This last week has really felt autumnal; we had a lovely Summer but it feels like it's over far too soon. I went up the allotment before work during the week. There was heavy dew on the paths and look at our sad tomatoes :-(
Lots of fruits to be had but blight had struck so this weekend we cleared the area and to be honest, it's a bit of relief to have some space on that part of the plot! There were calendula there too but they had long since been buried by the pumpkin leaves and haven't been seen since July so they got composted too - not to our compost bin, but to the Council green bins.
The Jack-o-lantern pumpkins have taken over but probably won't have much more growing time - just hope they start going orange soon...
We cut back the runners on the strawberries - we've potted on a couple which will replace non-fruiting strawberry plants from this year.
Today we picked our first Spring(?!) cabbage. It's there in the trug with our first sweetcorn (fabulously sweet and didn't even need butter to make it delicious) and some of our Kestrel potatoes. They're extremely scabby and only about 5 tubers per plant...but one weighed 850g! Don't know what went on there - we're blaming the weather...!
We cut back the runners on the strawberries - we've potted on a couple which will replace non-fruiting strawberry plants from this year.
Isn't it sad when the season starts to wind down?
ReplyDeleteA sad end to your Tomatoes Belinda. Mine are still struggling to ripen so I expect with the Autumn weather setting in rapidly they will remain green. Nice looking Potatoes. Up until some rain last Friday its been taking me 5 to 6 hours to lift and turn 1 rank of 10 plants per rank due to the compacted clay. 8 ranks left.
ReplyDeleteHi Belinda,
ReplyDeleteThis is strange but up here in the North West I've been eating sweetcorn for a month now.The seedlings did very well in my cold frame and then went from strength to strength after planting out.Put a load of cobs in the freezer yesterday.
After my delicious early Orla and Salad Blue potatoes I'm very disappointed with the Saxons dug up yesterday.Every one seems to have some slug/eelworm damage and the edible bits have rather a bland taste.I know what I'll stick to next year...
What a shame about the tomatoes Belinda It's classic potato blight on the tomatoes that you always get when the weather goes wet. It is a good strategy to anticipate this problem and pick the tomatoes before it happens and if there are too many to eat reduce them in the oven and freeze them.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had hopes for my own outdoor tomatoes In York I did pick all my large green ones last week to ripen inside.
It is a shame to see plots being cleared for Winter already, but we still have lots of winter squash and their leaves are still green so it's not feeling over yet...
ReplyDeleteWe did manage to take home another large container full of tomatoes from those plants but, yes, too late to risk storing as blight had definitely hit some of the fruits. Also, it's clear that these later crops aren't as sweet and delicious as the crops we had earlier in the season.
Our sweetcorn are definitely later than a lot of peoples. I don't recall us being particularly slow with sowing them, so I don't know why that's happened this year. We don't generally freeze any of our crops (our freezer is a bit rubbish) so I think we'll be eating a lot of sweetcorn over the next couple of weeks!