Things Can Only Get Better

There have been a few light frosts in the last week - I had to scrape ice from the windscreen on Monday so we knew that the plot would have been hit by it. I'm pleased that the two Crown Prince squashes both look ok, but I couldn't risk leaving them on the plant any longer.

The site doesn't look too bad - mostly flowers looking sad around the place, but not these lovely dwarf chrysanthemums, which are such a pretty colour. I'm glad I bought the tiny plant at our Plant Sale earlier in the year.

Luckily the greenhouse just managed to stay above freezing (0.5°!) and the peppers are still looking healthy - especially as they're so close to being ready now. The big question is, do we eat the orange ones or leave them for the Food Festival? Decisions, decisions... we'll be so disappointed if they go over or get frosted before next Sunday morning.

Jamie sowed some over-Wintering broad beans Aquadulce and we weeded lots of areas of the plots so things are looking reasonably tidy (in places). I re-attached the purple-sprouting broccoli onto their stakes - only one of the four plants grew up straight. There were masses of whitefly - I hope we have some proper cold weather to kill them off over the Winter.

It looks like we'll get a couple of swede this year - not quite so successful as last year.

I've just made some squash soup. I used one of the not-so-good Festival and a Honeyboat, that was a bit small. I roasted the squash first - the Festival tasted much nicer than the Honeyboat. I added some pretty spices (Paprika, Turmeric and Parsley with garlic) and plenty of salt and pepper to the stock.

The soup is very thick and, to be honest, not very tasty. I'm hoping it will improve overnight..

So the song title is for the soup...! Thanks to D:Ream... try getting this one out of your head :-)

Still Ill

This is my most beautiful squash so far - a Festival.

And this is the biggest and it's so pleasing! A Boston Winter Squash - the only fruit that developed on that plant - perhaps not surprisingly,

I removed a few of the Honey Boat squash too, in case there is a frost this week, as threatened, they're now in the greenhouse along with the others. Including a barrowful of quite small pumpkins - we're blaming the weather. This variety Jack of all Trades normally grow bigger than this for us.

The greenhouse is looking a bit different because we've suspended net from the ceiling to store our onions and shallots. We decided not to risk putting the squash up there - I already bumped into the onions several times today!

The peppers are changing colour - we can definitely see some yellow, red and orange. Really hope the greenhouse is protection enough from the cold... it would be good if they're still fresh for Hungerford Food Festival in 2 weeks time...

I hacked back quite a bit of tomato plant growth. There are a few small signs of blight, but plenty more tomatoes to pick.

As I'm writing this I should be making carrot soup, but I'm being lazy because I have a horrible cold 😩.

I was pleased it was so rainy yesterday so we stayed indoors most of the day and prepared shallots for soaking in salt water prior to pickling. The Longor shallots grew so big this year, we're just doing one big jar full of pickles.

And I shelled the borlotti and soya beans for storage - I do plan to use them, but I need to find a good recipe. I asked on a forum on Facebook and the second answer to 'what should I do with my dried soyabeans?' was 'BURN THEM' - hahaha, that doesn't bode well!!

So now I really should start on that soup...but first, a song title..aah, The Smiths - perfect 🤧.

Ça plane pour moi

We had a visit to the plot yesterday, mostly to pick some tomatoes. It was such a warm day that we stayed a bit longer to chat and were glad we did as suddenly there was an air show going on overhead

It was rather fun watching the sky with fellow plotholders and seeing all those bi-planes. And then there were parachutists with red smoke and also apparently wing-walkers - amazing! It was a shame I only had my little camera with me.

And, as if that wasn't excitement enough for one weekend - a frog has moved into our pond!

I took the mesh cover off it last week as I cleared some of the duckweed (it all grew back) and obviously froggy liked the look of it.

Today Jamie and I got on with working - no aerobatics to entertain us today, but the frog's still there. We did a lot of clearing, weeding and edging.

The carrot bed and sprouts plot - look how dry the earth is!

The leeks bed - not many leeks this year but hopefully they'll grow nice and big

The strawberry bed - masses of runners were removed

I also cleared the rest of the dried beans - soya (edamame) and Borlotti. There are quite a lot.... just have to shell them all now...

Jamie is going to pickle some of our Longor shallots this week - we finally bought some pickling vinegar - so they're at home now waiting to be prepared. And we pulled a Nicola potato - they are nice looking tubers; not slug-eaten and quite large.

There are a few of the Aviditas tomatoes which I'm going to add to salad lunches. Jamie made patatas bravas last week and will be making it again this week using the lovely larger tomatoes which are still in the greenhouse - they aren't Lizzano, which they're meant to be, but they are tasty.

My salad lunch is going to be very red this week - beetroot, tomato, red chard and red sweetcorn. I may add a red onion too for good measure :-)

I really wanted the Double Red Sweetcorn for the HAHA stall at Hungerford Food Festival on 7th October, but I'm not sure it's going to last that long; The covering leaves are very dry. And the kohl rabi are only tiny seedlings at the moment so they aren't going to be much of a show in 3 weeks time - luckily there should be plenty of squashes!

Aah, Autumn is definitely upon us, even though it was lovely and warm in the sunshine today - still Everything's Cool For Me as the title translates (apparently). Oh yes, and it has the word 'plane' in the title <ahem>. 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...

Bella Ciao

Can you guess what it is yet?

After two lovely weeks away in our favourite other place (Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife) we had to go and see how the plot is looking...

We were very pleasantly surprised. There has clearly been some rain and maybe some watering by friendly plotholders. The peppers have changed colour, though the green ones are meant to be orange...

And the tomatoes are delicious - the Aviditas are tastier than the Lizzano (still not convinced they are Lizzano as they aren't cherry-sized)

Most of the aubergines look like they've had their day, but the plant outside the greenhouse, in the ground may survive to produce us with another fruit or two. The real stars of the show are the sweetcorn - which are all just about ready for eating, so we took three home along with salad for my lunch tomorrow (back to work - ugh).

Really pleased with the Double Red Sweetcorn - it looks fabulous (prior to cooking - as you maybe guessed by now from the top photo) but the kernels are rather small. They are tasty but...

... surely nothing can beat the sweet taste of Lark. There are so many cobs that we don't mind sharing some with the birds. Clearly our heatwave Summer has been perfect for corn.

The squash are in their element too - in the grotto. That big orange Boston Winter squash is almost twice the size of my head! And there are two additional Crown Prince that have appeared along with multiple Festivals and Honey Boats. We really must go away more often (I wish!!) and leave the plants to their own devices.

Apart from that lot we have lots of pumpkins going orange. Should have a nice display for the Hungerford Food Festival and Halloween in October.

Aah, it's (sort of) good to be back...
Did I mention we'd been away?

More photos of this year's lovely stay in North Tenerife here, if you're interested...
https://photos.app.goo.gl/UozFaL37b8hfr7eM6

And the song title....well, I was so enthralled by the fabulous 101 Brass Band from the Oratova Valley, Tenerife that I figure they should play this one out - the title is a bit off-topic, but then so is the band so it's quite appropriate really :-)