An Indian Summer at Last!

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It’s definitely bringing warmer days and cooler nights. And now we’re at the Autumnal Equinox things are just going to get cooler.

Well following on from a nice visit to Exeter (complete with cream tea and meeting lots of interesting people) and a weekend away in Lincolnshire, then I am finally back to earth. Luckily at this time of year it’s more a gentle nudge than a bump. Next week I start my travels again.

There is good and bad news for the courgettes. When I was looking at them at the weekend I saw that they have got powdery mildew quite badly and this means that they will have to be dug up soon, so that means no more courgettes. It’s up to you which way round you want to take this (mrs MK thinks no more courgettes is good news). To me it’s just another indicator that Summer is over.

The butternut squash are coming along a treat, and are even still flowering, but there is no way that anything that sets now will actually ripen. Still, I am optimistic about the ones I do have. Some are fairly small, and one is massive. I realise thatscale is subjective on the photos below, but the butternut squash on it’s own is about 10 to 12 inches long, the two together are more like 5 and 7 inches.

I think we’re doing well for the sunshine but we do need a little bit of water up here. Everything that’s left is growing nicely and the world seems to be good. The allotment is not a riot of activity as most of the veg has already been and gone, but it’s still producing enough to feed us every night. There’s still carrots and cabbages, leeks, swedes and parsnips with me looking forward to turnips as well. The sweetcorn is coming to an end, with about a dozen or so ears left, they have really slowed down production but they are still coming along.

I do have to water the strawberries to make sure that the runners take nicely.

The cooler nights are chilling the greenhouse a bit, and some of the chilli plants are giving up the ghost, some of the others are thriving though. Oddly enough the glass greenhouse on the allotment is faring a lot better than the plastic greenhouse at home (despite the glass being ill fitting, and with nice gaps). I did manage to take a good load of chillies from the plants that were suffering a lot. There are still loads on the plants left, some of which are only an inch long and look like they should have a radioactive symbol on the side of them. Never the less, the chillies below will find themselves into jams and chutneys in the next week …

I may even make a meat free chilli (I used to be vegetarian years ago and even now prefer my chilli to just have lots of veg and some quorn).

The raspberries are still cropping prolifically and there is the occasional strawberry. I will have to pick some more apples soon and store them for the winter as my two apple trees do look good …

This weekend I need to go and get some fleece so that I can mollycoddle the late potatoes and keep the frost off them when it comes. I think I’ll save a bit of time and pull up my tomatoes as well, we can use any that are still green to make chutney and it will make life a little easier. Add to that the picking of apples and some weeding and I’ll have a few hours on the allotment.

Here’s to the season on mists and mellow fruitfulness…

• 24 Sep, 2009
• 6 likes

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