Mmm, sweetcorn

Picked our first two sweetcorn today. As you can see, one was far better than the other (sorry Jamie!). They were deliciously sweet and worth the wait. We've watered the rest in the hope that there's more time for plenty of kernels to develop - but may be a bit late in the season.

Still picking courgettes to stop them turning marrow-sized - and have got away with it so far this year, though we have given a lot away!

A bit of clearing

Spent a bit of time clearing up some of the plot today. Pulled the patty pan plant - there were just a few small squashes but others that were just going mouldy.

Pulled out a lot of the calendula - we've collected seeds but pretty sure the whole plot will be covered in them next year, given the number of seeds that we're finding everywhere!
Nice to see the rhubarb chard out in the open and glowing in the sunshine again.

Extreme rain!

We decided to walk up the allotment yesterday afternoon to pick a cabbage and some carrots. We badly mis-timed it! We had to shelter under a railway bridge for about 10 mins because there was a torrential downpour. We got to the site just as the skies opened again and ran for cover in the container - the sound of the rain on the metal roof was amazing!

The sun came out soon afterwards and the site looked beautiful, so we quickly picked our veg and went home! Sploshing through the huge puddle that is Marsh Lane after a rain storm :-)

Manure

We're a bit concerned with the broad bean we planted as a test in the horse manure. The leaves are really curled like reported with Aminopyralid contamination. Jamie's doing another test with 4 more broad beans. We haven't got too much manure and haven't spread it across the plots yet so it won't be catastrophic if it is contaminated, but obviously we don't want this additional problem!!

Still growing

We pulled our second purple spud and got a whole trugful. Also pulled the biggest turnip and ate that raw as a snack. It's one of the Oasis ones that are meant to taste like melon - not sure about that, but it was lovely and sweet. Also picked some sage to add to a baked potato. All the herbs have gone a bit mad and generally won't survive the winter so I'll use what I can before they're chopped right back or before the frosts come!

There are a couple of little peppers on our pepper plants. I can't think that they'll go red but hopefully they'll still be edible sometime soon.

Definitely Autumn

It's been cold the last couple of mornings but the days have been pretty warm. The leaves are all turning and quite a few leaves are down because of the recent windy weather. The hedgerow alongside our plot is covered in berries - hawthorn, rosehips, blackberries and sloes.
Jane picked some of our remaining raspberries and is going to make some raspberry jam with them so I'm glad they're not going to waste - the birds and anyone walking by is welcome to them!

Our courgette plant is still in flower but the courgettes seem to be appearing one at a time now.

I added today's small one to the carrot and parsley soup that I made. I made it with more carrots and only half a stock cube - it was really tasty so will remember that for future batches - and as we still have lots of carrots there will definitely be more batches!

Giant Patty Pans

Picked a giant patty pan to have stuffed for my dinner and picked one for my friend at work - they weigh about 1kg each! I'm having mine stuffed with tomatoes, spring onions, mushroom, cheese and sage

The plant is looking a bit sad though there are still lots of little squashes left on it. Some of the leaves have wilted and some of the tiny squashes are going mouldy on the plant. Hopefully I'll still get a few more little ones to eat.

It's been quite windy over the last couple of days but our runner beans are still standing! There are a few round site that are leaning badly but maybe they've had their fill of beans anyway :-)

Purple Cottage Pie

Had lovely veggie cottage pie for dinner. Instead of browning on top it went a deeper purple - really beautiful!

Green Tomato Chutney

We made the chutney using this recipe:
http://www.pickleandpreserve.co.uk/index.php/rapid-recipes/green-tomato-chutney
We only used half the amounts specified as we kept lots of the tomatoes for salads. Looked good enough to eat as soon as the apple, tomato, onion and sultanas went in the pan!

About 21/2 hours later it was finally reduced enough for packing into the jar. Looks delish!

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....

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...