Autumn harvest

All the pumpkins, marrows & butternut squash have now been picked also lots of chillies although my chilli plants are still producing. We had an early heavy frost this year on the 19th of October, which killed off my potatoes but luckily that was all.

The first parsnips that I've ever managed to grow, hopefully we'll be picking these up to Christmas.

I've picked some of the red cabbages & pickled them.

Marrow & date chutney, chilli jam.

This year I decided that it was a waste to just carve a pumpkin for Halloween especially when it was home grown. All this from one small pumpkin - spiced tea bread, pumpkin bread & pumpkin soup all delicious and made many times since. You can find the recipes here.

August randomness.

We've been so busy planting, harvesting, watering, weeding & preserving that my blog has been neglected so here's a quick catch up in pictures.

caterpillar control, I never realised that shield bugs like to munch caterpillars.

My 2 hens are in moult but they are such good girls that I'm still averaging 9/10 eggs a week.

The allotment has also kept me in flowers through the summer.

Piccallilli

Runner bean, mango,coconut & Indian spice

Sweet & sour cucumber pickle, Rhubarb & curry chutney, Rhubarb & ginger jam.

Greengage jam, not grown by me but a bargain find.

Blackberry jam.

Bread & butter sandwich pickle

July/August catch up

All the flowers are growing adding splashes of colour & enticing lots of bees.

Lots of grasshoppers & slo worms too.

We have 5 Aubergine plants that are flowering but have yet to see any Aubergines.

At the garden centre they had free bags of onion sets that were past their best, so I picked up a few threw out the bad ones & so far have some healthy looking plants. They are red, white and snowball.

Lots of Butternut squashes forming & getting bigger by the day.

Pumpkins, Italian tomatoes and red cabbage with brocolli behind.

We've started picking the runner beans but need sunshine to bring them on a bit.

Lots & lots of chillies, hoping they'll go red soon.

We've had 17 cucumbers so far & plenty still growing. I've just made some cucumber sandwich pickle with a couple of them, have to wait 3/4 weeks to see how it turns out.

My first red tomato picked last week.

We've harvested all of the potatoes & shallots now.

I'm getting lots of carrots too, I didn't thin them out until they were big enough to eat so none have been wasted.

I'm astounded this year by the amount of courgettes we've had 61 now. Because I've tried lots of different recipes with them we haven't got bored with them in fact I'll miss them in the winter. I'm doing a blog post on my other blog of courgette recipes.