Monster

Well, that’s August finished.

We took home this colourful selection of veggies yesterday. The yellow courgettes are from Neal’s plot (thanks Neal) and they’re now part of a very yellow soup, along with that carrot (Five for the price of one 😄), shallots, garlic and flavoured with turmeric and sweet smoked paprika. I remembered to remove the courgette cores this time so it’s thick and creamy.

The radish are the best we’ve grown for a long time. Jamie sowed them later than we normally would.

They’ve avoided the pest damage that they usually get, but…. that may change quite soon… as I found these 3 large white butterfly caterpillars in the cage 🙄

We picked the last of the tomatoes, as you can see the blight was well and truly into the stems. The red(ish) tomatoes are under the grow lamp at home to ripen (hopefully) and the remains of the plants have gone into the green bin at home.

And I’m sorry to report another crop fail - one of the Boston squashes has succumbed to blossom end rot. Probably because of the lack of rainfall during fruit development and, although we’ve been watering a lot, clearly not enough so the plant has suffered calcium deficiency. Some of the tromboncino have also suffered, but nobody minds cutting 20cm off the bottom of them! I’ll add some lime when preparing the plot for next year.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though the mood isn’t helped by the weather - look at the grey sky and there was a north-easterly wind chill.

The Borlotti beans are colouring up nicely. I don’t think I’d bother with the dwarf ones again which seem to be growing at the same speed as the climbers and aren’t so prolific.

I’ve also decided to keep them all for drying as we have plenty of runner beans and dwarf french beans to eat fresh, at least for the timebeing. Borlotti are my favourite dried beans but the Gigantes are also beginning to fatten up now.

The plants are still looking very much alive, with only the foliage on the squash (not all of them) dying back. You can see the courgette plants in the background.

So, that was the last day of August and the song title is provided by The Automatic. It’s mostly referring to the carrot but it also makes me think of Winter 😩

Living in the Past

With a few days off last week I was lucky enough for them to be the sunniest we’ve had in a while. We had a barbecue at the plot. The sunshine ripened up some of our tomatoes before blight got them. Not many, but happy to have had some!

The peppers are still green and we may not get any if the slugs have their way. Each visit to the plot we check the plants and invariable another healthy looking pepper has been ruined by slug or snail damage…and sometimes we catch them in the act 😖

Eurgh, so many slugs and they’re so big!! We don’t help ourselves really, with so many hiding places on our plots. At least we’ve finally cleared a rotten raised bed that was sheltering at least 15 big orange slugs and Jamie dug through the area. There, that looks better. Our broad beans will over-Winter there.

At least most of the beans are avoiding damage and runners or french beans are part of most meals at the moment.

And there’s plenty more to make a proper meal these days.

That green squash is a tromboncino. One of the plants has produced these green fruits. The flesh is slightly more yellow than the usual light green fruits; the taste is the same, pretty bland. Quite a few of the fruits are really long but are rotting at the flower end and aren’t forming the bulbous seed end; seemingly because they haven’t been pollinated.

Our carrots wouldn’t be winning any prizes in the Horticultural Show on 18th September! Sadly we won’t be joining in this year due to my shielding from COVID-19 but at least it means we don’t have to worry about “Don’t eat that! Keep it for the show” 😄

We’ve pulled our first Kestrel potato plant. They seem to have escaped slug damage too, which is quite unusual for our potato harvests.

The song title is specifically chosen for Neal who requested some Jethro Tull. As he won the ‘HAHA Tallest sunflower’ competition last week and he insists on using imperial (10ft 3 inches) rather than metric (3.12 metres) I opted for this song title.

😄 Well done Neal! This song will be with you for days!

When it Rains

 … Everyone gets wet!

Poor little bee, clinging on to his cosmos stalk. We know how he felt! It was the first time in months that we walked to the site because the roads were at a standstill due to the M4 being closed.

We knew it was raining but what rain! We were drenched before we were halfway to the site, but we needed to pick runner beans and it is nice to see the site in all weathers…

I thought I’d practice some macro shots. The Gigantes and Scarlet Empire runner beans are still full of flowers and beans. The weather makes it feel like September so I’m forgetting that we have (probably) another 2 months of growing time for the squashes and at least some of the beans.

The runners, garlic and shallots are key ingredients of our meals at the moment.

And the Nicola potatoes are a really tasty variety. 

They’re delicious hot or cold and we’re really enjoying them mashed too. This meal is based on my mum’s ‘yellow fish pie’, with plant-based This isn’t bacon rather than fish and it is SO DELICIOUS!

The pumpkin foliage has really died back, but the other squashes are still growing. I’ve been checking the squash tunnel for fruits. There are definitely two Boston squashes, two Spaghetti squashes and two Crown Prince squashes, plus quite a few Festivals and Honey Boats. 

There are no giants at the moment (apart from some ridiculous tromboncino!) but that suits me. I must say it’s pleasing standing in the tunnel looking up through the vines. A lot of the fruits seem happier forming closer to the ground, particularly the Festival squash and I gave up trying to get them to grow in the right direction so now the tunnel can only be accessed from one end.

The swifts were gathering on the power lines so perhaps they’re thinking they’ve had enough of our weather too!

Dare I say that the polytunnel tomatoes are still surviving blight and are beginning to go orange. The peppers are refusing to colour up but a branch has snapped off so I’m hoping they’ll ripen in the kitchen window.

So that was it for a day off work on Friday and a soggy Saturday.

The song is provided by Paramore.

Just Got Lucky

I thought I'd start the post on a happy picture, as the next photo is a less happy one - our tomatoes haven't escaped blight so this lunchtime I chopped off all the leaves in the vain hope that some may actually go red. I'm envious of all the tomato harvests I'm seeing on social media!

What a poor show! So it appears that we'll have to keep buying tomatoes for the rest of this year 😔 It's a shame because everything else in most of my meals is home-grown at the moment.

The runner beans are really paying out. And a branch snapped off my dwarf borlotti beans, so I had some of them in their pods along with the first picking of Speedy dwarf beans.

All of the beans apart from the Edamame are producing beans now. The Edamame have only just started to flower, so not sure whether they'll produce in time - the plants look healthy but the weather is definitely feeling like September.

Harvests are a bit more varied, (well, different shaped courgettes!) but how many more courgettes, cucumbers and beans can I eat??

I've made another batch of marrow and carrot soup, flavoured with celeriac stems. I should have removed the centre of the marrow, as the soup is a bit watery; I may need to add a potato to it to thicken it up a bit. I’ll see how it tastes tomorrow.

We have plenty of garlic - good job I'm working from home and not socialising! And I harvested a first Tromboncino for this tasty meal.

That's the before photo and I scoffed half of it before getting a photo after it was cooked, with a bit of cheese on top. It has Ancho chilli flakes added to the carrot, shallots and garlic; they’re not hot but add a lovely flavour - it covered two meals as Jamie's refusing to eat any more Summer squash 😃

That’s me, making holes for planting the leeks at the weekend - look, the sun shone and it was warm. We now have 40 leeks puddled-in, thanks to our plot neighbour Neal. We’d be waiting rather longer if we used our specimens…! How pathetic are they 😄

Leeks are such a tasty addition, particularly as our shallots didn’t produce very much. Jamie’s been trying to buy pickling vinegar to pickle a small jar of shallots but has found that in short supply - along with other items. Is it COVID-related or BREXIT… or maybe a bit of both?

Anyway, (don’t get me started) I’ll drag myself away from my two favourite subjects. The song title is provide by The Jo-Boxers and I’ve chosen it because more and more I’m reminded of how much ‘luck’ can change people’s fortunes - good or, sadly, very bad. Stay safe all.

Colours

Hmm, well, I’m not happy seeing the orange tint to the pumpkins already though I’m not too surprised, there’s been a definite Autumnal feel to the weather of late - obviously we’re all talking about it.

We have two New England Pie pumpkin plants; both planted on top of a big hole filled with manure. One has produced more than 6 football-sized fruits with more on the way. The other has only produced 3 and two of those have only just started developing. Either way, we’re going to have a pumpkin feast for Halloween (hope I’ve had my 3rd jab by then and can actually socialise a bit more!).

In between some serious showers this weekend we have managed some lovely harvests. Those are 2 Rocky cucumbers, the two plants are producing masses of fruits. We even resorted to blending those two with a bit of lemon juice and drinking it - we’ll, you’ve got to try these things….if only once! 

The two courgette plants have been causing trouble too - how can we keep up with this silliness - these were all marrow-sized? Luckily a couple were a bit yellow on one side so I didn’t feel guilty about composting them! 

The biggest one has been made into soup with the carrots and celeriac; it’s very tasty with a bit of turmeric and sweet paprika and has a lovely creamy texture. I took the celeriac stems out part way through cooking, but they’ve added a really nice celery flavour. Those celeriac stems were from two plants that were starting to go to seed, so I doubt they’ll bulb up very well.

I’m pleased that runner beans and carrots are on the menu now, they’re always a nice colourful addition to a meal. Like this dish, which I hadn’t made before. These fritters are beetroot, onion, flour and carrot using this recipe. I have to admit that the flavour was mostly of onion but the beetroot came through a bit and they’re a nice colour.

Two were filling enough for me, so I have the other two with roasted patty pan tonight. They’ve lost their crispiness since being in the fridge, so I’ll find out soon if I should have just kept the uncooked mixture which was even more colourful!

I had this salad for several lunches last week with patty pans, beetroot and dried Gigantes beans; my dried stock from last year is running low but the wigwam of plants has plenty of flowers and tiny beans now.

We’ve been assisting the sweetcorn with pollination now that the male flowers and female tassels have grown. Better pollination means more tasty kernels on the cob.

Something that doesn’t need any help with pollination is the tromboncino squash (I know Mal, you did warn me!) Look at that lot just making there way over the framework. At least they can be eaten as a Winter squash as well as a Summer one…. Apparently.

As already mentioned, the weather hasn’t felt like Summer and the damp weather has brought blight to the site. We’ve cleared our infected potato haulms and desperately hoping that tomatoes in the polytunnel will escape infection…  But if plot visits are timed right it’s been rather pleasant and I do like dark clouds like the ones looming as we returned home today.

I’ve been moaning (a bit) that we’ve had so many days of sunshine and showers but hadn’t seen a rainbow. But on Friday one appeared outside our window - perfect and they’re such a pleasure to see, aren’t they?

So the song title for this colourful post is provided by The Avalanches. Enjoy.