Recently having spent 23 days away from the UK and the
few days before getting things ready, and after the holiday, putting things
back in order - well the garden, at the
height of the growing season has been neglected.
When we arrived back home, the lawn was covered with
windfall apples, many of them rotting.
They
had to be raked up and sorted. I’ve
started to freeze some of the Bramley cooking apples.
Between the fallen apples were lots of bright yellow
flowers of the lawn weed variety – if you cut the grass regularly they do not
show up – they had to be picked before they produced their seeds for next year’s
display.
The early peas, which were starting to produce a
crop before we went away, had produced their crop, ensuring next year’s plants and
had died down. The pods were almost
completely dried out. But an internet
search gave the solution – pick the pods, let them dry out thoroughly, then
shell, storing the dried peas to use in winter soups.
Some creature had decided it was fun to dig in the
soil that was banked around the potatoes.
Soil was scattered over the slabs around that part of the veg patch and
there looked to be too much for it to be a blackbird. Perhaps we have hedgehogs returned, but they
wouldn’t be attracted by potatoes, so there must have been something in the
soil for them to eat. The potato plants
at the edge had died down so they needed digging up. I have ended up with a bag of three different varieties of potato from these
plants – but this year I didn’t buy any seed potatoes, I used up the potatoes
left over from last year’s crop and as they were quite small and had chitted they
were ideal. This mix of varieties has
seemed to be happy to grow together – I’m hoping the rest of the crop will do
as well.
The tall peas had grown to a height of about five
feet, last year they grew to about eight feet, but I was at home to water them.
Still - no shortage of pods looking as
though they were full of very large peas.
B. picked them for me and we have been eating them. In spite of their large size, they were very
sweet and full of flavour. Perhaps
Magnum Bonum peas are meant to be left to grow fat.
The runner bean plants had set lots of beans, but
they will need another few weeks before they reach the size they need to be for
picking. Fingers crossed for lots of sunshine and showers. My neighbour, who gave me the bean seeds
earlier this year, presented me with some runner beans to keep us going until
our own crop gets to edible size. They
have been eaten up already and they were delicious.
And finally, the courgettes – or rather
courgette (note the ruler for scale). The plant has produced one
giant, and this has taken all the goodness away from any other courgettes that
were competing for food. It has been
picked, cooked and eaten. Treated like a
marrow and stuffed with minced lamb/Quorn (for the vegetarian option) it has
been the main part of dinner for two days.
I’m hoping to get some more courgettes on the plant so that we can try out
B’s courgette muffin recipe.
