On the frost carpeted grass are the last pickings of raspberries and runner beans and the remnants of the tomato harvest that has been sitting it out in an unheated greenhouse at the school garden. Ironically the one BIG pumpkin has been given away to the nursery class so is missing from the picture.
To make amends for this omission here is pretty much the entire pumpkin crop gathered from our allotment. I had a big push on cucurbits, but it looks like I chose the wrong year to do that*. The result is one fruit from each plant that survived. There is the traditional orange pumpkin (only just turning orange), Uchi Kuri, Kabotcha and Butternut squash Hunter. Oh yes, two random Sharksfin Melon also made a surprise appearance. Now they are scary. I was surprised to see these on Gardeners World a few weeks ago and even more surprised to see the intrepid presenter sampling them raw. Like a mature marrow, but more dense, they definitely need to be cooked!
*The other 2019 push was sweetcorn. I grew three varieties and ended up with a unanimous raspberry: They don't like the cold and never quite made it to edible proportions.
Oh dear, you've had a frost. Our allotment seems to have escaped that so far, we still have begonias in flower, but there's been so much rain down here. Our Glass Gem sweetcorn didn't work - shame, will have to try again next year I guess...
ReplyDeleteOn the plus side, regarding frost, at least we feel we can legitimately start digging up parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes!
DeleteYou done well to have raspberries and tomatoes at this stage it has been a poor squash year hasn’t it?
ReplyDeleteYes, Sue. To summarise all Martin's hard work record keeping in one glib phrase: 2019 has been a bit of stinker.
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