Because, despite all that pests (like the cursed blackfly who ransacked our second broad bean crop), and disease (like the dreaded blight that's done for many of our tomatoes), and the weather (that's stopped things from ripening quickly enough) have thrown at us, it's the time of year when you can just step out into the garden and pick things to have with lunch or dinner.
Possibly my favourite success story this year has been the cucumbers. Not only have we got some of the bigger varieties, but the smaller ones have come up trumps too. These ones will be for salads and sandwiches:
And there are still loads of tiny ones on the plants. We're really hoping to get a big number of these ready at once so we can have a go at pickling them. In the meantime, we'll enjoy the fresh ones as they ripen.
Runner beans are something I really remember from childhood, twining their way round towering cane structures. Then cooked lightly and enjoyed throughout the later bits of summer until they went a bit too stringy to eat. They're really coming into their own now and I picked a load today to go into dinner:
And some to spare too.
Then there's the fruit. The old faithful blackberry bush is producing loads of fruit and we picked enough over the last couple of days for Ali to make some soft blackberry conserve to have for breakfast, stirred into some yoghurt. The plum tree is covered in fruit and this evening was the time for the first batch of plum jam. First of a few, I reckon.
The most modest crop of fruit we've had has been from the alpine strawberry plants - mostly these have been ripening in ones or twos for a little treat while gardening. But this afternoon I found quite a few:
So tomorrow we'll have them with our yoghurt, and save the new blackberry conserve for another day.
They're busy little blighters, aren't they. We're slightly concerned that they're stripping the bases of our sunflowers to make themselves a nest - hopefully it's far enough away not to be a problem. But it's fascinating to watch them work:
I'm not quite sure why today has produced so many blog posts, it's probably due to being able actually to do a few things after a bout of illness. And it's been a dry day too, apart from one very brief rogue shower, so we've been able to do enough to feel that we're back on top of things in the garden.
And inside too. I'm inordinately proud of my first attempt at making a pain de campagne (my secret's below). Ali at Craft Matters has been turning out brilliant loaves for ages now, but I've finally had a go myself. And it's turned out really well. Here it is fresh out of the oven:
And here it is at dinner time, when we had some to go with a lovely salad of sorrel, grilled courgettes, green beans, eggs and cheese:
It's been really satisfying - all down to following the painstaking step by step instructions of a book that (without being completely over the top) has rather changed our lives, Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley. Thoroughly and unreservedly recommended.
A few pictures from August.
The sunflowers are looking quite spectacular, towering over our runner beans (on the right) and the greenhouse:
The plum tree is bowed down with fruit. It'll soon be time to get plenty of plum jam and plum chutney on the go:
We have another big, curly cucumber! The first one tasted really nice and was also a pleasingly eccentric shape. Here's the new one:
And we have plenty of cute, tiny cucumbers growing too. The hope is that we can get enough together at one time to have a go at pickling them:
There haven't been many birds in the garden in the last few weeks (hopefully they've found plenty of food elsewhere and will return later in the year). But it's been buzzing with insects. More cabbage whites than I can ever remember seeing (which makes us fear for our winter cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli), but also this spectacular peacock:
And for the last week or two a buzzing crowd of honey bees, solitary bees and drone flies, who seem to like the flowering mint plants particularly well, including this one, which I think is a drone fly:
Finally, not really a picture from the garden, or produce related to the garden (other than a place you might drink it), here's a snap of the latest beer. I haven't brewed for a while (next brew day is Friday this week, I think), but I've still got plenty left thankfully. This one is from a Graham Wheeler recipe for Boddington's Bitter and it's a light, feisty, hoppy thing, with a really nice Harvey's-style tang to it:
We managed to get a good bowlful of ripe tomatoes from the greenhouse the other day. A really good way of preserving a large quantity like this for the winter is to half the fruits and roast, with olive oil, in a hot oven until there's a hint of blackening on the edges of a few. Whizz them up in the food processor (or keep them as they are) and stick them in the freezer. Makes a good thickener, or the base for a sauce for pasta. You can roast them with other flavourings too - like garlic cloves, rosemary, anything that you like really.
The anti-blight measures (along with a slight turn in the weather) seem to have proved effective. There are still some green tomatoes which will hopefully ripen -
- and which seem to have escaped the dread blight. And we've had a lot more of a crop than we were fearing a month or so back:
Whether it's been the dithane, or assiduously removing foliage with signs of blight, or the combination of the two, we're feeling a little more cheery than we were. Our second bag of spuds produced a nice crop too - thankfully unaffected after we'd cut the foliage back to just above the soil. There's nothing like home grown potatoes.
This is yet another blight post. There's something about blight - it might be that awful, apocalyptic name - that gets under your skin, and has you telling everyone about how it's getting to your garden produce. Maybe it's watching the fruit, that you've seen grow on your plants, wither and drop off that really gets to you. But anyway, hopefully this post is about more than doom and gloom.
Because we managed to get a nice big load of ripe tomatoes from our blighted greenhouse plants, as you can see from this pic:
We've not quite decided what we'll do with them yet. We had some with lunch, along with a delicious home made sourdough loaf and some fabulous Pecorino Dolce from the Chester cheese shop courtesy of Northern Harvest. And they were very good indeed. The rest I think should be turned into a tomato sauce for the freezer. Either some simple arrabiata sauce, or roasted in the oven with garlic, olive oil & rosemary and then blended and frozen. Decisions, decisions.
We've also decided to have a go at saving some of the very green fruit. Today I cut back all the most obviously blighted stems and foliage on the plants with the green plum tomatoes:
It's probably going to end up as more playing for time than anything else, but hopefully given the lovely sunny forecast for the weekend and the effects of the dithane spraying, we should get some ripe tomatoes before the blight spreads. The forecast isn't great for the cricket, obviously, but it should hopefully do the garden some good.
So our outside tomatoes in their grow bags are infected and past hope. This morning we've stripped the best of the green tomatoes for green tomato chutney and bagged up the foliage to go straight into the bin. After a quick check about what to do with the grow bag compost, I noticed some advice here to use it for top dressing beds, away from where we'll have tomatoes and potatoes next year. So that's what we'll do with it.Sunny today! So hopefully that should do some good to the tomatoes we've got left.
We're feeling a bit glum at the moment, as a couple of our outdoors tomato plants have succumbed to blight. This rather unappealing picture shows what it looks like as this fungus attacks the tomatoes while they're still green:
The main culprits for this endemic problem are climate change and the rotten July weather we've had this year. Progressively milder winters just don't have the oomph to kill the fungus and day after day of rain and warmth make just about an ideal breeding ground. So it's time to take the chemical route and apply the Dithane. If it ever stops raining.
You have to wait for a Smith period to use it on the plant leaves, as recommended here. And so once again we're praying for a warmer, drier period. If blight gets into the plant then, for tomatoes, it'll be time to strip the green fruit and make chutney or, for potatoes, it's advised to cut the foliage down to an inch above the soil and then harvest the crop soon after.
On a brighter note, we did harvest our first bag of potatoes and we got a pretty good crop from them:
They are great par-boiled for 5-7 mins and then roasted in a hot oven (220c) for 20-30 mins in extra virgin rapeseed oil. You can chuck in some whole garlic cloves or a sprig or two of fresh rosemary too if you feel like it.
It's easy to get disheartened when things don't go well in the garden - but the best thing to do is to keep going. We've picked up a packet of quick growing turnip seeds that should come in in the autumn. We also planted out our purple sprouting broccoli seedlings the other day, a crop that should be ready next spring:
We've given them a bit of protection from above as we tend to have fat woodpigeons clomping around the garden, sitting on things and pecking them. In fact it's been mostly big birds (the pigeons, scruffy magpies) and squirrels in the garden over the last month, adding to the general dreariness. Happily over the last couple of days we've seen some of the smaller birds come back. Dunnocks, blue tits, coal tits and goldfinches have been busying themselves about the place.
Finally, some more nice successes to round off this particular post. We've got an amazing cucumber growing on one of our plants:
And the marrows and courgettes are continuing to flourish. We've had to cut back the squash plant quite radically before it took over the entire garden - there are lots of fruits coming on it too:
The Met Office now seems to be forecasting a change in the weather some time over the next week or two. I do hope it's going to be sooner rather than later. This dull persistent rain is no good for our states of mind or for the garden!
