Harvesting traumas

August is the time I should be harvesting, but I'm having a bit of a difficult time with it. It seems like most of my vegetables have a single day peak-harvesting moment and I have a habit of missing it. I was hoping to have tomatoes to eat with my cucumbers by now. I've got dozens of tomatoes sitting on the bushes, but they are simply not going red. My cucumbers, on the other hand, are more than ready. I'm having to cut the seeds out the middle (and also peel the skin off, as they're very spiny). I haven't yet managed to harvest one before it's ended up with loads of seeds in it. They're also rather non-EU compliant with their shape:

I also failed to harvest my first sweet corn at the right time. I tried to follow the rule that the tufts on the end need to turn brown before you harvest it. But this wasn't enough:

 As it only produced this:

I have now started feeling the tips of the corn to see if they've filled in yet. I suspect I'm going to go in the other direction with the next one and leave it too long.
My courgettes and runner beans, however, have a tendency to get huge before I have an opportunity to use them. The courgettes are still usable, albeit not very flavoursome. They can be frozen, but they go rather mushy if you do, so I really want my tomatoes to ripen so I can make ratatouille and freeze that. This also relies on my courgettes not succumbing to powdery mildew before I can use them.

Some of those beans are actually still usable and I'll be having them for tea tonight or blanching and freezing them if there are more. In contrast, onions have been brilliant, we sue those in most things we cook and they don't go past their best quickly.

In the good news though, I now have strawberries. My neighbour Lucy popped round with some of her spare runners. This was handy, as I got a planter for strawberries from my parents for my birthday, but I left it too late to buy any plants this year. I now have it all planted up and ready to go and I've even put copper tape round the legs to give them a fighting chance against slugs.