Allotment harvests

OH had been to the plot last week and I asked him what it looked like.

"Verdant," he said.

"Oh."

"Yep."

It means we'll have to get the generator and the strimmer out very soon. I saw what he meant with my own eyes when we took the composter across to the plot on Saturday. A bed I had cleared at the start of the summer was re-covered in weeds. The onion bed, a week after lifting them, looked like it had never been done. The front was a bed of clover, and not in a good way. The radishes had bolted. And all the tomatoes had blight.

On the plus side, the Musquee de Provence squashes are bulking up very nicely. We have tons of chard, borecole and cavolo nero plus quite a few leeks. The spring onions are looking good. Loads of beetroot too, and runner beans. We harvested almost a kilo of raspberries, with more to come. We've got 2 little aubergines forming again. And OH's grapes are lovely and sweet -- they'll be harvested next week.

The potato harvest this year was a bit meh. The Desirees were a slight disappointment in terms of yield and disease-resistance. There were few per plant and came out with blistering and some slug and woodlouse damage. Golden Wonder again next year, I hope. The blue ones, forget which type, Shetland Black or Blue Danube? -- were okay. We keep testing and experimenting. 

Musquee de Provence squashes. They're massive.

I tried a squash recipe using two of the UFO squashes (Patty Pans). Cut them in two, scraped out the seeds  and stuck them in the microwave on full power for 10 minutes. They came out nice and cooked. Chopped  two of our freshly harvested onions and fried them off in butter. Added the squash meat plus the fresh chicken stock from the chicken last week. Cup of single cream, chopped chives, a sage leaf fried in butter. Lovely. Will make again.


The big Saturday dish was a piece of pork I found in our freezer, plus our potatoes and roast beetroot. 

On Sunday, after OH made us tattie scones from the leftover boiled potatoes, I got the extendable fruitpicker out and got a bowlful of Marjorie's Seedlings plums -- plump and round and juicy.

These went into my first glutenfree plum crumble cake:

While I was doing this, OH did a tip run to get rid of our old paint tins:

Then on to the plot again, this time with a cartful of scrap wood for raised beds. Cleared two beds of weeds and dug them over. Harvested humungous amounts of chard. I boil it down, chop it and then put them in cheese pancakes, which I freeze and then take to work as my worklunch.