We were having friends round for dinner this week, so decided to crack open one of the big green butternut squashes. Here's a reminder of the size of one...
I was really interested to see what it was like inside, and cut off one end...
It was really easy to cut through, and had a lovely orange colour (more orange than the pic shows)...
As the skin was thin, I left it on for the roasting, and added a bit of rosemary from the allotment too. That section of the squash ended up making three roasting tins-ful, phew! The squash has a very sweet flavour, yummy.
Also this week, I harvested all the remaining beetroot from the allotment - I wanted to use the space to make a new strawberry bed, plus the beets might otherwise get damaged by heavy frost (apparently there was one last night). I've stored them all in the brick shed at home, twisting the tops off first.
I sorted through the beet tops and selected out the nicest quality leaves to cook up.
The colour dulled a bit after cooking in a small amount of water, but still tasted good.
Whilst tidying up the two old strawberry beds I've been removing self-sown chard plants and saving the best leaves of those too, with a couple of large bunches picked on different occasions, here's one below. I was going to completely remove one of the old strawb beds but decided to leave them both whilst the new one settles in. Oh and there are actually some strawb flowers and actual fruit on a couple of the older plants! Crazy autumn. I don't expect them to ripen though. With the chard plants, I've been snipping them off just below ground level, so that the root decomposes in the soil, feeding the strawb beds as it goes.
Jan noticed we're nearly out of chilli flakes, so rather than buy more, we decided to make some from our own fruits. I've been growing these indoors - I have two over-wintered plants and two newly sown last spring.
Not having done this before, we just used a few to begin with, in case we messed up. Jan carefully sliced them up and we baked on a very low oven (less than gas mark 1) to dry them out.
We thought they looked OK after about an hour or so
So we ground them up (and actually snipped them up a bit too). We've yet to try them, so not sure how potent they are yet. And hopefully we dried them enough but I know Dave (Our Happy Acres) is an expert so maybe he might kindly give his view? (And in fact I've just seen on his latest blog post, linked below, that he dehydrated some peppers over two days, so our one hour seems a tad lacking!).
For a bit of variety this week, we dipped into some of the freezer goodies, using a pack of sweet peppers and diced courgette, with some homemade pesto. Oh, and today I thawed out a jar of beetroot hummus to go in our sarnies, along with the salad leaves that are still coming from the lean-to.
Today was actually really sunny, so after a short gardening job I spent a couple of hours on the plot, continuing to tidy the strawberry beds. Yesterday wasn't too bad either, and we had a walk down to Whitlingham Country Park on the outskirts of the city, where there are various woodland routes and a large broad (manmade lake) to walk round. I forget sometimes that I was the warden here one summer many years ago, it's changed a lot since then. Now there's even a lovely visitor centre and toilets!
The River Yare bounds one side of the park and in a few places there are some great views to be had (my photo's not very good, it was a bit cold on the fingers). We even saw a kingfisher fly by, low over the water at one point. I heard it before I saw it, with the 'peep' call giving a heads up that it was about to fly past.
I haven't looked ahead to the weather over the next few days but it would be nice if we had a some more like this. I might try and get some pics of the plot if the light is good. Ok, thanks for reading, I'm linking in with Harvest Monday, hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres.
Ooh, I've left it a bit late to mention properly the Norwich FarmShare (Community Supported Agriculture) crowdfunding launch, aiming to raise money for establishing the new site, so will do that another time. But please have a look at the link above in the meantime to find out more.
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Your giant green butternut squash sounds delicious. I might try growing it next year since you gave it such high marks. And your beets look amazing. I've never been successful at growing them, will have to try again in the spring.
ReplyDeleteThanks Phuong, yes it's a tasty squash. I think it's a bit more watery than other varieties I've grown previously, though not sure if this was typical of it or not, as I've not grown it before, and there's meant to be several smaller fruits per plant rather than one massive individual!
DeleteWith the beets, I multi sowed them in modules and then planted each whole module out in one. Then you can harvest the faster growing beets first, whilst the smaller ones grow on, without having to remember to sow more, hurray.
My aunt sent me a recent CBC news article about a Canadian woman that harvested a 22 pound turnip and was planning to make soup for her entire small town. LOL, that squash might be capable of the same idea!
ReplyDeleteHi Susie, ha that is a BIG turnip. Yeah I should do a meal for our street :D
DeleteOur strawberries have been ripening but we haven't managed to get yo them before the slugs. I'm assuming that our remaining strawberry flowers were frosted on Sunday night.
ReplyDeleteHi sue, one of my allotment neighbours had a lot of ripe strawbs recently but said they didn't taste very nice. So may be you didn't miss out too much to the slugs.
DeleteWow! That squash! It looks great and I hope it tasted as good too!
ReplyDeleteThanks Belinda, yes it had a nice flavour. After many meals I've still got about a third to cook-up :D
DeleteThat is indeed a giant squash! My wife says if everyone plants a few hills we could feed the world. It's good it was tasty too. As for drying peppers, since I use the dehydrator set at 135°F, it does take over 24 hours of drying time. If it's dry enough to grind up, I think it's dry enough. Our climate is so humid that after drying it tends to clump up, but it's all good anyway! Yours looks to be a lovely dark red color, and hopefully not too hot!
ReplyDeleteThanks Dave. Ha ha, yes they can be very prolific. Did you know a third of all food grown globally is wasted? There are various 'movements' trying to rectify this, like the gleaning network I helped with last year (they're not active in my area this year unfortunately though).
DeleteAh thanks, that's good to hear about the peppers, we haven't tried them yet.
Wow - that's a huge squash! I wish I had the room to let the old strawberry bed continue on while the new one settled in. As it is we missed having strawberries this year but am hoping for a bumper crop next year.
ReplyDeleteHi Margaret! Yep I was in two minds about leaving one of the old beds. But I think I might try sowing dwarf French beans in the new one, inbetween the establishing strawb plants to make the most of the space...it's worth a go anyway. Fingers crossed for your strawbs this coming year.
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