Bank Holiday Weekend

It's meant to be the late summer Bank Holiday - although it nearly always rains. As it did this year too. Thus marking the end of a wet, cool, miserable summer.

However, some things have greatly enjoyed the coolness of the weather. The gooseberries enjoyed it (there are over 6 kg of red and green gooseberries in the freezer waiting to become winter treats). The peas (13.5 kg) and broad beans (17.5 kg both podded weights and in the freezer) also thoroughly enjoyed the weather.  The onions and potatoes much less so. The potatoes have avoided being struck by blight but are being mercilessly attacked by slugs and wireworm. So The Under Gardener has been digging them, peeling them and sorting out the edible bits and I have been making homemade frozen chips and frozen roasties.

In the meantime, in the warmer surrounds of the greenhouse on the allotment, the cucumbers have been producing a mighty feast - so much so that we can't keep up with them and can't give them to people because some of them remain unpleasantly bitter and there's no way of telling which will be bitter before you prep them and bite into them :-S. The butternut squashes are also producing nicely - although when The Under Gardener went up on Sunday to water he found that one of the vines had collapsed and the fruit had fallen off

One is very nearly ripe, the other not so ripe

The ripe one weighed in at 1.5 kg, the other at just over 1 kg

And I have picked the apples off the dessert apple tree. They also weren't quite ripe but they were being eaten by birds and slugs.  I figured it would be better if we ate them instead!!

I took some of the apples and added some of the blackberries which are beginning to ripen and made a delicious apple and blackberry pie

The Bramley apples are still awaiting picking. And there looks to be a large number of plums nearly ready to be harvested.  The branches are so laden with plums that they are hanging down to the ground and the chooks are eating them from the tree!