Tomatoes, Apples, Chutneys and Jams

The Tomatoes are on their last legs. The leaves are starting to curl up and the green toms have just been sitting there for a couple of weeks and not turned red.

Time to pick and consider chutney.

But of course you cannot have a decent chutney without apples. We haven't had a decent crop this year. Well decent as in quantity anyway. The quality is top notch. Very few have got maggots in them. Perhaps it was worthwhile putting out that Codling Moth trap. Certainly they are very sweet and juicy. We need a few for the Jam (Blackberries have been in the freezer for a month) and the chutney.

The courgettes on the new mound at the back of the plot seem to be over.

There are a few newish leaves and flowers so they may yet offer up some goodies. But to ones at the front of the plot, and the Butternut Squash seem to still be charging along. I expect many more from them.
So we piled some of the toms, apples, courgettes and such into the big bucket to take home.

We've left some of the toms still in place in the hope that they may mature during the week. But I think it's doubtful.

As I work from home two days a week, I can nip to the plot in the evenings. So last Thursday when we went we had a visitor. A reasonably friendly chap who we call "Ben". Short for Bent Tail, because he seems to have a damaged tail.

He thanked us for the remnants of the courgette cake by leaving a deposit. All adds to the compost I suppose. Though it goes for the new compost bin which won't be used until 2019.

The 2017 Courgette Tally:

117

So this evening I made 8.5 jars of Blackberry and Apple Jam.
2kg Blackberries
5 large sweet apples.
2kg sugar.
The Blackberries were frozen, so it was simply a case of throwing them in a large pot on a high heat. As the thawed and the juice started flowing, throw in the sugar. I used 1kg normal and 1kg of Jam sugar. Grated up the apples and let it simmer for a while., When the froth had dissipated and the temperature was 104C, then it was decanted into washed clean jars that had spent the time sitting in the oven at 100C. Sorted.

Tomorrow I'll do chutney.

Honey and Jams and stuff

Just a quick visit to the plot today, chiefly because I arranged to pick up some honey.

I also grabbed a few ripe tomatoes, dared to try a sweetcorn cob, and of course courgettes (they just keep on coming). I was also given an aubergine and pepper and some Sloe Jam.

This is the great thing about an allotment community. If you have too much of a glut of things then give them away to friends and neighbours. You'll get gifts in return. Barter was the original form of trade.

Meanwhile at home, I have a couple of kilos of blackberries in the freezer. Really have to get some apples from the tree and start making some jam. And I also have a can of make-your-own marmalade which I really ought to do as well. I foresee and extended stint at the cooker in the not too distant future.

The 2017 Courgette Tally:

107

Produce show

Now I'm never one for the prettiest veg, heaviest this, longest that. Veg grows in all-sorts of shapes and sizes. It's this so called supermarket mentality which gets a lot of veg thrown out because it doesn't look right and people won't buy it. That to me is plain stupid.

The end result of veg is to eat it. So I prefer categories that allow you to show that. So I only entered two categories. Bread and Cakes. And to go with the alliteration, Courgette Cake and Beetroot Bread.

The Courgette Cake I've done before. Unfortunately though, it didn't come up to the standard of those who entered various cup cakes and layer cakes.

The Beetroot Bread though was nice and pink. Although oddly the insides, once cut, was just a normal colour. Just a nice pink crust.

Anyway, it tasted of a faint beetroot flavour and it came second... out of two entries.

Not much actually doing on the plot today though. Mostly it was spent sheltering in the greenhouse from the torrential thunder storm that rolled through.

But at least we hit over 100 courgettes during the week. I suspect there will be more tomorrow though.

The 2017 Courgette Tally:

101

Complicated Compost

I still have the compost pile to sort out from last week. So out with the sieve and fork and a time to dig through the year's worth of stuff.

However down at the bottom there were some nasty surprises. The first nastiness was an egg. Well there were plenty of eggshells (that I really should have smashed up better before adding to the compost). No, I mean a real egg. One which had been buried for a year. As you can imagine when the fork went through it there was a loud pop... and a stink that made me stand upwind for the rest of the digging.

Secondly I have a little complaint about "compost bags". I used Sainsbury's Compost Bags for my compost caddie, and then, when full, they were dumped into the compost bin. They've been in there for over a year, so you'd expect them to have decomposed. No. They haven't.

The packet says that they're made of potato starch. Well OK, I've got a couple of potatoes that are still relatively whole in the compost, but these bags are somewhat disappointing. Do you use compost bags at all? How do you find them?

Meanwhile the Wife is ripping out some of the weeds (and flower stems) from one arm of her raised flower bed.

So it can get a nice load of freshly sieved compost.

And I bought 20m of weed membrane to cover the extension to the plot. I'll build the beds to go in here over the winter time so they'll be ready to use next spring.

Meanwhile... courgettes. Ugh, don't they ever stop?

The 2017 Courgette Tally:

88

Sunny Bank Holiday

It seems that Sunny Days like busses. You wait ages for one and then three come along at once. It even brought out the rampant sex at the allotment.

So this Bank Holiday saw me down the plot wilting in the heat as I try to get the un-managed parts of the plot into action. Hiding behind the sunflowers and sweetcorn is a section of weed membrane being held down by spare pallet wood, potato bags and strawberry towers.

Time to pull it up and make space for a couple of new beds. Well needless to say that I ended up too damn exhausted in the heat to be able to do much. I built another of my stackable beds, dug out the now baked clay and installed the compost bin into the bed, ready for it to spend next year being the host to all of the composting.

Once in place the new bed will be surrounded with wood chips and gradually filled with decent soil to replace the clay.

Meanwhile the weed membrane has now shifted to the side where I will have to build a path alongside my plot. There never has been a path between plots 30 and 31. Same as there never has been paths between 28 and 29. But the Committee has said that I have to build one and in return they will allow me to use the small off-cut of that once was plot 31 which is now available due to the newly build woodchip and manure bays. I'm not going to complain about that since I effectively go from 5 rods to 6 rods.

The old compost bin was opened up and a start made on shifting some of the lesser composted material over. It's turned into some really good stuff, despite my usual method of completely ignoring it.

Many people go on about how you should turn and aerate compost to get the best out of it. Fine. That works if you really want to turn over your compost fast or make huge amounts of it. I find that simply having two compost bins on the plot works just as well and you can simply leave it to get on with it and do it's thing. The worms and wood lice love it in there. The only problem is that it takes an age to sift out the uncomposting material. Something which is hard to do in this heat so I kind of gave up and decided that I'd be better off at home in the cool which a nice chilled cider in hand.

But I do have to take "George" home with me to be kept on top of the kitchen cupboards ready for being turned into seeds next year.

The 2017 Courgette Tally:

82