Saturday, October 31, 2009

giant puffball fritters

Puffball fritters with sausages, tomatoes and parsley pesto
Posted by Picasa

Monday, October 26, 2009

Sunday, October 25, 2009

The garden came to a rapid end after a couple of heavy frosts mid October! The outside tomato plants and the courgette plants just collapsed forlornly overnight. I managed to salvage the bigger of the last courgettes, the last two smaller ones got badly frosted and went all soft. All the green outside tomatoes are now meant to be ripening in shoe boxes covered in newspaper.
The greenhouse tomatoes I am still picking, but it has been so cold and I suppose with less sun and shorter days they are ripening very slowly. So I pick them underripe and ripen them off on the kitchen window ledge.

The frosts have also finished off the Tagetes marigolds so the garden is suddenly looking very wintery and colourless.

As I write we are still completely self sufficient on the vegetable front, but I will have to start implementing with bought stuff soon. I am already coming to the end of the onions, so need to plant far more next year, but it is a comforting thought that the early onions, shallots and garlic are all planted.

I've still got masses of potatoes, so they will keep us going for a long while yet.
I've also still got carrots and beetroot in peat under the verandah. Also 2 small pumpkins and a courgette still to be eaten.
In the greenhouse the tomatoes are still ripening, there are late planted parsnips which hopefully will be harvestable in the spring - I'm just leaving them in the greenhouse. In between them are a row of red and a row of white spring onions.

There's broccoli in a big pot in the greenhouse, and also a big pot of cut and come again mixed salad leaves which I've already harvested a lot from and which is still doing OK.
In the greenhouse there are also various seedlings coming on: a big pot of Mesclun mix, lettuce, bull's blood beetroot leaves, pak choi, lamb's lettuce and land cress. I've no idea whether they'll all keep on growing in a draughty unheated greenhouse, but we'll see.

Outside there are rows of mustard greens, mizuma, raapstelen, baby carrots and radishes.
The outside parsnips were planted too late, so if they survive the winter we'll hopefully have parsnips in the spring.
The bulb fennel I cut leaving the roots in the ground and they have regrown so I have enough for a last picking.
The leeks, bigger spring onions, endive and brassicas I do the same with. I've got plenty of leeks for the moment. There are about 24 endive plants of various sizes.
I'm still harvesting the leaves from the bull's blood beetroot plants that are outside. There are 2 big purple kale plants that I do cut and come again with, they are very obliging! Both they and the Italian kale, Cavalo Nero, which I have lots of, were turned into lace by caterpillars. The lace production seems to have slowed down so I'm hoping the caterpillars have been killed off by the frosts.
The rainbow chard hasn't suffered the cold at all so far, it's still looking attractive and is still pickable.
All the stuff I planted out early autumn - more rainbow chard, more purple kale and spinach are suffering from the extremes of weather. Late summer/early autumn was much too dry so everything stopped growing, then when it did rain we suddenly had very cold nights and frost, which they're obviously not really enjoying either. I've started to put plastic bottles round some of them to give them a bit of protection. Because they're planted all higgeldy piggeldy I can't really put fleece over them.

There are quite a few celeriac plants. I've already harvested a couple, but will leave the rest in until needed. The Jerusalem artichoke plants are still in flower and will hopefully provide some nice farty meals over the winter.

I must get my broad beans planted and I still need to get a load of straw to mulch the beds, and to do some manuring, weeding and a big tidy up in the greenhouse and to put a proper path down. And of course ordering seeds for next year.

The 2 melons!

Posted by Picasa