Time of the Season

The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.

The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.

I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.

I had some of the podded runner beans in a dish covering a couple of meals, along with the orange pepper, chard, garlic and shallots - a fully home-grown meal. Very tasty and even better eaten a couple of days later when the flavours were enhanced. It’s apparently a peculiarly British-thing to eat the pods of runner beans, with most other nationalities growing them for the beans. And, I was surprised to see that in the US they are predominantly grown as an ornamental plant (hummingbirds love them) and are not even considered for food. See this blog, The Sharing Gardens, which is an interesting read.

My chard is looking better now than it’s looked all year, so I roasted some with sesame seeds yesterday, to eat as ‘crispy seaweed’ along with roasted veg - another fully home-grown meal, which up till now have been infrequent this year.

Jamie has some sort of flu (not COVID-19) so I’ve been to the allotment on my own a couple of times recently. I always think I don’t want to go, but am so pleased when I do. It’s such a lovely spot and there’s always someone to talk to.

Yesterday I moved all the ripe squash into the polytunnel, there are still a few more to pick as they may still further ripen. 

Now that the foliage has died back, it’s clear that we didn’t keep up with the Rocky cucumber production! That lot will go in our compost bins so it’s not really wasted and we did eat a LOT of cucumbers this year.

The kohl rabi are beginning to bulb up. I’m concerned for them because the purple sprouting broccoli (single plant) and Chinese cabbage are being chomped by something - it looks like caterpillar damage but I haven’t found the culprit yet…

We also didn’t see who tucked into the sunflower seeds, but they’ve nearly cleared all of them now.

I had a couple of hours on the sunny plot again this afternoon. I took down the runner bean and Borlotti bean plants and poles. All the foliage will go in a trench under the squash tunnel once the plants are cleared and we’re expecting a HAHA manure delivery in a week or two.

And the cycle starts again with the Aqua dulce broad beans sown under their bottle cloches.

We’re hoping the garlic and shallots will be delivered in the week so can get them planted into their prepared beds. The title song is provided by The Zombies because, well, it really is that time…

Hazy Shade of Winter

Look how colourful my dinner is! That's carrot, beetroot, onion and chestnuts to stuff a Honey Boat squash. It's in the oven now...

We had a couple of hours on the allotment this afternoon - it wasn't too cold, it wasn't raining or windy but it was such a grey day. What a mess Plot46A looks - we're going to take the structures apart for next year and have it as a straightforward plot for growing - it's our only plot which isn't near the hedge, so it will be novel for us to dig somewhere which isn't invaded by tree roots!

I cleared some of the awful weed from around the kohl rabi - this chickweed (I think) is a pain, it's all over the plot. I'm hoping it'll die off if there's a frost, but I'm not so sure that it will. In the meantime I cleared enough so that I could put some covering over the kohl rabi to keep the pigeons off.

We did what we needed to do, which was to clear all the remains of tomato, pepper and aubergine plants from the greenhouse. There are still squashes stored in there and a few more onions hanging in the roof netting - still bumping our heads on them every time we move! While Jamie finished off in the greenhouse I did a little bit of weeding around our leeks. Really wish we had more leeks! We were too slow to sow them this year.

We were pleased to see that our garlic has sprouted - just a few tips poking through the soil at the moment, but it gives us hope!

Then back home to cook with the ingredients I picked - one of our two celeriacs, carrots, beetroot and a few more onions and shallots.

I've never grown a giant celeriac like they sell in supermarkets, but this is plenty to make a soup with.

Celeriac and chestnut soup - mmm, the celeriac has such a lovely pungent smell and the chestnuts make it a nice creamy soup, but it's not very attractive is it?! But then, the prettiest soup I've ever made was borscht and that tasted nasty.

While that was simmering I was cooking the stuffing for the squash - it looks like a dessert doesn't it! This is the first Honey Boat squash I've eaten. It seems to be very similar to a Cornell's Bush Delicata, so I'm hoping it'll be delicious...

And of course today's song is by the lovely Simon & Garfunkel - aaah.

Golden Brown

What a lovely Autumn weekend we had. It was a bit fresh, but very pleasant in the sunshine.

Saturday was a quick visit to pick some veg. Mainly for soup - I have some chestnuts left over after making the most delicious chestnut and pumpkin stew last week..

Onions/shallots are being steadily eaten, they're surviving pretty well in their netting suspended from the greenhouse roof - some are attempting to re-grow as it's been warm. The beetroot and small carrot were grated for a salad - though the purple radish had been nibbled by something, I only needed a few bits (luckily). The HoneyBoat squash will be stuffed for a meal during the week.

A beautiful calendula which has survived the cold weather and the hot sun has drawn it back into flower. So pretty. But the cold weather coming up will probably stop them in their tracks. Unlike the Californian poppies which seem to be indestructible and have almost covered the plot where we had our sweetcorn. Oh well, they are beautiful and if they pop up between some veg I won't be too upset.

There is still more to harvest - the kohl rabi have recovered after the pigeons pecked most of the leaves - they have more growing to do before we will pick them and there are nice florets on the purple sprouting broccoli, although there are a lot of whitefly. We need a harsh frost to kill them off I think!

Something large has visited our garlic bed, but no sign of garlic appearing yet - I think this is probably a cat, I'm pleased it didn't leave a 'gift' behind :-}

I'm at work, eating my delicious chunky carrot and chestnut soup while there's a very cold wind and rain hitting the window - but I don't mind too much as Jamie and I are going to Oxford this week for a bit of Christmas shopping - I'm feeling quite Christmassy already after seeing the Newbury lights at the weekend.

And, I can't believe I haven't already used this Stranglers song on my blog - this was the second single I bought, such a great song. Enjoy.

Down to Earth

What a colourful month September is!

This was yesterday's trug - mostly to be used for last night's roasted vegetables meal. The spiraliser and the sweetcorn stripper came into action. The spiralised courgette cooks quicker than chunks and it's lovely to add a pile of sweetcorn kernels to almost any dish towards the end of cooking.

This was a harvest from earlier in the week. Our last successful cauliflower - the only one we actually ate - we roasted it - definitely worth trying again next year and worth trying a little harder with them too!

This was the harvest from Friday - much of that went into a vegetable cheese omelet (so delicious!)

I pulled the first two edamame plants which have completely dried. Shelling the beans was rather fiddly and the beans are very small. Some pods only had two beans but the majority have three.

Luckily there are several more plants which are nearly dry - I'll need a good deal more for them to be useful - especially with the preparation needed for dried beans...

Yesterday (Sunday) we had a busy afternoon on the site - clearing and weeding. There's Jamie, hand-weeding the carrot bed and pulling a few thinnings to add to our meal.

I cleared all the lettuces which had turned into trees on our plots - I still have chard to use as salad leaf before I move on to soups for lunches.

Two wheelbarrows plus buckets of lettuce - all to the compost bins.

I also gathered a lot of compostable material by hacking back the squash plants.

There were a lot of immature squashes which probably don't have time to reach maturity - so they got the chop. Although it's tempting to leave them, it's better to let the energy get to the squashes which stand more chance of maturing. The plant will generally do this by dropping fruits that it doesn't have the energy for, but it still uses energy creating long new trailing stems.

Now we have two full compost bins and another one more than half-full. We need to mix them up a bit, but that wasn't a job for today - it was very hot and sunny - we can do that once they've shrunk down a little.

So with all that clearing we can see what's growing a bit better - including this little line of Kohl Rabi seedlings - sowed in mid-August.

The song title is provided by Curiosity Killed the Cat (remember them?) because with so much clearing we can see the earth again...

My Favourite Colour!

Look at the colour of that Kohl Rabi! I haven't fiddled with the photo but the camera flash has made it a perfect match for the lovely glass bowl. Turns out cameras do lie ;-)

Unfortunately two of the larger pumpkins in the greenhouse were starting to rot at the top, where the rain got at them (we really need to re-seal the roof seams). I chopped a healthy chunk out of one of them and have another week of pumpkin soup - shame, I was looking forward to using parsnips for a change but felt I couldn't waste it.

I think some creatures may enjoy that edible house over the next couple of weeks. I only took a couple of handfuls of the seeds and roasted them in pumpkin oil with paprika and a small sprinkling of sugar.
Less sweet is how our Halloween pumpkin looks now!

I noticed that the Florence fennel in the raised bed has sprouted. I'm hoping that will survive to next week and then maybe I'll have carrot and fennel soup; if I don't look at the pumpkins perhaps they'll go away!

But the big chunk has been turned into curried pumpkin soup this evening. Lovely onions fried in turmeric, cumin and paprika while the pumpkin was roasting in the oven.

The kohl rabi are for tomorrow night's version of  'neeps and tatties' to have with a veggie haggis - we know it's not Burns Night, but still it's so tasty :-)

I ate one of the Jack-Be-Little pumpkins with dinner last night. It was a good way to eat it. I chopped the top off and scraped out the seeds. A little bit of butter and 4 minutes in the microwave - perfect for a light lunch. But I made a fried patty out of the cooked flesh and had it with a tortilla and some chilli beans - very tasty!

That's the loofahs on the lower shelf. I'm taking them into work where our office is so warm and dry they'll hopefully dry out very quickly.

Spicy Veg - thanks to Daniel

I received a thank you gift from someone I'd helped at work - isn't it nice to be appreciated! Daniel had been to Sicily and brought back these lovely spices.

They are meant to be used on pasta but they look so lovely we couldn't wait till we were having pasta, so sprinkled some over our roast vegetables last night instead. (With hindsight, we added a bit too much of the spice - it was VERY hot hot hot!)

Carrots, parsnip (the first this year), beetroot, kohl rabi, pumpkin (small, lumpy kind - thanks Forbes), tomatoes and onion.

That must surely be the last of our courgettes for this year! There's a sweetcorn there for me. We have found that just keeping them for a day after picking stops them tasting so sweet and delicious - the kernels go rather hard, so they've got to be cooked and eaten as soon as possible after picking. 

That will be our penultimate visit to the plot before we go to Tenerife - I wonder how much will still be green in a couple of weeks time...