Welcome back to our allotment retreat, where we are enjoying the fruits of our labour once again! After a quick visit to the plot today we came away with this bumper harvest. We cant lay claim to the courgettes - they were a gift from a fellow plotholder - he grew so many he's been eating them every day for weeks! The marrow is our second this year and the plants are still flourishing. We picked a good handful of Runner Beans, French Beans and Purple podded french beans. Only a couple of Pea pods - but they are soooo tasty ! Finally we dug the first of our Second Earlies(v.Nadine). We'll be conjuring up some lovely home grown veg to go with our Hake Fillets for tea! Yum.
Our Butternut Squash plants are also going well. No sign of any fruits yet, but buds galore on the 4 plants that are planted atop our compost heap. The flower in this pic looks to have a fruit developing underneath, all we need now is some sunny weather to help it grow on a bit.The mixed bag of plants that we were given are also doing very well, considering they've only been in the ground about ten days:
This one appears to be Zucchini - you can just see the yellow fruit starting to form.
Not sure what this one is either, but something is growing !! Unfortunately, the majority of the plants that Stephen gave us were without labels, so we'll just have to wait and see. We can't thank Victoriana Nurseries enough, and can't find enough superlatives to describe their nursery. Maybe we can show how grateful we are by buying a bit more from them next year!
Our newly located Rhubarb crown is going great guns too, obviously liking it's new growing position. Won't be enough growth to harvest this year, but we're hoping for bumper harvests in years to come.
Our first attempt at growing Borlotti Beans is proving to be a great success. Faced as we were today with a multitude of beans, we need to read up a bit before we harvest them. The plan was to grow them for drying, with a view to using the dried beans in winter stews and casseroles, but we are now thinking they could be picked to eat as "runners" - maybe one of our readers can advise us on this ?
On the way back from the plot, we stopped off at a newly discovered site (being vague on purpose!) and picked approx 10 pounds of these lovely Cherry Plums. As I sit here typing, wifey is busy preparing the first 5lb batch of jam - yummy yum. We already have about 4 jars in the larder from a previous picking a couple of weeks ago. If you could smell the fruit now as it gently boils on the stove . . . . oh, you can't ! Oh well!!That's about it for now. Hope you are enjoying the growing and gardening, and also hope that you will pop back soon for more updates.
Till then, take care all.
TTFN
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1 comment:
No, don't eat them as runners, I think they will be stringy. Instead, you can eat the beans inside fresh (rather than dried)which is what I did last year, but this year I am going to store them dried for when the harvest slows down.
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