Blue Skies and Cold Temperatures

We made our final trip to the plot before our holidays. It was a beautiful sunny morning and such lovely blue sky. We just did a bit of composting (I added the dried out sweetcorn sticks and vegetable waste from home to the bin.
The ash tree has lost all of its leaves now - hope this one doesn't get infected by the ash tree dieback which is spread by a fungus. The fungal disease has spread to the UK from Northern Europe and is currently a big concern for all our ash trees :-(

The temperature has reached a minimum of -1° in the last week - with frost on the car a couple of days. Our rhubarb is gradually dying back but appears to have established well since it was planted at the end of July.

So that's that for two weeks - I doubt it'll look much difference when we return. There's not much to change the look of the plot at this time of year.

Happy Halloween

We had our squashes stuffed with Quorn mince bolognaise on Halloween night. Still have 3 squashes left over which will still be edible when we get back from our hols hopefully.

Jamie's head hurt

Over-wintering broad beans

Last night we baked one of the Cornells Bush Delicata squash - well worth growing. Jamie thought it similar to sweet potato and I've today found a reference to it as 'sweet potato squash'. It really was delicious, with butter and pepper on it - ooh, I'm drooling at the memory...

We pickled two jars of beetroot last night - again in red wine vinegar, with thinner slices. The lightest of the beets was yellow once it was cooked! It tasted incredibly sweet. I think they were all boltardy beets but there may have been a couple of moneta in there too, though they were all meant to be red ones!



A rather bleak-looking plot!

We went to the plot this afternoon - it was rainy and rather chilly. It was just a quick visit to sow the Aqua Dulce broad beans for over-wintering. We've covered them with the onion netting - hopefully that will protect them from mice and the worst of the weather (we're holding Kerry to this!). We've only sown 17 seeds - leftovers from last year.

It got to 0° last night... The chives have gone down and the marjoram went black a couple of weeks ago(!) but the hardier herbs (rosemary, thyme and fennel) are ok and even the parsley is hanging on to life for the time-being.

Plot 8 still looks quite colourful in this photo, but the calendula are just about dying back.

And this side of Plot 7 only has sprouts to show off!

 

A sunny, cold Autumn day

We had a couple of hours in sunshine. It was chilly though and the wind was blowing all the leaves about. In fact, it looks like Autumn has really hit over the last week - trees and hedgerow have changed colour and the berries really shone out in the sun because so many leaves have fallen (all over our plot).

Look at that beautiful blue sky!

The thermometer showed that the minimum over the last couple of days was 1.5° and there was ice on our tub. Washing the dirt off the beets which we're going to pickle this afternoon was hand-numbing!

We collected some wood which someone had donated to the allotment site - we're going to use it for a new cage next year. We need to work out a design for what we actually want; the plastic tubing is great but makes access a bit tricky so want to work on something to make that easier... We also collected some manure which had been in a tub by the gates for a few months - well rotted horse manure - should be good for mixing into the brassica quarter.

The chard was glowing in the sunshine, but has gone to seed so unlikely to get eaten now and this is what's left of the butternut - the wildlife is welcome to it!

Picking Bush Delicata squashes before the frost

Jamie visited the plot a couple of times during the week. It's been a grotty week weather-wise - basically living in a cloud, so everywhere is soaking.
Jamie said that the mouse or slugs have left empty hulls of the little butternuts, which came to nothing because they got going too late. They were Butterbush variety but did spread over the ground; possibly because they weren't confined to pots. I think the year's weather can be blamed for their poor show rather than the variety as each plant did produce several fruits. The squashes grew to about 10cm but were still green when the frost took them out :-(

More positively, Jamie picked all the good squashes from the Cornell's Bush Delicata - pretty good from one plant! He brought them home as we were expecting the weather to go very cold on Friday and it did - about 5° at work, though no frost on the car.

We're going up the plot later, after my flu jab, but still won't be able to burn the hedging day cuttings - they're probably wetter today than they were last week! As I look out the window now there's beautiful blue sky and sunshine but it sure looks cold - brrr. Where's our flask gone? I've a feeling we're going to need coffee!