Digging Your Scene

I’ve pickled a jar of  tomatoes. We’ve not tried them before but I found the recipe on the British Tomato Growers Association website while searching for inspiration. It’s mainly the tiny redcurrant tomatoes and a few cherry toms from the polytunnel plants which have all been removed now and sent off to the Council green recycling. 

As you can see it has garlic and a few herbs added to the white wine vinegar. Each tiny fruit was stabbed to let the pickling flavours in. We ate one of the small jars of tomato chutney that I made in August, it was very tasty so I hope these same tomatoes are just as flavoursome pickled.

This trug contains the last two courgettes of the year as well as the last tomatoes. I haven’t cooked the pumpkin yet, but the other veggies went into this colourful rice dish - the veg were fried in oak-smoked oil and just soy sauce as an additional flavouring. Yum.

Before going to Slimbridge and since returning I’ve had some tiring but satisfying digging sessions. Although we’ve had some meagre rain the ground is still very dry, but I was pleased to find some worms.

I was hoping to harvest some beetroot but the beets had grown too woody and they looked to have had two growing seasons so they went into our compost bin. I’ve left the chard growing, it didn’t grow very well in the Summer but the leaves and stems can provide a bit of Winter colour, even if it doesn’t get eaten. 

And I couldn’t bring myself to pull the last of the antirrhinum which are still flowering along with bindweed’s prettier cousin Convolvulus which has come to life late in the season and self-seeded so is scrambling on the ground.

The Apsleys mulch was left on top for a few days before the final dig in with chicken manure pellets.

Yesterday I planted 22 cloves of Sultop garlic, from 2 bulbs, and 42 onion sets - a mixture of white, brown and red onions. I’ve netted the onions in an attempt to protect them from birds and mammals. The garlic are planted deeper so don’t usually attract their attention.

The area where the onions were last year, on Plot8, plus some of the salsify forest(!) has been cleared of bindweed (ugh, I know it’ll be back), dug over and covered in a thick layer of Apsleys mulch plus potato fertiliser as that’s where they’ll be planted next year.

At this time of year it’s good to see clear areas with plans for 2027. There’s still a lot more to do and I’m trying to progress before the weather turns hateful and we’ll want to hibernate.

The weather is rather grey today but it has been nice and warm recently. We walked up to town and sat by the canal. The swans have 5 large cygnets now. The female slowly waddled from under the bridge directly towards us. 

She stared at us for a bit then walked off disgruntled as we didn’t have any food (must remember to put some in my handbag). As you can see in the second photo, she has a broken beak but Swan Lifeline have apparently checked her over last year and she’s ok living with it.

The Sun is just appearing and although windy it’s quite warm out there - I think I feel some digging coming on… blasting us back to the 1980s (oh, so 80s) with the Blow Monkeys.

My Time

We’ve had a delivery from Apsley Farms. It’s basically a by-product of the organic process to produce bio-gas from arable crops. The history is an interesting read. It’s quite expensive but hopefully worthwhile, especially on some of our not-so-good soil.

I’m using it as a weed suppressant around the tiny fruit trees. There’s an area left clear around each tree. I’m not expecting it to kill the bindweed but my regular hoeing of the area does appear to have helped suppress it already to some extent… well, we’ll see…

We’ve also covered the area where our broad beans will be planted next month. The area has already been dug and conditioned with lime. It’s spread about 10cm deep. And there’s some left over which we’ll use in Spring. It smells quite strong of ammonia initially, like Guinea pig bedding, but not any more.

I took one of the Festival squashes home and had it roasted with tofu, tomatoes, garlic and chard. It's tastier than the butternut I had the other day - can't eat the skin on this squash though.

The song title is provided by Royal Deluxe and is to commemorate getting some time back as I've stepped down from the HAHA Committee. It's kind of a shame, I've enjoyed it for the last 10+ years but it's taken a bit of a turn so I'll take the opportunity to have more time on our plots rather than thinking about or doing HAHA admin and site management.

Catching Robbie

A short afternoon on the plot today - it was windy but not too chilly (about 8°) and it had only got down to 0° last night. The sun didn't shine much - until we got home!

We dug some more of Plot 8b, but didn't get very far with it. In fact, most of the time I spent trying to get the robin to pose really close for a photo - not very successfully, so I resorted to using the zoom on my little camera instead!

I know this should be on my wildlife blog - but if I put any more pictures of robins on there I should rename it 'Robbie and Friends'!!

Jamie had read in Amateur Gardening magazine that grass cuttings make a good mulch for raspberries, so I have covered all the manure round ours with clippings which Ted produced from his mowing yesterday. The cuttings should just rot down and will keep the raspberry roots nice and wet.

Talking of fruit, our strawberries are still hiding in their holes in the weed suppressant, but there are signs of new life on each plant.