This week the weather has been cool & bright with a lot of the leaves now off the trees & a real smell of autumn in the air. It was time to turn the clocks back this weekend so now it’s dark about 5pm, which puts paid to visits to the Hill in the week, bar the odd sneak down at lunchtime.
I have had an extremely satisfying weekend at the Hill – & in the kitchen. The main job has been to clear all the ‘summer’ crops, so after picking a carrier bag of various sized & variety of green TOMATOES, all the plants came up, along with the marigold, BUTTERNUT SQUASH (harvested one small one!), PUMPKIN (harvested one pretty big one), nasturtium, bolted lettuce, courgette, slug eaten radish & sweetcorn.
This has left just the indestructible (and, quite frankly, so-hot-it-is-inedible) landcress, a row of pak choi & a row of spinach in plot B. I gave the bed a good old rake over & sowed some 30 short rows of green manure. I also planted up the garlic sets bought at Malvern, & the dianthus plants along the front of the plot for some spring colour.
I also dug up a JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE, out of curiosity, & now have a heap of funny shaped tubers to ‘do’ something with! I rescued the Prize Pumpkin (19lb, 5th place) from the polytunnel, & along with the absolute star of the day – a small but perfect CAULIFLOWER (all the year round) – I went home to deal with the bounty…
So with my pinny on, I cooked up a batch of Green Tomato Chutney from a recipe from the GYO Grapevine – which looks wonderful (& a sneaky taste confirms…) – and I spent a merry hour cursing the density of pumpkin flesh as I hollowed out the smaller of the two pumpkins (weighing in at 13lb). The pumpkin is now all cooked & frozen – & some put aside for soup – & then I had a rather a lot of fun making this chappie for Halloween…
I have had an extremely satisfying weekend at the Hill – & in the kitchen. The main job has been to clear all the ‘summer’ crops, so after picking a carrier bag of various sized & variety of green TOMATOES, all the plants came up, along with the marigold, BUTTERNUT SQUASH (harvested one small one!), PUMPKIN (harvested one pretty big one), nasturtium, bolted lettuce, courgette, slug eaten radish & sweetcorn.This has left just the indestructible (and, quite frankly, so-hot-it-is-inedible) landcress, a row of pak choi & a row of spinach in plot B. I gave the bed a good old rake over & sowed some 30 short rows of green manure. I also planted up the garlic sets bought at Malvern, & the dianthus plants along the front of the plot for some spring colour.
I also dug up a JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE, out of curiosity, & now have a heap of funny shaped tubers to ‘do’ something with! I rescued the Prize Pumpkin (19lb, 5th place) from the polytunnel, & along with the absolute star of the day – a small but perfect CAULIFLOWER (all the year round) – I went home to deal with the bounty…
So with my pinny on, I cooked up a batch of Green Tomato Chutney from a recipe from the GYO Grapevine – which looks wonderful (& a sneaky taste confirms…) – and I spent a merry hour cursing the density of pumpkin flesh as I hollowed out the smaller of the two pumpkins (weighing in at 13lb). The pumpkin is now all cooked & frozen – & some put aside for soup – & then I had a rather a lot of fun making this chappie for Halloween…
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