Mostly runner beans

Rainy most of today so we just picked some runners to have with our tea. They just keep on growing! Every time you turn round there's another bunch ready to be picked. The longest one we picked was 14 inches long!!

We left just as it looked like it was going to pour again. Looked beautiful in the sunshine with the dark sky and all the berries in the hedgerow.

Spuds and Raspberries

In Spring we put 3 spare kestrel spuds in Plot 8A, alongside the raspberries. Anyway, we've been pulling them over the last couple of weeks - they're pretty scabby, especially compared to the lovely-looking spuds we've been getting from Plot 7 - they taste and cook fine though. The plant closest to the raspberries grew much slower than the others and looked a bit different, but we pulled it yesterday and it was a kestrel.
It seems that potatoes and raspberries are not good growing partners. The raspberries are certainly happy (Dave took a punnet-ful away today) but the potatoes only produced about 4-5 tubers and are quite uneven shapes and scabby.
We won't put them in there next year and will move the raspberries and get them under control now we know they're mainly Autumn fruiting varieties. The roots have got everywhere and are spreading to path and neighbouring plot so we'll pull them and transplant just a few canes - probably in December/January. Autumn varieties can be chopped right back and then will fruit in the same year, so they should be fine....

Record-breaker!

We had a big salad for tea last night - it was a record-breaking meal with our maximum number of our home-grown ingredients consisting of:

1. Red cabbage
2. Carrot
3. Potatoes
4. Spring onions
5. Beetroot
6. Cucumber
7. Radish

The coleslaw made with the red cabbage and carrot was lovely - Jamie thought it wasn't quite as tasty as the green cabbage stuff we made last year. Still, the Rocky cucumber is definitely vastly superior tasting than any shop-bought cucumber!

There was enough edible cabbage from that giant red that we picked - we had plenty for 2 meals and could have had 3 if we'd been more organised. Quite a lot of shredded cabbage went into the compost bin :-(

Scarlet Empire Runners

Our Scarlet Empire runner beans are looking happy. Producing some really good 30cm pods!

First Red Cabbage

Here's our first giant red cabbage - if there's enough to eat we'll have half cooked and the other half as coleslaw. The other cabbages don't look as big as this one, but may be able expand a bit as they're thinned out.

After taking all the outside and eaten leaves off this is what we're left with! Looks nice.

Jamie picked lots of runner beans on Monday but there are loads more appearing and our crimson broad beans are almost ready. We've still got lots of peas and the courgettes/patty pan are producing new ones continuously at the moment.

The weather was wet all day yesterday and not very warm, but it's burning hot again today... so plenty more growing time for our sweetcorn hopefully.

Green Manure

We sowed mustard, as green manure, yesterday in the middle section where the onions/shallots were. We grew this last year and it just gets dug in when it's died down after the frosts. This quarter is going to be for the legumes next year. So, at the moment it's turnips, green manure and horse manure under black plastic.. The turnips have just started showing a white bulb.

We're picking one of the red cabbages tomorrow, so this is the last photo of it growing - there's a lot of caterpillar damage, hope there's enough edible stuff left for us!

Courgette Cake

Another way to use courgettes, other than frying in butter which is always delicious, is in courgette cake. We made a chocolate one last year and it was far too heavy.
This one, from the Hairy Bikers website is really tasty and has walnuts in. You can still see the grated courgette so it's a bit interesting - but can't taste courgette at all!

Borscht

Made borscht (Beetroot soup) for tea, using a recipe from the Vegetarian magazine ('Recipes from Under The Lime Tree'). As well as beetroot it had apple, onion, garlic, ginger and orange juice.

Prior to blending

It was really nice but even better than the taste was the colour of it! Look at this, after blending - I can see why they call is 'Beautiful Borscht'!

The final product

Best made plans..

We got to the plot in the morning to avoid the rain - but didn't get there early enough and got soaked, before running for cover in the container!

We did manage to get some of the manure dug into (what was) the onion quarter - it's going to be the legume quarter next year so we plan to overwinter some broad beans in there. We covered the dug-in manure area with black plastic to encourage worms, etc.
It should mean we start getting broad beans a few weeks earlier - unless the frost strikes too soon...

Picked a couple of massive beetroot - we wanted 400g for cooking borscht for tonight. In fact the two we picked weigh more than 500g each :-} Really should have taken the scales with us!

I also picked about 250g more of raspberries to make up some more vodka...

Geese

I think these are Canada geese, which probably means they aren't actually migrating, but it looks quite a wintery scene with them heading off and the low sun :-( It's only August!! Hopefully we still will see some lovely sunshine!!