Reaping what you sow....

Having had a second week of exclusively picking our wonderful produce & not so much as pulling up a weed seedling, I am getting a bit worried that I am ‘taking out’ a great deal more than I am ‘putting in’ – will there be anything left to harvest in the bleak mid-winter?

Obviously, that concern has not stopped me gathering FRENCH BEANS (blue lake), RUNNER BEANS (reg-next-plot), a wonderful PARSNIP (white gem), TURNIP (snowball) & a fantastic CARROT (multicolour) when I went to the Hill this evening!

I saw Novice-neighbour-Jody – he’s been hard at work starting to manure his plot – with it having been dry for some weeks, all the plots look pretty dusty, so the manure can only help with the soil structure. I can’t start our over-winter manuring of the roots bed until some of the carrots/parsnips/beetroot are lifted, not to mention the celery which (lack of forethought here) are slap bang in the middle of the roots bed.

Jody kindly let me have some of his chilli peppers which look like they could kill at 10 paces – as they will keep (either left to dry in the kitchen or chopped & frozen), there’s no rush to make chilli con carne just yet.

This week’s preserving project has been beetroot chutney – funny how half a dozen beetroot, half a dozen onions & a couple of bramleys shrink into one pot of chutney? It did smell very good in the pan, so I’ve high hopes for it in a month or so.

I’ve also ordered some rye seed for sowing as green manure on plot D (potatoes as was) so hopefully the molehills will not soon be quite so visible, even if our ‘guest’ is still in residence….