Autumn's Bounty

We have nearly 30 kg of Bramley apples to deal with :-S

And the freezer is full :-S

We have given a few to our neighbours on both sides. I have managed to squeeze a few into the freezer.  I have put some in one of the potato drawers in the cellar (strictly speaking, they are apple drawers. The Under Gardener made them for me when I saw a chest of apple drawers in a catalogue - so this year they are filling their real purpose).

I am going to have a bash at preserving the rest as apple sauce. I am given to understand that if you put hot apple sauce into oven-hot glass jars and put the lids on immediately it produces a seal which preserves the apple sauce.  I'll give it a whirl and let you know how we get on.

We also, on Saturday, pruned the cherry trees, the plum tree and the peach tree. The ducks and chooks were a bit puzzled by this but enjoyed playing around the branches and twigs once we had stopped lopping.

We were a bit surprised when we went down into the garden on Sunday afternoon, to find Curry and Udon pottering about amongst the currant bushes.  It appears that the bottom gate into the orchard had blown open and they had taken the opportunity to come out for a bit of an explore.  We have secured the bottom gate but decided that we might as well let everyone out while we were there to supervise.  There isn't much left now for them to get in and destroy in the vegetable beds.  We had hoped to encourage the ducks to come up and discover the fish pond.  But no. They were more interested in ruining the afternoon for a quite surprising number of slugs and snails that they managed to find.  I think we might let them out again when there is someone around to watch them.

We have now emptied the greenhouse on the allotment that had the pumpkins and cucumbers in it. We brought home two 2kg butter pumpkins and a cucumber that was hiding at the bottom of the plant and which we didn't realise was there. There are two capsicum plants in there but they haven't fruited.  Oddly enough, the ones that we plonked outside in a garden bed on the allotment are absolutely covered in peppers. It's a bit strange. I would have expected it to be the other way around!