beefsteak, and ripening green tomatoes indoors
- Merlin and Femspot cucumbers, and one that went rogue over the camellia
- The case for growing climbing beans over an arch instead of a wigwam
- Five pumpkins from a single Small Sugar plant trained up the fence
- The full end of August haul from 15m2
Standing there in the near dark with all those trays lined up, it is easy to forget how small this space actually is. You genuinely would not notice anything is missing from the trellis, there is still plenty more to come. If you are thinking about growing your own next year and worrying that you do not have the room, I promise you can do a great deal with very little. It comes down to structure, a bit of planning and the willingness to have a go. What has done best for you this summer? I would love to know.
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