Purple mashed potato

We had our first ever purple mash - looked amazing, maybe some would find it a little off-putting, but I like purple!!

Spuds and Tomatoes

The Congo potatoes are still looking amazing with their lovely white flowers. However, either blight or some other mould has got some of the leaves, so we chopped some of the foliage down.

 

And, because we weren't convinced that there would be any actual tubers we dug plant up. It was amazing! Really nobbly long spuds and lots of them. They were mainly growing pretty close to the surface but the roots spread a long way either side.

We couldn't wait till dinner time so had some boiled for lunch. The water that came off them was a fabulous green! Some lost a lot of their purple colour but plenty were purple throughout and you can see some have a great greeny-type skin! They look fab and they tasted good!!

We decided to pull the tomatoes (Gardener's Delight) because the foliage has blight and we wanted to save the toms to make some green tomato chutney. We had lots of fruit on the two plants - some we'll be able to ripen up at home. We've eaten some of the tomatoes and they're super-sweet, such a shame the site always succombs to blight - we need to try and get our tomatoes fruiting earlier next year...

So, we had a lovely trugful of goodies to take home! Obviously including a courgette which had grown too big and runner beans (cos it's September!)

Growing, harvesting and preserving

The weather is making it feel like it's later in the year than it is, but things are still growing on the plot. Our little turnips are looking good, though pigeons (or something) have eaten quite a few of the leaves on some of the plants.

Our Rocky cucumber is going off at right-angles to where we wanted it to grow, but it's got lots of little cucumbers appearing and we've picked 3 in the last couple of days.

A bit disappointed that the crimson broad beans didn't actually produce crimson beans - though the flowers were very pretty. We've got our first harvest of these for dinner tonight along with Kestrel spuds. Still picking loads of carrots (living on carrot soup most of the time for lunch!) and patty pans are for dinner tomorrow.

We also picked masses of runner beans. We're making chutney this afternoon with 1lb of them (using our usual recipe, but with red onions and the runner beans) and the rest will be for Jamie tomorrow and for me to take to work.

Weird Sweetcorn

Our sweetcorn has been struggling a bit this year. Initially it was slow to grow but has reached about 4 foot tall now and the cobs seem to be growing ok on some of the plants - just hope there's enough sun for them to actually mature in time for us to eat some! The tassles are beginning to go brown but there's still more padding out needed by the feel of the biggest husk...

Today we noticed something odd though... a couple of the plants have kernels growing on the male flower bits at the top...

Have had a look on the internet and have only found one possible answer here - "Before corn was cultivated this is how it originally grew in the wild. It is simply reverting to it's roots!" Well, we'll see whether it's actually edible!

Colourful food

We picked salad bits for lunch, just to have with some humous. Lovely colourful trayful - 3 coloured carrots, 2 coloured mini-turnips, radishes, spring onions and cucumber. We also had some of our own tomatoes which eventually went red in the window.

There wasn't much happening on the plot, we did a bit of weeding and just chatted to people.

Blight has finally reached our tomato plants and the Congo potato plants. We've been waiting for it to strike - it's been around site for quite a while and the weather has been starting to get misty in the mornings.. We're going to pick all the tomatoes and redden what we can or we'll probably make some green tomato chutney.

We're also going to make some runner bean chutney when we pick the beans tomorrow.

Another trug of goodies

We picked a radish - one of the 'Candela di Fuoco' ones. Lovely and tasty and HUGE!

We gave the celery a bit more room as the leaves were pressing against the top of the netting. Took the opportunity to pick a few stems (to add to some stuffing and soup this evening). Some of the plants look like celery from the shops, but the stems are weird - they're hollow... not sure whether this is to do with lack of water or whether celery is meant to look like this before it's fully formed! Will wait and see as it's got another month or two to grow really...

I'm having a stuffed patty pan for tea and some white/yellow/orange carrot soup for lunch for the next couple of days so had a lovely full/colourful trugful of veggies to take home. There's the celery, carrots, thyme, Orla spuds, onions and a little cucumber for Jamie's sarnies and the obligatory courgette in there to. Lovely!

Comparisons

Quite a few people on site have noticed that their sprouts aren't looking too good - either not producing any sprouts up the stem or 'blowing out' (not forming little buds). Ours are under the enviromesh so are a bit tricky to see. It's clear that some of ours have done better than others.

This plant looks reasonably happy. There are sprouts, though some do appear to have blown, so hopefully there'll be enough for Christmas lunch...

The sprouts on this plant appear to just be made up of a couple of leaves, so, unless, they do a lot of growing over the next couple of months they may not amount to much....

Our leeks are looking pretty good, although a couple have started to be eaten - not sure what by. It may be birds or maybe slugs.. The majority of plants seem fine at the moment, so we hope it stays that way!

Sorting out Compost

We were up the plot this morning as it was quite warm, although not as sunny as it should be in August!
We've sorted out the compost bins completely now and have made an area where we'll store the horse manure before it's ready to be used. We're going to keep it covered with black plastic so that it doesn't all get washed away and the worms should like it under there too...

The black compost bin is almost full and we're leaving that till next year - it's full of worms. The green bin we'll keep adding to and the wooden (open) bin is empty at the moment - that'll be used for all the beans, etc. when the time comes - not yet though, there are masses of runners coming through still.

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....