Harvest Monday - squashy and potatoey

Wow, what a lovely late summer / early autumn we've been having. Thank you weather, for easing us in gently. In fact if I remember rightly we had a bit of autumn in the middle of summer, so thanks for sorting that out now to even things up. Today's gone rainy though but we needed it really.

Ok, so some crops are grown to be productive over a long period - you can keep going back and picking more and more until the plants fizzle out (eg they run out of nutrients or it's just the end of their lifecycle) or the seasons change and the weather isn't to their liking. Here's a few things which have been carrying on producing this week -

Dwarf beans (though are getting a bit stringy) - I've had a few handfuls but not photographed them all. Courgettes and summer squashes still really slooowly pushing out occasional fruits. Some kale from a plant which carried over from last year. And a first for the autumn, hurrah, self-sown lambs lettuce that I put absolutely no effort into growing. There'll be loads more of that.

Chard continues too, but slower, plus runner beans. A few borlotti beans from the plot.....I still have the ones in the back garden to pick too. And another first (and last I think) - in the bag are some hazelnuts from the plot, but there are hardly any compared with last year.

Picked on Saturday, the blackberries are hanging on in there and producing some lovely late berries thanks to the weather.

And today from the plot. Everything's a bit smaller now. And I forgot to look for lambs lettuce.

Tomatoes from home. Look closely just above the bowl and you can see two of my little aubergines...there are 5 fruits now, ooh.

And some extra blackberries, foraged from the countryside. Jan's away for a holiday in the sun to get some vit D and relaxation with a couple of our friends - not my kind of hol so I stayed here. But the weather's been so nice I had to get out in the countryside, so headed up to gorgeous North Norfolk on the train and bus yesterday. ( I'll hopefullly do a separate post on this ). I followed a walk inland first before heading to the coast path....and my goodness, the hedgerows were absolutely heaving with blackberries. I knew I didn't have any freezer space or a spare tub with me (though I had some spare bags in case of wild plums) , so at first I just kept stopping and picking a handful to munch on the go. But then, along a bridleway, the temptation got me. These'll have to fit in the freezer somehow! And amazingly they didn't get squished in my rucksack, phew, that would've been messy.

Back on the plot, turning to crops that you can generally harvest all in one go and store easily for a while (though of course you can store beans, courgettes etc in various ways too. )

Maincrop potatoes - these are Setanta (not rooster, whoops). They're a lovely roaster too. I dug them up Wednesday morning and left them to dry / harden skins a bit during the day in the sun ( which was getting lower in the sky by the time I got back there, as you can see from the shadows). You can't really tell from the pic but they are huge potatoes from this row, it's quite interesting...I gave them lots of well- rotted horse manure at planting out time, and then my own compost on top to earth-up later (there wasn't enough soil to earth up from the sides)

Oooh, sunny

And my other bed of setanta. Here I just about fitted in two rows side by side, and also gave manure and compost. But the potatoes were generally a lot smaller here, with smoother skin (hardly any scab on either bed though, which is unusual for me due to the dry sandy soil). I wonder if the size difference is just due to the space each plant had to grow.....still, quite a good harvest anyway. I don't have a car so use a sort of granny pull-along trolley to move heavy things to and from the plot.

The squash plants aren't liking the cold nights, and as several of my butternuts seem ripe (sound hollow when knocked), I brought them home to keep in the lean-to. This is my biggest one and I wanted to know how much it weighed but I didn't have enough weights (there's a 2lb weight under there too). I just about managed to balance this lot, the result being just under 9lb! And the second biggest is about 7lb. Phewee. I think they liked the well-rotted horse poo.

Lined up on the settee - I sat next to them for a while, they feel very cold to the touch, brrr.

I have about 5 or 6 more fruits on the plot, though some still have a long way to ripen so I may have to protect them from the weather. I've got 4 of another kind of squash too, I don't remember the name without looking it up, and the cat is currently trapping me in my seat. It would be a shame to disturb her ;)

This week I'm going to head out and check on my other squash plants, which are in the garden of my friend's elderly mum, out in the Norfolk countryside....I'm quite excited to see how they've got on, it's been a few weeks since I was last there.

We have a new host for Harvest Monday - Daphne has decided to stop blogging - she was a great host, blogger and inspirational grower and preserver, so a huge thanks to her for all that she gave. I've only been taking part for a year or so but will definitely miss her. Her squash, sweet potato and carrot harvests were amazing too!

But our new host is Dave at Our Happy Acres, and looking at his blog he will do a grand job. I'm already in awe of his harvests this week!

 

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Harvest Monday - a giant parsnip

It's warmed up this week and on Saturday I went to collect some really well-rotted horse poo from a farm owned by the dad of a friend of a friend, (with said friend). It was nice being out in the countryside, with skylarks and yellowhammers singing (the first yellowhammer I've heard for a while, with its 'little bit of bread and no cheeeeese' characteristic song).

I don't have a car anymore so we went in my friend's and filled up 10 bags (5 each). We dropped off hers first (she has an allotment on a different site to me) and then went to drop off mine. It had been a lovely morning so far but all went awry when we realised the housing estate next to the allotments was cordoned off by police and there were police cars and ambulances blocking the area, including the allotments. My friend did a skilful turn around in the narrow road and we instead dropped the bags off in my front garden (where they still sit). A police helicopter was overhead for quite a while too. I found out later that there had been a serious incident. I won't go into detail but this kind of thing is fortunately unusual in Norwich and they caught the person responsible that afternoon.

So I'll have to take the horse poo bags down to the plot one by one on my little trolley, which can take a surprising amount of weight. I'll also keep one of the bags at home and use it on my tomatoes. There's still a huge muck heap left so we'll probably go back another time. I'll use this lot for the potatoes and the next lot for squashes.

I had a few hours on the plot yesterday and got carried away doing none of the things on my list. I did move my leaf mould pile nearer to the edge of my plot so that it's less in the way, as and when I clear that part. My two robin friends came to say hello and when my back was turned, they decided to get active - I'd put a small stack of pots on their side, on top of a bag of leaf mould that I'm going to use soon. Over the next half hour they started filling it up with leaves! Ok, so whilst this was really sweet, it was a terrible place for a nest, completely open and at the mercy of the local cats. So I moved it a couple of feet away, wedging it into the low branches of my buddliea, facing away from the prevailing wind, and cut a load of brambles and stuck them all around it as some protection. The robins were a bit confused and one kept going back to the place the pot had been but they were also hopping around where I'd moved it to so I hope they realise what had happened. I don't know how long it might take for them to lay eggs but I'll have a very careful peep next time I'm down.

In other naturey news, I saw my first butterfly of the year (a small tortoiseshell) and also sadly the remains of a dead fox in the undergrowth at the end of my plot. I hope it died of natural causes. I left it untouched as other beasties will make use of it and I'm not doing anything with that space this year.

It started to rain and I realised I hadn't picked any harvests yet so I did a quick whip round - the parsnips had started shooting again(after losing their leaves over winter). This means they start to get woody, so I dug them all up. This included two huge specimens! A nice surprise. Here's one of them, that got roasted with some potatoes.

I picked a whole load of greens too - most of my Nero kale, so that it will produce some tender side shoots from the remaining stalks this spring. I also picked my last tiny cabbages as I'll be planting out early potatoes in the patch soon, after weeding and adding horse poo. I picked some curly kale too. Didn't get any photos of all of them but here's the Nero, not a bad crop.

I meant to pick some more corn salad but forgot in the rush.

Oh and here's how my tom seedlings are getting on (pic from yesterday morning), they're starting to get their true leaves. And one of the chillis had germinated too.

My potatoes in storage have started to shoot so Friday night I made a big pan of mashed potato and mixed it up with some fried onion and garlic and froze in portions. I still have a huge bag of potatoes though, so this week I really need to get mashing!

So a bit of a wierd weekend and sorry for rambling on!

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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Autumn already?

Well, the past few weeks have whizzed by again. Still not had time to do a decent days work at the plot but have spent lots of time picking things and making chutney and jam, which is what it's all about really! Had the last of our sweetcorn today - our best year so far, definitely thanks to having manure I reckon.

Have dug up the first two rows of the main crop potatoes and sorted them into 'use first' (like the ones I inevitably speared with the fork) and 'keepers' (ones which have no scab or any other blemishes etc). I've doubled up paper shopping bags to act as potato sacks. This has worked in previous years and the tatties have kept well, in the shed. We have some right whopper pots (variety Cara), They're really tasty but have a tendency to over cook easily.

I thought we might have had blight but the discolouring of the leaves started off yellow rather than brown so it was probably (hopefully) just the plants reaching the end of their life! I cut off all the tops just in case. I have one more row to dig up and decided to leave them in the ground a bit longer as it's meant to toughen the skins up for better storage.

Today we used our first ready pumpkin to make this lovely soup:
Just peeking in the background is a jar of rather tasty marrow, apricot and ginger jam, which I made a batch of last weekend. I made it last year too and it's right nice on toast, or mixed in with porridge (mmmm I'm looking forward to those cold mornings already!). Anyone want the recipe?

Here's a pic of the other squashes collected today:
Am desperate to sow some oriental greens (have not grown these before). Just need a bit of time to weed where these squashes were growing and pop them in. This weekend?

Our first potatoes of the year!

We thought we'd take a chance and dig up some potatoes to see how they were doing. They'd flowered and were looking ready, and so out came the fork...


Luckily all wasn't in vain - there were a few decent sized potatoes and some wee 'uns also:


But, the ultimate test has to be how they taste, and it's fair to say that these were the most delicious, melt-in-the-mouth potatoes we've both ever tasted! They were earlies - Colleen variety - make sure you buy them next year!

Simply boil in a little bit of water with a few sprigs of mint, drain, add a little pepper and a knob of butter, and enjoy!