Radio Random is broadcasting again

It's been a lovely long summer but extended by some health issues that needed to be dealt with and which took us away from the plot. Thankfully, OH and I are firm subscribers to the doctrine of lazy gardening and the beauty of that is that if you've done the work in the spring and early summer, the plants will take care of themselves during the rest of the year, largely.

We did well in using mechanical barriers to bird and insect strike with our more vulnerable salad plants, kales and roots (carrots, beetroot) but we missed those cabbage whites that did get under the netting and laid their eggs so we came back to a massive infestation of scary-looking caterpillars. Being of the kind and caring type, I picked them all off individually and lobbed them in the direction of our overgrown compost heap and invited them to try nettles and brambles instead. OH suggested that maybe it was time to let the birds in on the insect control so we removed the netting. I haven't seen a lot of caterpillars since but neither have I seen any more viable broccoli florets. Maybe there's a second flush round about October/November time. But definitely an area for improvement next year.

This year, I'm going to try making my own cosmetics and medicinal balms and salves, having acquired a considerable herbalist library by now (hat tip Mum!). I've collected more than a mayonnaise jar full of calendula flowers (dried) and mint and lemon balm. There are thyme and oregano from the back garden and plot drying in my study although it's far more likely these will be used up making stock.

Speaking of stock: OH and I somehow ended up with a plastic bag full of tiny unpeeled brown shrimp, which we now need to transform into shellfish stock. I tried peeling a pound of the stuff yesterday while half-watching the Hairy Bikers re-run, and it took me over an hour. I'll probably turn the two handfuls of shrimp into ravioli filling for tonight.

We've had a pretty good harvest this year despite all this benign neglect and the heat. These are our pumpkins so far:

Bush White Scallops

The 3 very orange Uchiki Kuri and the 2 bigger ones, which we're not entirely sure what they are

 

 

 We grew some French pumpkins too, and these are huge. OH reckons they'll be up to 10 kilos each. Monsters! A couple of zumpkins snuck in (zumpkins look orange like squashes but don't keep very long, and their flesh is watery, like overgrown courgettes/zucchini), and these will become our Halloween decorations.

 Our runner beans were a bit of an afterthought this year but they've been very good -- only 4 plants and an abundance of beans. Have usually boiled them and then frozen them, or baked them into eggy pies for lunch.

Or turned them into stews. Brought home Mettwurst from Germany, which negates the need for stock.

 OH has laid the Sturon onions out to dry. Last year's batch lasted well into spring and summer although OH reckons this year's won't be quite so resilient and more prone to mould. We took 12 bottles of Federweisser back from Germany, new white wine, fizzy and sweet, still with yeast at the bottom, and Federweisser absolutely has to be drunk with French onion tart.

 OH's potatos -- again very tasty. We've been using them in all sorts of dishes this year, mostly with a roast but also, as recently, with fish pie. They do tend to explode in the pot though -- maybe because of the drought and the heat this year?

The tomatoes! My pride and joy! Another case of Ignore-and-Thrive. Last year's tomatoes were literally a washout -- those that did survive were all horribly blighted. This year, I grew some seedlings and popped them, very late in the year, in one of our planters out the front. And they've rewarded us with bag after bag of flawless juicy perfection. We're supplying not just our lovely, huggy postie, who will pester all our neighbours to take in parcels for us when we're out to save us having to trek out and pick them up from the depot, but also, of course, P next door ("If you see a shadow flitting past your window, that's me nicking another one.").

This here is a tomato quiche with homegrown thyme, oregano and basil.

More tomatoes are currently coming from the plot as well although, because they got in too late and are more exposed to the elements, their yield isn't quite so impressive (though still good, given they've never seen a greenhouse from the inside! Wish I could remember their variety though...).

Not photographed but also quite successful this year: OH's sweetcorn, a whole bag full, now in the freezer.

 We've restocked our raspberry jam provisions, which had been running low over the summer. Our raspberry patch will have to be rejuvenated. Touch wood and health permitting, we'll get that done over the autumn/winter.

And this is a very tasty chocolate pear cake, with pears from our own tree, now carrying again after taking a year off. Instead of sugar, I used plum and pear compote from 2 years ago, still good (because it was pumped full of sugar then), and instead of butter, which I'd run out of, I used a mixture of quark and neutral oil. Pears were poached in Federweissen, with a handful of cardamom pods thrown in. Worked!









Things have temporarily been a little restricted mobility-wise (bending over, crouching and heavy lifting are pretty much out) but recently, OH and I went for a mushroom walk in one of our local woods. We found quite a lot of oak-based edible mushrooms (beefsteak fungus and chicken of the woods), of these later once I've found the right lead and downloaded the pics from OH's camera, and we also found crab apples on our usual tree. However, they didn't have a lot of juice and I suspect we were too early picking them.

Unimpressive yield

 

 

 

 

Last weekend, we went blackberrying down our usual spot. The harvest this year is so rich all we had to do was reach out in front of us and pick them. Two big bowls gave OH enough to start off his next bucket of blackberry and elderberry wine. The previous lot by the way was bottled and OH gave me a sip to try. I thought it was quite tart, to the point of being vinegary, while OH insisted that that sort of wine needed to mature "about 10 years", before all the tannins had broken down. Happy about this -- if it doesn't work, it will be six bottles of very well matured pickling vinegar.

Our newly discovered secret spot for wild mirabelles has as yet been undiscovered by anyone else but as mostly everything is maturing late in the year, that's perhaps not surprising so we had to leave them on the trees for later. If we time it right, the harvest will be massive. OH also spotted a huge cooking apple tree that had been left to its own devices and that was heaving with the things. We had our long picking lance with us and filled a big supermarket bag. Great timing too -- the same day, our neighbour, who also has a massive apple tree, gave us two more plastic bags full ("I can't use them all.") so now I'm looking at two weeks of constant bottling and baking. My next project: an apple strudel made with Turkish yufka.

In other news from the plot: Bird Man now has a peacock that sits on top of the chicken shed but Cranberry, the Turkey, was nowhere to be seen the last time we looked. Our neighbours from across the path have cut down their hedge and made a fence out of used pallets, thus gaining more planting space. Our Portuguese neighbour has given up his plot to concentrate on growing humungous cabbages in his front garden and no-one else is working it at the moment. The central path still needs resurfacing. Seed orders will soon be collected and sent off.

Our back garden is currently looking like this:

 

The rolltop bath at the back is full of rainwater from the new Holzleg and is slowly sinking into the ground and into the fence we share with P. The bay shrub in the conical tin tub on the patio has recovered very well. The lemon balm in the foreground has exploded and I need to cut it back every once in a while to allow the fuchsia to catch up (also a rescue). The large, fleshy-leaved bits are perpetual spinach (Mangold) -- we've got loads of this on the plot.