Chilly Chillis and Eskimo Carrots

Look at that sad little plant.

The temperature went down to -4.8° in the greenhouse overnight marking the end of the chilli plant and the tomatillos.

It's been a cold weekend; not one for working on the plot but I wanted some carrots for soup so we wandered up this afternoon. The sun just peeped out for a short while, but didn't hang round and neither did we!

I pulled a couple of the Eskimo carrots - one of these weighs 500g, so I only need two for 3 days of soup! And we saved some of the red chillis - they aren't very hot but will add a little spice. Clearly Wilkos had labelled the plant wrong, which I'm quite happy with, as I couldn't have eaten them if they were too hot.

The sprout stems have been blown sideways by the recent storms but the sprouts are looking firm and have plumped up nicely over the last month.

The birds were active on the allotment today. The magpie family are ever-present and were having a stand-off with one of the kestrels before they took to the sky for a dogfight.

The kestrel chasing the magpie off

Composting and Clearing

The weather was reasonable at the weekend so we managed to spend about 6 hours on the plot. Jamie was clearing a section on plot 3; digging out raspberries and couch grass to have a new position for compost bins on that plot - just to store manure in for a bit.

I was dealing with the compost bins on plot 7. I emptied them both out onto a tarpaulin and then layered the contents, along with straw and some manure, into the new bins. The 'wet' bin was full of worms - lovely fresh looking red ones. They do such a good job turning all that waste into new soil!

'Dry' Compost which has been left alone since April

'Wet' Bin we've been filling since April

Someone dropped off two unwanted compost bins on the site a couple of weeks ago so we swapped one of our smaller ones for a nice big one; we now have two matching ones on Plot 7. I dug them down a bit and they're more level than they were previously. The stones round the edge are a haven for snails but they're also a vain hope to stop mice making a winter home in them.
Both of the bins are pretty much full but they won't take long to decompose and the compost will probably be usable in the Spring.

I cleared all the overgrown lettuce, chinese radish (which went to seed) along with the dried remains of the mangetout. I also cleared the cucumber and pepper plant from the greenhouse and chopped back lots of the tomatillo, which was trying to take over half the greenhouse! That all got chopped up and added to the compost bins so we can actually see the bottom of the gherkin plants again now.
The chilli pepper plant is now outside to see if that can be shocked into going red, some appear to be going black (not in a bad way) - perhaps the label is wrong and that's the colour they'll end up as.

This was part of Saturday's harvest. All those tomatillos came from the branches I chopped off. Some of the fruits are quite large. They taste quite nice as part of a salad, but will be interesting to see if any go purple and then taste them.

The fruit is really sticky inside the papery lantern. It doesn't taste like a raw tomato. If I get a chance I'll see about making some salsa with them - which apparently is what they're used for generally in South America. (They aren't Cape Gooseberries, although their lanterns look similar).

(Almost) All the Colours of the Rainbow

Love that little hoverfly in the background!

Because it's that time of year even if the weather has forgotten!

The Tenerife potatoes are still in full flower, although the foliage on the potato bags aren't looking so healthy.

One of the cornichon plants seems to be forming a flower on top. That can't be right, but we have the two other plants and lots of little gherkins are forming so we'll wait and see what it does...

The row of pot marigolds along the greenhouse were all self-seeded and are looking beautiful with all their different oranges and yellows.

The tomatillo fruits are forming their little lanterns - one fruit at each branch joint.

The wild flowers are coming on nicely but would probably appreciate a bit more sun (and so would I).

The chillies are producing well, I really hope they're not too hot to eat.

Shame we didn't see the Beechgrove Garden episode which included information on growing peppers as cordons till this week; perhaps we could have helped the plant produce more than 3 fruits.

Even the compost is colourful today.

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet - well, I got close but my rainbow includes pink rather than indigo I think!