Harvest Monday and overwintered chilli

What a week of weather.....frosts, hail, rain, sun, wind. I've fitted in a few trips to the plot, picking some decent chard from last year's self-sown plants. They've put on some really nice growth this spring.

Enjoyed with some titchy purple sprouting broccoli.

I've made another couple of blackberry cakes (berries from the freezer). The recipe is very easy here on mumsnet. It only makes a small cake so I double it to make two cakes instead. Mine look nothing like their photo though. I think another time I'd pop some berries on the top too so they'll sink in a bit and have a better distribution through the cake.

Talking of freezing things, with some crazy cold weather on the cards I properly covered my strawberries and potatoes (beforehand I'd only covered about half of them, with netting rather than enviromesh)

They survived unscathed, phew. I saw some on an allotment neighbour's plot that had the black dot in the middle of the flower, a sign that they'd been got by frost, aw.

Potatoes were fine too, I had some hoops to keep the mesh up off the potato foliage.

The tiny corn salad flowers were totally unbothered by the weather, looking lovely

Back at home, inside by the south-facing window, the over-wintered chillis are still flowering and even fruiting. This one is actually on a new plant that grew up next to the original

Here's where it's growing out from near the base of the original. Sometimes I sow two seeds in a module, so I think this might be the second seed from last year that for some reason germinated over winter instead.

The other overwintered chilli is producing more flowers (some flowers dropped off without fruit setting). I've still got a few of last summer's ripened red fruits on it as well.

But there's even fruit setting on this one too. This is on some new growth that developed on the side facing the window.

Funny eh? If I'd been trying to do this I bet it wouldn't have worked.

 

I've spent a couple of days volunteering at Eves Hill Veg Co this week - the usual Wednesday (where we planted out lots of lettuces) and a special monthly community Saturday, where the farm celebrated its first anniversary, wooh. We planted out loads of beetroot in the outside beds, plus the first few tomatoes in the big polytunnel (and we may have eaten lots of cake too - it's definitely been a cakey kind of week). There was a red legged partridge nearby behaving very oddly, pulling a weird posture, and I meant to go and see if it was laying eggs. Hopefully partridges don't like eating beetroot seedlings.

 

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

 

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Harvest Monday and Eves Hill Veg Co

For a lot of us here in the UK the weather's become quite cool, with frosts and even possibly snow in the next couple of days. I saw a graphic of the cold weather moving down the east side of the country, right over Norwich, yikes. So this afternoon I checked on the potatoes - I could earth up the maincrops to protect the little bit of leafy growth above soil level, but the earlies were too tall already, with a lot of growth poking out and not enough soil remaining to rake up and over them. So instead I put some low hoops over the two rows and draped over a sheet of enviromesh, making sure none of it drooped onto the plants, as that can encourage frost scorch too, especially if the material touching the plants is wet. I did something similar with the strawberries, which are in full flower now, so fingers crossed.

 

The other day I noticed one of my garlics had keeled over a bit, so I forked it up to see if anything was obviously wrong below soil level. I couldn't tell if there were the beginnings of white rot, it didn't look too bad, but I'll keep an eye on the others. We could still eat this garlic though, including the stem, which is soft at this stage.

I like seeing the beginnings of cloves forming

It went into this hotpot that Jan made, tasty

In the lean-to I've still got some lettuces growing and a bit of rocket

In the freezer there's still lots of berries. I used some up in a couple of blackberry cakes, having been inspired by Dave's (Our Happy Acres) pudding last week. I forgot to take a photo until they were nearly all gone, and in this part of the cake the berries had dropped to the bottom, so not showing off my baking skills very well...tasted nice though.

Out in the paved front yard I have some tubs of plants, including a bit of mint. The mint does quite well out there as the yard faces north so it keeps cool usually. I had this as a mint tea...just add hot water and leave to steep for a couple of minutes. You might be able to spot some tiny aphids, which I did (mostly) wash off first.

I've had an exciting delivery....books! I had a voucher for the Green Shopping website, where there's loads of cool things. As I've been reading online about no-dig methods for a while, I thought it would be good to have something physical to refer to. I foresee many happy hours of browsing these beauties. I don't like getting many new things / more possessions but these were a welcome exception. I've also got my eye on some copper tools but I think they'll have to wait for birthday and Christmas combined.

Out at Eves Hill, the spring bed prep continues. Here we removed half a bed of overwintered chard and sowed dwarf French beans, then topped with mulch. The bed next door has broad beans sown a couple of weeks ago. There was quite a bit of nice new growth on some of the chard, so the best bits went to the veg bags whilst the rest came to us volunteers, yummy. (Some of it went in that hot pot and we also made a lovely chard & sorrel soup, with sorrel from the farm too).

Spring-sown salads are getting planted out, with fleece protection

The many trays of seedlings are doing nicely, like these in the polytunnel

Kohl rabi in the polytunnel looks good too

As do these lettuces

The busy seed-sowing table

I should be heading out there this Wednesday and also Saturday, when the veg farm celebrates its first birthday (there will definitely be cake), what a lot has been achieved in a year!

 

I'm running a bit late tonight as there was a Norfolk Organic Group talk on the 'Secrets of the soil' this evening...lots of interesting info...my main takeaway thoughts are: protect and feed the soil (soil life), mulch mulch mulch (preferably with organic matter), disturb the soil (and soil life) as little as possible (this also ties in with no dig), healthy soil life = healthy plants. When we harvest plants we're removing nutrients etc from the system, so it's important to replace them with compost, whether that be well-rotted manure or homemade compost etc (and preferably applied as a mulch rather than digging in). I never have enough compost, sigh!

 

And on that note, I'll bid you goodnight. Thanks for reading, I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday kindly hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.

 

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Harvest Monday - blackberry and apple loaf

After a long period without much rain we finally had a decent downpour last night, hooray. It was quite windy at times too but there doesn't seem to have been any damage.

 

This week the harvests have picked up even more, loads of runner beans, courgettes and cucumbers. I haven't photographed them all but you get the idea....

Couldn't resist a little face, hehe

Several batches of beans like this

More self-sown chard too

And kale

I've made a tasty curry (freezing a portion of leftovers)

And a big batch of a more Mediterranean - type thing, with courgettes, tomatoes, red onions, lots of garlic and rosemary. My red onions are teeny, the slugs really attacked the stems, which hindered their growth.

I also added in some kale plus some haricot beans which I cooked-up today in the slow cooker, after soaking them yesterday. Haricots seem to be one of the quickest pulses to cook that I've tried so far (they're quite small).

This week I've harvested the first sweetcorn, it was really good, mmm, didn't even need any butter. On the whole the corn hasn't done too well but we'll get a few cobs.

Onto more fruity things...

First tiny sweet peppers with a pen for scale (I think they're meant to be bigger!)

A crown prince squash from one of my plants plus a spaghetti squash from an allotment neighbour. I'll try roasting the spaghetti squash - I cooked one that way years ago which I think is nicer than when just boiled. I'm not sure how many winter squashes I'll get this year, they sulked for a long time before doing much, so we'll have to see how the next few weeks go weatherwise.

I've had a couple of nice big bowls of tomatoes though

Picked today

I'm continuing to remove lower leaves and thin out ones higher up to let in more light and air..this is the 'after'. I'll remove some more soon too.

From the allotment I've had a few apples including these below. You can see some codling moth damage (and the caterpillars were still inside). There was still a good amount of edible apple though.

(A joke from my childhood "Q: what's worse than finding a maggot in your apple? A: finding half a maggot")

I cut into these apples rather than biting into them and risk finding half a maggot!

These were better. There were a load more windfalls too, which I combined with blackberries, ginger and cinammon, and froze in tubs (after a shuffle round in the freezer to make more room).

I used the peel and (non-maggoty) cores to make a couple of batches of cider vinegar - just add water and a few teaspoons of honey. Mix around, cover with something breathable (I've used kitchen towel), leave for a couple of weeks to bubble and ferment (check occasionally to push any poking-out bits back under the liquid, otherwise they might develop mould), then strain out the liquid and leave it to mature a few weeks or longer (I use old cider vinegar bottles and feel rather good when I see a price sticker still on them, knowing I've just made some for virtually free)

Talking of honey, my friends who have a couple of hives in their back garden in the city gave us a jar from their latest harvest, mmm. By the sounds of it they've had a bit of a nightmare with swarms this year but the honey looks good.

My friend Andrew has a greengage tree on his plot. The fruits all seem to ripen at different times, which means you have to keep checking for windfalls, but they've got quite a nice flavour

I've picked a couple of big tubs of blackberries again (and eaten quite a lot straight from the canes). There are some lovely big plump ones which attract your attention but also when I tried a few tiny ones of a different variety they were super sweet. The smaller ones take longer to pick but it's worth adding a few to the mix. There are so many though, I can't pick them all (well I would if I had more freezer space).

I wanted to use some up in a cakey-thing so a Google search came up with Blackberry and Apple Loaf on BBC Good Food. I simplified the recipe by just using Demerara sugar and didn't bother separating out any of the mix. I also doubled the recipe to make two loaves. Some blackberries get gently mixed in whilst others are popped on top. Oh, also I didn't include any orange zest but it didn't seem to matter.

Turned out nicely!

And it wasn't too sweet either. I gave half a cake to our neighbours, shared some with friends and family, and we ate quite a few slices ourselves, hehe.

We're having a picnic with friends at the weekend so this recipe may come in handy again, especially as there's so many blackberries around at the moment.

 

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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