Harvest Monday - still hanging in there

Out in the glass lean-to attached to the back of our house, some of the summer fruits are still ripening away. I finally got round to harvesting the few aubergines, plus a few peppers (some red, and some green). A couple of the green peppers had dodgy spots starting to develop, so it was best to just pick them and use them up. Hopefully some of the others still on the plants will continue to turn red (I much prefer the flavour of red to green peppers). We'll have to see though, because at this time of year, even though the lean-to faces South, a large evergreen tree in the alley behind our house blocks out the lowering sun.

Down on the allotment I picked some more Nero kale and self-sown chard. I still haven't covered them over to protect from pigeons though. Hopefully I won't regret my tardiness!

I also found possibly the last summer squashes, though there is a chance of some really weany ones if we don't get a frost soon. The white custard marrow is protected on three sides by a low barrier of (safe) broken greenhouse glass that I put around it when planting out, so that might keep it going a bit longer too.

I harvested the remaining apples on one of my dwarf trees...I can't remember the variety but have it written somewhere (at one point there was a tag on the tree but that went missing ages ago). They're crunchy and have quite a sweet flavour. Some of the apples are rather small which probably means I should have thinned them out earlier in the year.

They fill up a bowl nicely though. There's a bit of damage from snails and other beasties.

This week I sorted out my previously dug-up potatoes, which had been sitting in a sack in the kitchen. I sorted them into three piles - the best (for storage), ones with holes (possibly slug damage) and ones starting to sprout, which both need using up asap. We went to use up the ones with holes in and unfortunately, even though in most cases there was only one or two small holes, the whole tuber was riddled inside with damage. Darn. It's not surprising....there have been loads of slugs this year and I bet they loved it under the mulch covering the potatoes.

Meals this week have included an omelette with courgettes, beans, chard and peppers. (I still have beans from last week).

A raw kale salad, with pepper and pumpkin seeds, drizzled with homemade cider vinegar.

It went nicely with some of the last few tomatoes, home-sprouted beans and homemade red cabbage coleslaw (not home grown unfortunately).

I've made the spiced apple cake again (third time recently, it's a nice cake!) and also made two big pots of spicy stew with loads of veg chucked in. We had friends round and that kind of meal is always an easy-ish tasty option...it just mainly involves chopping veggies, which I like. Today we had leftovers, which I added noodles to, as a change from potatoes. I like the noodles because you can just add them raw in to the leftovers, add some more water to the pot, stick on the lid and let them cook away for a few minutes. Easy peasy and no extra washing up.

 

So I still need to work out my crop rotation, check out what seeds to order this year and get chopping away on the allotment. I did a bit of grass cutting this week, which feels good. But some paths I only recently cut already need another trim...the darned stuff just keeps growing. At least it's more to add to the compost heap.

 

Thanks for reading this week. I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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