Harvest Monday - a touch of colour

So, after a good start to the week, there was a bit of a lull.....but things have picked up again. We could really do with some rain, it seems to be missing us, so I'll probably end up having to water in a couple of days...I can't actually remember the last time it rained.

 

Here's my harvests for the week

The blackberries are starting to come thick n fast, which is great as the rasps have pretty much finished. Though I am still picking a few, they just don't make it home...tasty treat.

I thought the toms were going to get properly going too but most of the week they just ripened a few at a time.

Nice in sandwiches and with salads though.

I'd been keeping an eye on this little squash. I find that sometimes a little one ripens first before getting a bigger one or two later. So it seemed like a good time to pick it! I figure that if I left it on it might prevent another one forming (like if you leave beans or peas) because the plant thinks it's reproduced when the seeds inside the fruit ripen.

An added bonus is that at this time of year the skins are still quite soft so it's easy to cut through. Anyhoo, I added it to a mild curry, also with my own courgettes, chard etc, with quinoa.

A nice surprise on Saturday morning were my first runner beans (back garden). I hadn't realised they'd got so big around the back of the wigwam, I'd been looking at the smaller ones round front, hurray. I did make the mistake of putting them down on the recently cut grass, so they got covered in grass clippings, which are surprisingly hard to brush off!

 

I've used the beans quite simply, with courgettes and tomatoes in a sort of ratatouille, which we've had a few times - I soften them in some butter and then add the toms.

Friday night we had homemade oven chip/ wedge things plus homemade curry sauce (onion, garlic, curry powder, cornflour and a splash of cider vinegar)

And with squashage rolls one night, plus pies tonight (not pictured). These squashage rolls got even more squashed on the way home from town.

Sunday afternoon...more blackberries. And a round courgette! (I think I prefer the favour of the normal ones though)

And a biggish harvest picked from the plot in my lunch break and back garden /lean to tonight, which'll keep us going a couple of days. Though I could have spent a lot longer picking blackberries, there are so many but they'll have to wait for tomorrow, when I head to the plot after work :)

When I went back to the office after lunch with my stash of blackberries, I asked a couple of people if they'd been blackberrying yet. They said, no, where can they go? How about pretty much everywhere at the moment, I see them all over the place and could spend hours picking them! Sometimes people don't notice what's around them, or they drive everywhere and miss what's on their doorstep. Anyway I think I can feel a blackberry cake coming on this week....and I might just take it into work (to share of course, not just to gloat hehe)

Linking in with Daphne's Dandelions for Harvest Monday

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Winter squash update & a trip to St Benet's Abbey

So a while back I mentioned that I was thinking of growing squashes in the garden of a friend's elderly mum. She lives out in the Norfolk Broads and has a really big, lovely garden but the far end isn't really used for much these days as she can't look after it very well. My friend Liz and her fella had sown lawn seed the last couple of years to make it easier to keep tidy, that the neighbour kindly mows.

When I said I was looking for more land to grow food she offered up her mum's bit of garden up the back (very generous!). As it's quite far from here I knew I wouldn't be going over very often, so decided to grow squashes and hoped they would look after themselves.

 

Here's the strip of garden, which Liz's mum did actually use as a veggie patch in the past

 

I'd sown loads of squash seeds 'cause I wasn't sure how much space there'd be and managed to fit in 8 (I ended up with some spare squashes that I gave away plus also used as spares on the allotment to replace ones eaten by evil slugs)

 

To keep things simple and neat I used a spade to make the edge of a circle for each squash then used a fork to remove the turf. There was a lovely big pile of compost up the end of the garden so I forked over the bottom of each hole and then added compost and watered each hole.

Then I replaced the turves back (upside down so the grass would die) and planted in each squash plus some more watering...simples!

I don't have a car but Liz goes out to her mum's regularly so we got a lift out with her at the weekend to see how things were going...

Much better than I expected, especially as they haven't been watered apart from rain! And they all survived (better than mine at the allotment)

These ladies and their siblings live next door and pop into the garden all the time (much to the dismay of Liz's mum who doesn't like them scratching around her flower beds). They're full grown now and I love seeing them run around (sorry Liz's mum!). Also, there has been virtually no damage to my plants and hardly and weeds have grown, so I put that down to the chooks.

The garden is full of wildlife too, including this lovely dragonfly that stayed in one spot in the sun for ages, whilst we sat next to it and enjoyed eating some of the rhubarb &gooseberry flapjack I made (see last post)

And for anyone interested, jan and I also took a walk down to St Benet's Abbey, that neither of us had visited before. Jan's started to feel better now (from her thyroid condition) and managed to walk there and back the whole way, yay.

The walk there included a lovely green lane

This is what the abbey would have looked like, there's not much of it left now

The abbey site

Someone a while back thought they'd build a windmill in the remains of the gatehouse...huh!

Bizarre but cool. And a lady went in to the mill and started singing an aria which sounded beautiful (though at the moment all I can think of is the mysterious cities of gold theme tune)

Over where the abbey was, a cross has been erected to mark the location of the alter

And down on the river was a paddle steamer ! The site was actually really busy, we didn't realise that the Bishop of Norwich holds a service there the first Sunday in August each year - the paddle steamer brought lots of people up the river from Norwich

And a lovely sail boat went past (plus there was a Norfolk Wherry on the river and a red biplane flying over....it was all happening at St Benet's!)

Well, I probably should have split that into two posts but what hell eh.

Thanks for getting to the end!

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Harvest Monday - rhubarb and gooseberry flapjack with recipe

Hey it's my 200th post! I only noticed by accident and haven't had chance to do anything special, so will try and do something soon.

This week, the weather's been weird but finally returning to summer the last couple of days. A bit of rain would be nice actually. (I must water the tom plants in the lean-to before bedtime.)

Harvests have started picking up again slowly - it had been really cold so things were pretty much just sitting there.

Lots of chard and a cuke, onions from the shed, the last few raspberries and the first few blackberries. The chard is mainly from some plants which were growing since last year - I had a good crop from them and when they started to bolt in late spring I cut them right to the ground and they produced lots of new leaves, a bonus crop!

A few more blackberries, yummy

And this little lot, picked yesterday. Spot the robot face? And a boomerang courgette. The yellow chard seeded itself from plants I let run to seed in the past and this popped up in the onion bed. A nice splash of colour. The blackberries are picking up the pace too, lucky I got a bigger freezer in the winter.

Meals have included this noodle dish with chard, onion, garlic. And not my peas, mushrooms, beans, ground ginger. Wish they were my peas though!

Some comfort food. The potatoes were real good, oven cooked.

More comfort food - pie and veggies. Pie not home made either! I cooked the veggies in just a bit of butter and steamed in the water that came out from them)

The toms have been slow to ripen

But, yay, the improved weather the last couple of days has started taking an effect

Hehee, don't know how why my hand looks odd

Mmm, fresh veggies

Little n large: In the back garden the rhubarb was blocking access to the water butt (even though that's empty at the mo), so I picked a few stems (there's still more but after a certain time it's advised to stop picking so the plant can recuperate, so I'll not pick too much more). And I was emptying out one of the compost bins to pot-on some basil seedlings when I found a few teeny potatoes that must've grown by themselves, Very cute

Well the basil potting-on took absolutely ages and I didn't even get through half of them - I wanted to get to the plot to pick courgettes and make choc courgette cake for a trip out with friends the next day. So instead I thought I'd make use of the rhubarb, and found a flapjack recipe in The Allotment Seasonal Planner & Cookbook by Andi Clevely. It needed 2lbs of rhubarb but I only had one, so used a pound of gooseberries from the freezer instead. I also used museli instead of rolled oats (a quick internet search confirmed they could be used as a replacement but just adding a bit more quantity) and used honey instead of golden syrup plus dates to replace some of the sugar.

So the recipe I used ended up being -

1lb rhubarb

1lb gooseberries

140g butter

260g museli base

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tsp ground ginger

40g dried dates

35g Demerara sugar

4 tbl sp Norfolk honey

Oven at gas mark 5

Lined and Greased 8inch pie dish (I used one that the bottom pushes up from to get it out easier)

1. Simmer all the fruit together until soft,

2. Warm the sugar with the butter and honey until dissolved then add in the museli, ground ginger and salt

3. Use 3/4 of the oat mix to line the bottom and sides of the pie dish, pressing down lightly

4. Pour in the fruit mix (I found that I only need about 2/3 of the mix )

5. Cover with the remaining oat mix and bake for 35-ish minutes

The mix doesn't look that apetising!

I meant to take more photos of the process but was distracted by half-watching a film at the same time! Here it is ready for the oven.

And the next morning, Mmm. The night before, it was a bit floppy but it had firmed up the next day.

I wondered what it would be like inside - the fruit mix had soaked into the oats. Yum yum.

And for something completley different, a naughty pigeon flew into the lean-to and knocked over some of my

purple basils. Well, they were getting a bit past it so it wasn't too much of a problem!

Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions

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