Squashed

The allotment was somewhat neglected last week.

On Monday we decided to pay a visit to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park.  We aborted an attempt to visit last month. When we came across a long queue of traffic stretching some distance from the actual entrance, we turned around and headed home. Even in pre-Covid times we wouldn't have enjoyed our visit. We decided to wait until after the school holidays when hopefully things would be quieter. I must admit I was surprised that there were several school parties so soon after the start of the new school year. For anyone who is interested, I'll post more about our visit on Thursday.

Tuesday we had planned to go to the allotment but instead I had a doctor's appointment. I now have a fourth type of cream to try a clear up the rash on my leg.

We did get to the allotment on Friday, when we dug another lot of potatoes. This time the variety was Rudolph. The ground was bone dry. We can't manage to water all the potatoes and so they have to make do with whatever moisture comes from the sky. The result was that, although we harvested some good quality potatoes with no slug damage, the actual yield was lower than usual.

We made a second visit to the allotment on Sunday. The main aim was for, Martyn to finish strimming the grass paths, a job that was started on Friday. We posted a video here.

On Friday, I noticed that the garlic planted earlier had produced shoots. These were bending under the weight of the enviromesh cover so we needed to lift the mesh higher to stop the shoots from being damaged. On removing the mesh we could see that the onions had also started to produce shoots. As the ground was really dry I watered the bed whilst, Martyn constructed a frame to lift the mesh.  We didn't want to remove the mesh entirely as the shoots would risk being damaged by animals prowling about at night.

You may remember that I mentioned that some of our new strawberry plants were persisting in flowering despite me cutting off all the flowers as they formed. During an enforced absence when, Martyn was in hospital, the plants had not only flowered but had set fruit. The plants were gifted by Thompson and Morgan after they had featured us in their blog. I originally thought the variety was Christine but this is an early variety. Looking back through my emails I found that the variety is Albion. This makes more sense as Albion is an everbearing variety that crops from June to October. On Sunday we picked the first ripe strawberries and if the weather is kind there are lots more to come so we decided that we had better net the plants in case any hungry birds spot them.

Friday as well as the Rudolph potatoes, we harvested a variety of produce.

24 September - Potatoes - Rudolph, Apples & Tickled Pink- Fiesta, Mixed dahlias, Raspberries - All Gold & Joan J. Blackberries - Loch Ness, Cauliflower - Zaragosa, Courgettes - Boldenice & Ambassador, Tomatoes - Shirley, Crimson Crush & Crimson Plum and Cabbage - Kalibro

Heavy rain is forecast for Monday morning so, just in case the rain actually arrived, we decided to harvest the squash. (Monday morning saw heavy rain so ir proved to be a good decision). We cut nine Crown Prince, three Pink Banana and one very small Autumn Crown. The tiny yellow one in the photo below is Autumn Crown - just big enough for a taster.

26 September - Squash - Crown Prince, Pink Banana & Autumn Crown, Apples - Fiesta and Egremont Russet, Quince - Meeches Prolific, Pears - Invincible and two Albion Strawberries

Squash Pink Banana on the left and Crown Prince on the right.

On Friday, we picked a bucketful of Fiesta apples and on Sunday we picked more Fiestas and a bucketful of Egremont Russet apples.

Fiesta on the left and Egremont Russet on the right.

Invincible pears

We also picked some of our Invincible pears which will finish ripening in the summerhouse and a bucketful of Meeches Prolific quinces. Quinces are picked once they have lost their fuzzy coat, some that were still a little fuzzy were left for a little longer.

Meeches Prolific quinces,

Last week we used some of our carrots and potatoes to accompany a turkey and red wine casserole into which went some of our onion, garlic and carrots.

I also cooked a Runner and Broad Bean tagine that used our runner beans, broad beans, onion, garlic and tomatoes. This was served with couscous. I can't find the link to the recipe but to give a rough idea, other ingredients were red pepper and dried apricots. The onions, red pepper and tomato were first fried and then garlic, apricots, turmeric, chilli powder, ground cinnamon, ground cumin and ground almonds were added along with vegetable stock. After simmering for 10 minutes the beans were added and continued cooking until the beans were tender.

One other incident of note was that on leaving Nostell Priory after our walk with Ruby, Martyn managed to drive over his camera bag. Ruby's ball and bottle of water were scattered behind the car but the camera bag was wedged under the front wheel. Incredibly the camera survived the ordeal. The videographers' God was watching over us!

On that note as always, wherever you are stay safe and well.

This week I   am once again joining in with Dave’s Harvest Monday collection of posts over at Our Happy Acres.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett