October Week Two Sunday 7th 2007
This week, with the distinctly wintery chill in the air we ventured down the allotment to do a bit of housekeeping and tidying up. We arrived to discover that despite the less pleasent weather the unsupressible weeds were well and truly making thier presence felt on the majority of the plot. So, the first order of the day was to get them well under control. Following a thorough scalping by several members of the family as well as clearing a few beds of now unuseable crops, it quickly began to look orderly again and we could turn our attentions to more pleasant tasks.
"Weedless"
In particular the fruit area needed a bit of attention, many of the raspberry canes had grown through the netting placed over them to protect our crops earlier in the year and so now needed to be freed. The rhubarb patch was looking decidedly sorry for itself and ready to have any remaining leaves or rotting matter around them removed, ready for its winter dressing of some combined well rotted horse muck and our very own compost to protect and feed it through the colder months
Although the plot is looking a little sad and empty at the moment there is still a lot of colour being produced by may of our plants, both ornamental and eddible. Our laveteria are continuing to brighten up the place and even our little bluberry bush is getting in on the act producing a fine display of brightly coloured red leaves (we just hope this is normal!!!!).
"Autumn Shades"
There was however, quite a significant harvest to be had, our celery (pewny in stalk though it might be) was picked and will be used this week for a warming celery soup to ward off the dark cold nights ahead. The ever producing courgette had some fruits for us, along with salads, sweetcorn and some baby fennel.
"October's yeild"
By far our biggest task and greatest joy from this trip however, was the pumpkin harvest, it was decided that we should take pretty much everything from the patch that was ready in case of any early frosts, ultimately this resulted in 58lbs of pumpkins and squashes making thier way home with us.
Hey Good Lookin'"
The biggest (a large crown prince like squash of our own seed) dissapointingly failed to break the record we set ourselves last year falling 3lb's short of our previous achievement. Sadly we also have not managed to produce the monster specimine we had hoped for to decorate our annual bonfire ngiht celebrations and our so called "atlantic giant" can only be described as a pewny "northamptonian football".
"Cutting the Chords"
However, here on lottieblogs we are not down-hearted as really our crop has lived up to our expectations and considering some of the stories we have heard of other peoples problems with cucuirbits this year we truly do consider oursleves lucky. They will need to be cured under glass or on a windowsill for the next few weeks in order to keep them for as long as possible over the winter. Our wonderfully coloured and varied pumpkins will feed us for many months to come.
"Five of our finest"