wombling free

First up a picture of our glorious beans all nicely dried for the winter. We had a rather pleasant afternoon up at the allotment when it was too hot to do anything but sit and shuck them all out of their pods and here they are. We've picked out the best 50 and put to one side for next years planting.

In the interest of self sufficiency we went on the scavenge at the weekend and filled up a big box full of brambles which have made assorted pastries and crumbles but the best find of the day was a wild plum tree growing in the hedgerow, not many of them but very good.

we've also been given some rather deadly chillies by Jeanette which went in very small quantity into tonights meal. Think we'll have a go with the seeds from them next year too.

Catching Up...

Its been quite some time since our last post and lots has happened in the garden. We've had an incredibly hot rainless few weeks which has been great for some things like the tomatoes but not so good for some of the others - our peas are wizned little brown ball bearings only good for pea shooting pigeons with.

We have had an abundance of cabbage which was great until something started munching it, now Large is waging war on them with each one he brings up there is a mad flurry of hacking and cabbage leaves flying everywhere. On the theme of cabbage we' ve been waging war on the cabbage butterflies and the sight of Large rampaging around the garden in hot pursuit taking mad swipes at them with a cane - to a rather depressing degree of success. A cabbage recipe we like;

Fry up some onion and a clove of garlic with plenty of olive oil and add some ham or bacon, when they are nicely cooked and the oil is well flavoured put in the cabbage chopped up into cubes and fry until it had softened. Plenty of salt and black pepper on top.

We went away for a couple of weeks holiday recently and on our return found the coldframes had become a jungle and there was a courgette the size of a babies arm (according to Large) bulging at one end of the plot.

Had a jam making session with all our berries and felt very pleased with ourselves for the 10 or so jars ... until we met Willie who informed us he'd made 200. Smartarse ( in the best possible way!).

We've lifted all our early tatties and the broad beans are drying in the shed for what the gardening guru John Seymour describes as food that will give "strength to face the winter"

The photo is from at the start of the growing season, around May when everything was just put in. Hopefully some more pictures soon to bring everything up to date.