Changing

The verbena bonariensis is so pretty and I do love the mix of colours with the nicotiana. They’re usually buzzing with life but I didn’t see many bees yesterday, even though it was pretty warm for October (October already!?) and wasn’t breezy.

We had a busy day on the plot and my aching body isn’t used to it! In the morning I weeded and dug this area where the garlic is to be planted. We’ve had a delivery of very well rotted manure to the site so I dug some of that in - a barrowful for £1.50 - bargain. Jamie spent the time clearing, digging and chalking an area where the potatoes had been - for our broad beans to over-Winter.

In the afternoon I spent time clearing the weeds from the leeks bed. The weather has been warm with a bit of rain - the weeds have loved it… the bindweed had started strangling the leeks and the grass and bittercress has also enjoyed a fresh burst of growth. I tried hard to pull out unbroken bindweed roots, but it’ll be back 😩 I’ve cut back the parsnip leaves which had become a slugfest and there's a row of leeks there which have been chomped. Hopefully they'll recover now they can see the light of day again.

Now that the foliage is dying back we can see all the mini Jack-be-Little pumpkins. Those two plants have been happy it seems! We need to get some shelves up in the polytunnel so those little fruits can go in there to cure. Jamie was making some room in the polytunnel today by removing a couple of the pepper plants. I'll use the soil for planting up some bulb pots. So, as well as sweetcorn, we had peppers for our meal last night. They were meant to go orange, but they taste good green too.

We had halloumi and roasted veg - I've started just adding the halloumi to the roasting pan towards the end of cooking rather than cooking separately on the hob - it gives it a slightly different texture but still delicious and squeaky. That plateful has home-grown peppers, sweetcorn, garlic, basil and a few tomatoes (but mostly shop-bought). Perhaps we'll try growing our own onions again next year ...

We've had the last of the green beans, although I'm contemplating whether to save some of the runners for drying...

The beans in the polytunnel roof completely dried and they’re now in jars - I have a few left over for sharing. I know borlotti are delicious but the Yin Yang (aka Orca or Calypso bean) are so fabulous looking; I hope they taste good too!

We think we may have had the last of the courgettes, although there are a couple of new ones appearing - we've been eating them since June! The song is provided by Sigma with Paloma Faith.