And It's Still Alright

I made these very tasty carrot and bean burgers on Saturday. I used this recipe for my dried borlotti and runner beans from last year and fresh carrot and shallots. Our shallots actually turned out better than we initially thought, so we’ve been using them instead of onions for a few weeks now. I used a little turmeric and cumin rather than coriander and cumin. I didn’t bother adding the flour, they held together well.

Now that we’re halfway through October we’ve not been visiting the plot every morning, it just depends if we need to pick anything, water the tomatoes and peppers or close down the polytunnel. Thursday morning we were swathed in a thick fog - thank goodness for no commute!

Two days before that we had a proper frost and another day to be grateful for working from home. We had to scrape ice off the car and just look at the grass on site. The lowest temperature in the zipped down polytunnel had been -2.8°

That finished off the zinnias and most other things which weren't in sheltered areas on the plot. We noticed that the hedge offered protection from frost as did Ivan's grapevine.

We've almost managed to eat all the sweetcorn this year - probably just one reasonable one left on the plants for this week. And we're taking Crimson Plum tomatoes home as they ripen (or get close). The Lizzano outdoor tomato got frosted so no more tiny toms from that bush - it's yield has been a bit disappointing this year with some of the tomatoes being the size of blackcurrants and a lot splitting - obviously the weather is getting the blame for that as it usually produces delicious cherry tomatoes.

The Love-Lies-Bleeding has also not enjoyed getting so cold. I was thinking of harvesting some of the 'grain' but I don't think I will now - I'll leave it for the birds, though I haven't seen anyone enjoying it so far.

One plant that hasn't been upset by the frost is our cavolo nero. I've seen it looking good in the frost on other people's plots in previous years. The white fly are crazy on site and you just have to touch any brassica leaf to be surrounded by the tiny moths. It seems that they are frost-resistant too.

I stripped a few leaves off yesterday and after much shaking to rid it of whitefly and a good wash I blanched it then stir fried it for a bit with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. It was a delicious addition to my all-home-grown meal last night. I can see that it's far superiour to chard... It doesn't appear to have been affected by caterpillars/slugs so I wonder if it can be successfully grown outside of the netting - I see a few people on site have done this, I shall have to inspect their leaves!

Yesterday was warm when we visited in the afternoon. As with most visits now it was mostly about tidying. Jamie did some strimming, weeding and clearing the zinnia from the raised bed while I did a bit of digging. I do enjoy digging. Look how dry the earth is, we've had some rain but it disappears quickly. We haven't worked out our plan for next year so we're not sure what's going in this plot in front of the broad beans, but I wanted to clear all the grass and other weeds that were threatening a take-over, as you can see from around the Love-Lies-Bleeding. I couldn't bring myself to pull up the self-seeded broad beans and one of them has flowers on.

In the week Jamie bought me a celeriac and chestnuts to make soup. Unfortunately we had two apples left over and seeing this recipe, I thought I may as well use them up. The apple made it far too sweet for my taste and rather ruined what would have been a delicious soup 😒
My friend from work suggested adding chilli to detract from the sweetness. It worked, to a certain extent ...

So, another weekend passes in a blink of an eye 😔 Back to work, oh, I'm already here! Have a good week all and enjoy the song title provided by Nathanial Rateliff, because the year may be flying by but, no matter what's going on in this mad country we're currently living in, so far, it's still alright...