We managed a couple of visits to the allotment last week. Most of the week was wet and miserable so we were more or less confined to indoors.
We escaped to attend a couple of appointments, film a steam engine and visit a couple of garden centres - although to call them garden centres at the moment is a misnomer as they have transformed themselves into festive emporiums. All things gardening have either been removed or squeezed into the background. Martyn needed some new wellies but didn't fancy what amounted to fashion statements although I thought he would look quite fetching in the pink spotty pair. We didn't waste our time completely as we had lunch at one that has a particularly good restaurant. No more garden centre visits for us now until January.
The Plot is rather soggy at the moment which was why Martyn needed new wellies. His old pair were fine weather wellies which in current conditions meant wet socks.
This bloom of toadstools or are they mushrooms, is thriving in the damp? (When does a mushroom become a toadstool?) They are growing on the wood chippings that are mulching the bed of hardy annuals. The annuals are growing really well but will they survive winter?
Mark over at Mark's Veg Plot is a fungi guru - he seems like a fun guy too, sorry I know it's hardly original but I couldn't resist - and he tells me that these are possibly Tubaria furfuracea - Scurfy Twiglet. It's not a very attractive name is it? Apparently they are inedible but not actually poisonous which must be a trait shared by the half eaten apple that is also in the photo. I don't know where it came from but I guess that it wasn't very nice and someone passing by just tossed it away. I'm sure some creature will find it and enjoy it.
Mark will be able to name this other fungus too as I'm sure it will be a really common variety. This one is growing on a larger piece of dead wood.
The Plot is rather soggy at the moment which was why Martyn needed new wellies. His old pair were fine weather wellies which in current conditions meant wet socks.
This bloom of toadstools or are they mushrooms, is thriving in the damp? (When does a mushroom become a toadstool?) They are growing on the wood chippings that are mulching the bed of hardy annuals. The annuals are growing really well but will they survive winter?
Mark over at Mark's Veg Plot is a fungi guru - he seems like a fun guy too, sorry I know it's hardly original but I couldn't resist - and he tells me that these are possibly Tubaria furfuracea - Scurfy Twiglet. It's not a very attractive name is it? Apparently they are inedible but not actually poisonous which must be a trait shared by the half eaten apple that is also in the photo. I don't know where it came from but I guess that it wasn't very nice and someone passing by just tossed it away. I'm sure some creature will find it and enjoy it.
Mark will be able to name this other fungus too as I'm sure it will be a really common variety. This one is growing on a larger piece of dead wood.
Our first allotment visit, on Tuesday, was mainly to replenish our vegetable store back at home.
We also wanted to try out some new sound recording equipment and so decided to film a December Tour of the allotment which I have posted below - just in case you are interested.
We didn't get to the allotment again until Sunday when as well as a bit more harvesting we managed to carry out a couple of jobs.
The posts supporting the wires that the raspberry canes are tied into were in desperate need of replacement so Martyn spent his time erecting and rewiring new posts.
Before
After
I'm not sure how well the raspberries will perform next year as they don't seem to have put on as much new growth as normal so it may be that we will need to replace the canes.
Whilst, Martyn was busy on this job, I tackled the two kiwis that had - to be honest - become a tangled mess and also totally hid two gooseberries plants. As we are more likely to have fruit from the gooseberries than the kiwis this needed remedying.
Before
After
I didn't complete this task but cut out three barrow loads of kiwi vine. The fence that the kiwi was growing along was really only being held up by the tangle of vines so it will also need some renovation as will the two gooseberries.
Before we came home we gathered some more vegetables. There is a theme to our harvests at the moment - leeks, parsnips and carrots.
The parsnips were not up to last week's daddy parsnip standard, I think that is going to be a one off, but there was still plenty of flesh on the roots. One parsnip went into Sunday's Turkey and Parsnip Curry.
We are now digging Autumn King carrots which are huge. They are so big that they make the parsnips look smaller than they actually were.
A recipe I was cooking last week called for two large carrots but I think the author's idea of a large carrot was very different to ours. I do wish recipes wouldn't use terms like small, large and medium when we have a perfectly good method of measuring by weight. The same recipe called for a thumb-sized piece of ginger but was that my small thumb or Martyn's large one?
Our leeks on the other hand are still rather small. Some will be used to make a batch of Wensleydale Patties for the freezer. These use a similar recipe to Glamorgan Sausages but use Wensleydale cheese and are patty shaped rather than sausage shaped. I'm sure Wallace and Gromit would like them!
Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.
This week I am linking to Harvest Monday hosted on
Dave's blog Our Happy Acres
