Carry on sowing

The squash seedlings (pumpkin and courgettes and BNS) are through and growing madly.  The cavolo nero seedlings are also through but pretty tiny. I need to get them all in the ground before I go on an extended jaunt in France.

We were in France just a week ago too and, they are having as bad a time of the weather as we are. In fact it was the main news item in France - it was apparently 10 degrees colder than last year (which was hardly ideal) and some areas even had snow. We spent the weekend in the Champagne region avoiding showers/ torrential rain.  The cold and the wet will have hit the wine trade hard and I assume other farmers will also be suffering.

The basil seedlings I put out have curled up and died in shock from the cold and I can't be bothered to sow more. I wonder if in 'normal' weather they could have coped outside - I'll try again next year.

There is still time to catch up which is good news for a friend who has just got allocated a plot after 6 years of waiting. the plot is overgrown with weeds and he is tackling it bit by bit.  As his back is breaking under the work of clearing the plot, this is probably not a good time though for him to remember that he likes very few vegetables!

We took advantage of some dry weather to finally clear out the shed which was more than a dumping ground - more of a Bermuda triangle lurking in the garden. I feel much less guilty now and ready to start filling it up again now.

Pumpkin, squash and a damp squib of an aubergine

Top tip: Learn from my mistake - don't be in too much of a hurry to clear runner beans away. Leave the pods on the plants until the end of October.  Save seed by podding them and drying them on newspaper in a warm, dry place.  This also works with sunflower seeds.

With sunshine predicted this weekend and Tom having some free time on his hands, I decided it would be good to clear some of the plot. The tomatoes are almost finished and the courgettes are sending out very few finger sized courgettes.  The patty pan squashes are never making it larger than a golf ball before starting to rot and the runner beans are getting enormous and stringy. 

On the whole this was a good idea. We collected over 7 kilos of tomatoes (including 2 kilos of green tomatoes - if they don't ripen by the end of the month then more chutney is predicted. Friends and family you have been warned! Maybe I can get empty jars from work to put it in once I have a kitchen to make it in). We discovered a ripe butternut squash and the pumpkin has ripened to a proper Halloween orange. The debate now is whether to save it for Halloween or to eat it. Considering that I can't cook it properly and can't remember if it is a variety that is particularly tasty I think it might be best to keep it for a bit.  It can live next to the unfeasibly tiny aubergine I rescued from Tom's clearing onslaught.

2 kilos of runner beans were destined for my aunt but then Tom and I were struck with the cold lurgy so the fridge is stuffed again until I can work out what to do with them.

We also picked the largest pods off the runner beans before they were hacked down - making sure to leave the nitrogen fixing roots still in the ground. My plan was to to pod the beans and save them either for seeds next year (ignoring the fact that I have loads of beans already) or else to boil them up as dried beans in the same way that you would treat dried kidney beans.  This is where I should have waited until the end of the month as too many of them were under ripe and not worth the effort of podding - they should be a pretty mottled pink and purple.  Still they are now in the summer house next to the sunflower seeds and I am dreaming of winter stews.

Plump pumpkins and swelling squashes

Giant but a long way off ripe

Top tip: Apparently mildew isn't a problem for winter squash - leave leaves (even if infected) on until they brown in October and dry the fruit for a couple of days to make sure they keep over the weekend. Next year prepare a bed with lots of nutrient rich  and water retaining material (try shed loads of household waste (no meat)) for the plants to discover while growing.

Medium

Thanks to a fellow allotment novice I have finally found a tasty way to use our Patty Pan summer squash.  Boil them with the skin on then sprinkle with a little cinnamon and spread with butter. a great side dish - tastes buttery even without the butter. A grating of cheese wouldn't go amiss either.

Marrows, courgettes, squash and pumpkin are all related and it has been a cracking summer for me for them all. I discovered a great traditional 'Halloween' pumpkin ripening under the brassicas and there is a tiny butternut squash developing. I hear that you should stop a plant after it has set fruit twice so it doesn't divert energies into fruiting more over making the existing fruit a viable size. But I am very greedy and live in hope they are wrong and I can get even more put of the plant.

Mini mini mini! Tasty.....

Autumn in August?

Top tip: Enjoy the daylight before the clocks go back (or forward - I always forget), keep harvesting crops and sow green manures when bare patches start to appear. Enjoy the bright colours of approaching Autumn.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Autumn is already here despite it being still not even mid August.  The days seem shorter and there is a definite chill in the air in the morning. Maybe this is normal and the exceptionally dry and warm summer we have had was the aberration but I had almost forgotten what rain was like. Last Tuesday, the skies decided to remind us with a vengeance. Following the driest weather for 80 years August 12th saw vast amounts of rain - so much so that the Met Office issued severe weather warnings. Looking on the positive side, it means I don't have to spend so long watering. It does, however,  encourage the weeds to spring into life and though you are supposed to keep on top of weeding a) I am not going out in the rain and b) there is no point hoeing weeds if the rain might 'replant' them. So I've stayed indoors and read gardening magazines.

This might be another reason why I think it might be Autumn as, infuriatingly, monthly magazines insist on talking about tasks to do in September despite coming out in early August. I seem to be living in a time warp.  Luckily I also buy Amateur Gardening (the UK's oldest consumer gardening magazine, I believe) and Garden News which are weeklies so they should be more relevant for mid August.  According to them, this week we should:
- Harvest early apples (only take them if they come off easily when twisted)
- Keep picking runner and french beans to keep the plants flowering and cropping
- Lift and sort out potatoes - eat damaged ones first (obvious I would say...)
- Sow salads. Apparently if you sow them in the morning they will germinate better. Worth a go.
- Direct sow spring cabbages now to either crop for winter greens or leave for fully grown plants in spring.
- Remove all but two or three fruits per pumpkin plant to allow them to ripen properly and put the fruits on a tile/ lift them off the ground to stop rotting and encourage ripening.

In this gloom it's good to have a few unusual and colourful produce to make a change from the tidal wave of green (courgettes, salads, cabbage, beans etc) so I was particularly pleased to see that my Swiss Chard 'Bright Lights' have produced a great range of coloured stems.  The variety of colour ranging from hot pink to burnt orange is truly psychedelic. Steam the leaves and use like spinach. Cook the stems separately and apparently you can treat them like asparagus spears. A good way to preserve the leaves and stems is to freeze them but rather than have the leaves in a giant block, steam them, squeeze out the water and then pop them into a muffin tin so that you have easy to use portions.

I'm also loving the cute mini-spaceship shaped Patty Pan summer squashes. I'm not sure what to do with them though the online view seems to be to either treat them like courgettes (ARGH - not more courgettes!) or to stuff them. Tempted by the latter, though I am a bit suspicious about stuffing things - it's almost like disguising the filling.  I also spotted among the triffid-like squash patch a developing 'real' pumpkin and a butternut squash so am watching their progress with interest.

PS Charlotte, her darling little daughter Tabitha and I harvested one of the neighbour's giant cauliflowers (he did give me permission). Though impressively huge it was also full of woodlice - less than appealing but I did get rid of them all by the time I posed for this photo!

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