OUR ALLOTMENT - Life on the Weald October 2018

OUR ALLOTMENT - Life on the Weald October 2018

October has been a rather short month on the allotment!.  We returned from the US and Canada on 16 October and didn't see the allotment until the 18th.

We had seen the preparations for Halloween in Seattle

Strange fruit - Madison Park, Seattle

no shortage of pumpkins in North America!

and I wondered how my pumpkin was faring.

I was worrying unnecessarily as it finally weighed in at over 10kg

On arrival at The Weald, my priority was to harvest what I could of the beans, cucumbers, courgettes (now giant marrows) and peas.  Some of the beans were far too gone and stringy but we are drying some and saving the seeds for planting next year.

 The peas were excellent and it was obviously a good decision to do a late sowing and we continued to harvest succulent peas until the end of the month.

Some of the courgettes had grown to 2 ft in length - 

- some we have had stuffed and baked, others cubed and baked/roasted with peppers and tomatoes, some have been used for soups and some for jam (marrow and ginger jam is one of our favourites)

The leeks, the kale, cavolo nero and purple sprouting broccoli were all looking good (but rather a lot of whitefly) and we have had several good pickings from the purple kale and cavolo nero.

Leeks 19 October

Purple kale 19 October

Kale, leeks and Purple sprouting broccoli 19 October

Cavolo nero 19 October

Broccoli 19 October

And we also have some Brussels sprouts which hopefully will have matured for Christmas but they look a bit far behind at the moment.  Next month I must get some fleece or netting to protect the broccoli from the marauding pigeons!

At last Halloween has arrived but my pumpkin is too good to waste so I have used only half for a face and scooped off as much flesh as possible, saving the seeds for roasting and the flesh for soups, curries, roasting, and freezing for later use.

My pumpkin

See you next month!

John Austin

Hove, October 2018