A quick visit to mulch around the rest of the current bushes with cardboard and manure.    There is no mistake that it is now autumn, its not cold but it is wet and windy.   The plot is covered in leaves, which I have collected where I can and put in bin bags, I’ll keep adding to it each time.

Last week I started mulching around the current bushes and so I mostly finished that off today, just need a bit more cardboard for the last bit.   While I was at it, I mulched around the leeks a bit.

The sprouts are no better and covered in aphids, maybe one or two lessons learnt with sprouts or next year.  I don’t think I will get much out of these.      I had forgot to bring up the fleece that I bought during the week and it looks like I was a bit late anyway.  Last week the potatoes were all green and happy looking, today they looked pretty much damaged from the cold, although I didn’t think it had been that cold.  Maybe the wind and dampness has affected them.  A bit annoying, they look like they probably won’t recover and so I wonder if they have been in the ground long enough to get something out of them.   Other potatoes on the plot, rogue ones left behind, all look good still.   I felt a bit sorry for the potatoes so went back to get the fleece and covered the rows over, maybe one week too late.

More positive was discovering the last lot of radishes are starting to be ready for picking.   In the summer it took just four weeks from sowing to eating, it has taken two months this time for this last lot, which are growing under fleece.   I had a feel about and there was nothing last week, this week I was able to pull up three of them and hope to pull the rest next week.

Today I wanted to pull a number of turnips as it would be a day of cooking discovery as we “cook with turnips”.  Up until now we have roasted one or two.    We had turnips earlier on in the year too but they only grew to small balls, these ones were looking a bit bigger.   I pulled up a couple and thought just one more, which turned out to be the size of a house!   Looking at others, I noticed a lots more were similar size – a huge success.

I thought I would dig up a salsify, one of the first things we sowed and a bit of a mystery, free seed packet off a magazine.    They certainly grow down deep, it took a while to dig up and it was clear that I could had prepared the soil down a lot deeper for it to grow to a point.  Instead, it looked a bit like a mandrake off of Harry Potter.   In a day of cooking discovery, we will discover just what to do with salsify too…

The rain kept off for most of the day and so I took the trip to the next village to help myself to free manure that I found the other week.  I filled 11 bags which should keep me going for a while and I have helped clear waste material for someone so everything is happy.

 

Items picked:

• massive turnip
• carrots
• radish
• salsify
• beet leaf
• runner beans (still one or two…)
• french beans (determined never to stop delivering)
• raspberries (why are they still producing?)
• broccoli (I thought it had finished, but it seems not)

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