Collecting seeds

Whichever way you look at it, the season is coming to a premature end.

The long hot summer has put paid to many of the inground crops, such as forcing our turnips into bolting, or shorting us on the strawberries. So now the flowers and beans are coming to an end and we need to start collecting seeds for next year.

The flower department is definitely The Wife's concern. So she has been collecting seed heads from the various flowers.

Don't ask me which is which. I can only spot the Soya Beans and the Petunias in that lot. But she knows what they all are.

Meanwhile I'm tidying up the plot, cutting back the triffid (which does have quite a good selection of grapes on it this year) and harvesting spuds and such.

We have also picked our first melon. Well not so much picked, as it fell off, so it must be ripe. The other one in the greenhouse is slightly larger. These are Honey Dew melons from Sainsbury's. Not so much from a seed packet, but from an actual Honey Dew directly. They were an experiment. And possibly one of our more successful experiments at that.

Apples are from our tree (still no idea what variety it is), but because we don't use any pesticides and this year, I didn't put up any Codling Moth traps, we're rather inundated with grubs in the apples.

Ah well, as the old saying goes, there's only one thing worse than finding a maggot in your apple and that's finding half a maggot in your apple.

BBQ

So this is the third BBQ we've held down the plot this year. We had an old friend (of The Wife's) visit us. So we had a jolly good cook-up down the plot with burgers and grilled slices of courgettes fresh from the vine.

Of course, when she left, she went with a load of tomatoes, apples and courgettes. After all, we can only eat so many. We have to give most of them away.

Working party (again)

So today was another working party. Part 1 involved getting an unloved plot back into shape. The plot regularly flooded and a previous tenant decided that a moat was the best way to counteract that. Unfortunately doing so made the site dangerous as it was very easy for anybody walking past to slip into it with potentially ankle damaging results.

We strimmed the long weeds, and uprooted what we couldn't strim (these ended up being dumped in a pile, then a load of horse manure piled on top and the covered by black plastic and some car tires to compost down). We also covered the plot with manure to give some of the bare ground a bit of nutrition where everything had gone to wrack and ruin over the scorching summer.

After Tea and Brownies, we then embarked on part 2 where we emptied out the MAGA Marquee and repaired the flooring (much wood chip and replacement carpet) and repaired some of the marquee flaps and side panels with new bungee cord. I didn't manage to get any photos of that part, so you'll have to make do with just a description.

After that we were so exhausted that we nearly didn't manage to do anything on our own plot. But there were a load of red juicy tomatoes staring at us saying "pick us, pick us".

So we did.

Plenty of trays of large toms (Ailsa Craig), one small tray of cherries toms (Sweet Million), a lonely chilli and a few obligatory courgettes (gave four away), liberally scattered across the back seat of the car, and hoping that the journey home won't leave them liberally scattered.

I guess we now need to figure out how to make tomato sauce properly. Unlike chutneys (where vinegar preserves it) and jam (where sugar preserves it), a good tomato sauce needs enough acidity to stop botulism forming, but enough taste so that it won't end up too acidic. Best get some research done quick.

But Freddy Fox doesn't think much of it all. He just wants his rest.

As do I..

We had rain...

Not the small splatter that only settles the dust, we actually had a decent downpour for a day or so that has given us a respite from the endless watering.

The courgettes are still cranking out far more than we can eat. So they're being given away to anyway that can take them away. But now the Toms are starting to crank out some decent sized fruits. And for a change we managed to get some of the sweetcorns that are edible... however the popcorns have only produced small powder-tasting cobs. Guess they're going to be ground into cornmeal.

But we thought we'd have a go at pulling a few carrots and see what they're like this year. Now we haven't really had much success with carrots over the years, and this year is the first time we've tried planting directly in soil, so we did wonder what we'd end up with.

So these are four carrot plants. They look like a cross between and alien from outerspace and a dodgy hentai movie. Still I reckon they'll taste pretty good anyway.