Goodbye Summer...

With temperatures set to drop close to freezing later this week, and squash plants turning brown and straggly on the plot, we've had to bring in the last of our summer crops.

I am very disappointed with our pumpkin/squash harvest, which totals a measly 5.5kg. Most years we bring home whole pumpkins weighing that much! Here it is: two Baby Bear pumpkins, one stunted and underripe Atlantic 'Giant' (ha!), one miniature Sweet Dumpling, two smaller-than-usual Thelma Sanders and one very tiny and very unripe Butternut. Sigh.

I'm most disappointed with the Thelma Sanders - in all previous years they've reliably produced several big fruits per plant - this year just one small one each. What went wrong? Slugs were certainly a major problem this year, destroying two whole Crown Prince plants and eating the other Atlantic Giant pumpkin, which was looking really good early in the season. Perhaps they thrived in the cool and damp summer. Perhaps I should just be spending more money on pest control... I planted the seedlings out a bit late too, which meant they were a little pot-bound and took longer than usual to settle in. And the weed jungle which came up while we were on holiday couldn't have been timed much worse and gave the young plants a lot of competition. Hmmm. Must do better next year...

These will sit in the sun by our back door for a while now to finish ripening (hopefully) and for the skins to cure for storage (not that it'll take long to eat this little lot).

Still, it's not all bad news - we have dug up another 13kg potatoes, bringing our total to something around 30-35kg, and we even found a late handful of strawberries and raspberries!

In the garden, the tomatoes are still going - they've given us fruit since the beginning of July, sixteen weeks ago! Despite blight finally hitting the plants about a month ago, very few fruits have been affected and they're actually still producing! The plants look a total mess though... Today I will pick the rest of the ripe fruit, but I think I'll leave the green ones where they are just to see if they can continue to surprise me...

The courgettes and cucumbers have just about finished now, so I've picked the last fruits to keep in the fridge until I'm ready to use them, so that just leaves the peppers, and there are so many! I'm wondering whether to just haul the plants indoors on cold nights, rather than picking them all at once and trying to eat them all really fast! I think I'll overwinter a couple of plants anyway, but they're not small so it'll be interesting...

October Strawberries!

It seems that hot spell last month really confused a lot of our plants - a lot of plants in the garden are flowering for a second time and I know I'm not the only one whose strawberries have started producing a second crop! Crazy!

It was my pleasure to write a guest post for Tom, the 'Hapless Gardener' for his blog 'Growing Up' on Friday - please go read it here if you haven't already!

Peppers - At Last!

October, and my peppers are finally reaching a decent size. Well, some of them. All right, I've eaten a few small ones earlier in the summer, but they were pretty few-and-far-between. Now, at last, I'm counting up to twenty peppers on my 'Doux Tres Long Des Landes' plants, the 'Aji' and 'Kaibi' are a semi-respectable size, and one of my 'King of the North' has even ripened to red - a first! It's the only one, mind, and it's snail damaged and going soft. Doh.

All these pepper plants were sown in late Feb - they really are very slow and steady growers! I might start them even earlier next year...

The King of the North were by far the earliest - I think we ate our first back in July - but we don't tend to get many per plant, and they're extremely irregular in shape and size..

The 'Dedo de Mocha' sweet Aji peppers - smoky flavoured but heat-free, and apparently rather rare - are DELICIOUS and I shall certainly be making sure to grow them again. Might even have to try saving some seeds next year to ensure I can continue to have them. I'm not sure if they're supposed to turn red... but they taste great anyway so I don't care.

The 'Kaibi no 2' sweet red peppers are... still green. And quite small. And there are only two or three per plant. But I'm looking forward to tasting them one of these days...

The 'Doux Tres Long Des Landes' (what a mouthful!) long peppers have been very productive, with around twenty fruits per plant, up to six inches long. We've enjoyed a couple already in salads and a chilli during August and September, but like the others, they're only really coming into their own now. They're supposed to be eaten red or green - but I don't think I'm going to be seeing any red ones this year.

Our chillis have been rather less successful - they only flowered in late August and it looks like this might be the sum total of our harvest!

Doh! I'm considering trying to overwinter this plant indoors to see if it'll give me an early start on some chillis next year.

Until then, I'd better find some recipes to use this little pepper glut well before the frosts get 'em!

Aji, left, and Doux Tres Long des Landes, right. Highly recommended!

What a Whopper!

I'm making slow progress on my 'things to do' list from last week, but we did manage to dig up some more potatoes the other day, albeit in sweltering heat. Check out the size of some of them!

This beast weights 750g! And it's not alone - there are loads of big ones, which makes me so happy after last year's pathetic harvest of golfball-sized spuds.

We brought home 13kg the other day, we've had 4-5kg already and there's at least the same again still to dig - and I suspect we've missed a few deep ones too so we'll give the whole lot another once-over before the weather gets too cold.

And in the meantime... lots of jacket spuds for us!

Wild Food Night - September

Last Wednesday was September's Wild Food Night, and I struggled out despite still not really being well, and with my tastebuds certainly not on top form! I even indulged in my first glass of wine for weeks... though I regretted it by bedtime, when I'd developed a splitting headache. Doh.

I can't help but feeling there's a bit of a lack of variety in the foods offered at the moment, and there's still a real lack of wild greens which is a shame. Perhaps it's just not a good year for greens - I know mine have struggled. Or perhaps I'm just feeling the inertia between seasons - that time when summer's kind of over but autumn hasn't really begun yet.

Our canapes were all crayfish; crayfish caviar on a blini, a whole crayfish (bit messy and fiddly for a canape if you ask me!), and crayfish tempura with chilli jam - delicious!

The starter was a real treat - two filo parcels filled with shredded rabbit - one with fennel and other warming spices, and one with tomato, garlic and herbs. I do love rabbit, and these were fab.

The main course was a curry; a pathia, with tomato, fennel and coriander, and very slow-cooked venison that really melted in the mouth. Delicious, and just the thing for a cold! I'm not convinced that naan was homemade though...!

Dessert was an elderberry panna cotta, with hazelnut biscuits. I didn't really think much of the panna cotta - just personal taste I think. Despite the lurid purple colour, the flavour seemed a bit lost, to me. (My elderberry ice cream was way better!) The biscuits were lovely though!

I'm really looking forward to seeing what autumn and winter bring...