Harvest Monday - leafy greens, Eves Hill Veg Co and a coastal walk

Phew, we largely escaped the effects of Storm Doris on Thursday....a few things were blown around on the allotment but nothing major..my shed escaped unharmed. On other sites in the city, greenhouses were demolished and wheelbarrows sent flying. Two of our fence panels in the back garden were blown out of place and bent a bit too, but our neighbours popped them back in place...they'll do for now, I don't fancy replacing the panels at the moment.

 

Inbetween the gnarly weather passing through this week I've actually made quite a lot of harvests....firstly some Brussels sprouts and a self -sown cabbage (the cabbage came from a plant I let go to seed a couple of years ago)...here's some of the outer cabbage leaves plus the sprouts -

...the inner cabbage leaves plus some of the Nero kale I've picked this week -

...more Nero kale and some self-sown chard -

...self-sown corn salad -

...a few leeks (plus there was an extra one I'd already used up by the time I got round to taking a pic)

....some dwarf curly kale -

...and finally, some Brussels sprouts which had started to 'blow'...I love these as spring greens. Here I used them with some leftover cooked potatoes and nut roast (yummy nut roast made by Jan's mum, who'd been visiting over the weekend).

A touch of colour came from some stewed fruit I made with the last of our stored apples, and frozen berries - gooseberry, raspberry, blackberry, saskatoon and red currants. I still have lots of berries in the freezer too, so hopefully they'll last us through to June (when the first strawberries should be ready).

As a bit of a sweetener I added about half a jar of my homemade apple and elberberry jelly (from 2015). I'd given away most of the jars for Christmas 2015 but still have a few left.

When the fruit starts to thaw it releases quite a bit of water, but that's fine as we mainly use it up on muesli for breakfast (along with organic milk and a big dollop of yogurt, mmm).

Whilst Storm Doris was giving it her best outside I got stuck into sowing some seeds...tomatoes, peppers and a few aubergines. I was comparing how many I'd sown of each variety last year but still managed to sow too many...couldn't help myself...but I'll give away spares. I covered them all with a thin layer of (peat free) compost, filled the tray with water to let the compost soak it up from below, then after a little while moved them to a fresh dry tray, wrapped it with bubble wrap and placed nearish the radiator. Quite exciting.

These are the tom varieties...

Last Wednesday I volunteered at Eves Hill Veg Co again. Amongst various tasks we pegged out where the beds in the new polytunnel will go. Five beds with four paths. Yes that'll be a lot of veggies...awesome. Unfortunately Storm Doris struck the following day and damaged the original smaller polytunnel next door, bending one side out of shape (the side in the photo below). But from what I've heard, it's repairable and may even have been sorted by now...phew.

We had a little excursion from Norwich at the weekend, with Jan's folks who were visiting and headed up to the coast to sunny Cromer (well, it wasn't actually sunny, but it was still lovely nonetheless)

Down on the beach we were actually out of the wind too, walking a couple of miles east to Overstrand.

But on the way back along the cliff top we experienced the full brunt of the wind plus some heavy rain joined in too - it was bracing to say the least. Nice scenery though.

So that's it from me, I think the weather is meant to perk up again soon (we had lots of rain showers again today) so hopefully I'll get some more work done on the plot too. Oh, this evening I went to an interesting Norfolk Organic Group talk on stinging nettles...that's how I like to spend my evenings :D

 

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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