Soup, but no garlic, yet

A rainy and grey weekend means we still haven't planted our garlic - I think there's still plenty of time (even though I hear Gardeners Question Time are saying it's too late). I understood garlic cloves are planted by the shortest day and harvested on the longest day. I'm just worried that our bulb will start sprouting in the cupboard.

I've had three festival squash waiting to form part of a meal but one went off so I decided to deal with the other two a bit more promptly than intended. So, of course, they're now soup! That's next weeks lunches sorted.

I roasted the squashes before adding the flesh (and a shallot) to the stock, with plenty of pepper. I love my hand blender - my favourite kitchen utensil :-) I may spice it up a bit, but it tasted nice as it is. I tasted a bit of the squash before making the soup - okay, but not as tasty as the Cornells Bush Delicata.

More Carrots, More Soup

We only visited the wet plot this afternoon to put some kitchen scraps in the compost bin and pull the carrots. We can't remember what variety they were - possibly sugar snap - they should gave been picked small for salads but it just didn't work out that way. Some had grown so large that they split, so they went straight into the compost.

That's the last of the 'summer' carrots - soup for next week, made with smoked rape seed oil. The soup is a bit more runny than my normal gloopy soup, so I hope it will be tasty, it smells good at the moment.

We left in the pouring rain - felt very similar to last Sunday, but no sunshine through the rain - so, a bit of a cheat - here's a photo of last Sunday's sunset as we walked home from the plot in the rain then too!

Colourful Days

The last two weekends have been good allotment weather - weirdly warm for the time of year, even at night. On the last weekend of October we made up the new bed for another row of strawberries. We piled up a mixture of home-made compost and the well-rotted manure. Then covered the row in weed suppressant.

Jamie cleared the Desiree potato rows and disposed of any which looked slightly dodgy, but we got a fair few gigantic ones which make delicious mash and one potato makes plenty for both of us!

We did a lot of weed clearing - there's so much grass which is where all the slugs are hiding. The plot looks much prettier again now! And look at the asparagus peas! They just won't stop growing. 

Our Tundra cabbages are looking good, considering their sad start and are just starting to form heads. We had to remove quite a few caterpillars from under the netting.

So, we left with some pretty veggies including a couple of Hooligan(!) squashes from fellow-plotholder, Jonathan. Thanks!

November arrived and still the temperatures aren't falling but it rained hard overnight on Saturday. Sunday afternoon was ok so we got our eight strawberry plants into their new bed.

The rhubarb plants have died back completely and the area looks good with no weeds and two (Jamie-neat) circles of manure & compost mix.

I picked a lovely bunch of carrots for tea and some lunch soups. I also picked some par-cel which Jamie added to our mash - our flat smells of celery, mmmm, yum!

Some of the carrots have a bit of carrot fly damage.

We left as the sun started to go - too early now the clocks have fallen back. Aah look how pretty and berry-laden the hedge is.