Tomatoes: Don't believe the hype

I have heard from various sources that you can successfully ripen green tomatoes by putting them in a drawer, box etc. with a banana. The gas released by the banana as it ripens will turn the tomatoes red. I am happy to confirm that this is complete rubbish. All you get are mouldy tomatoes, a wasted banana, and if you're really lucky some nasty liquid will dribble out of whatever container you're using. The best thing I have found for green tomatoes so far is to chuck 'em straight back on the compost heap.

Mice don't eat cheese they eat raw potatoes.

Potatoes in store at the allotment have been attacked by mice, so we brought them home today. When you start growing vegetables you think the hard thing will be the actual growing of the plants. In fact the hard part is stopping every other living creature on the planet from eating your crop before you do.

Pumkin Harvest

Moog and I have had some quite good results with butternut squash and pumpkins this year (pictured above). One big orange pumpkin (variety 'Mars') has already been eaten, along with two squashes (variety 'Avalon F1').

These will be saved for soups and for roasting as the winter draws in. I couldn't bear to risk wasting my home grown produce at halloween, so we bought some from the shops specifically to carve into lanterns.

Bizarrely, these were labelled as 'Extra Large Monsters versus Aliens Pumpkins from Outer Space.'

What a whopper!

Here I make a rare personal appearance in the blog to show you my first parsnip which I dug this weekend. No need to dig more than one, as the one I eventually prised out of the ground was a whopping 2lb 8oz! delicious roasted with beef Wellington for my tea. This was planted in the 'magic' bed at the front of my plot, if only the whole plot had soil this good.

Jack Frost

We have have now had two good frosts in a row, brilliant news for my parsnips! I will give them a couple more cold nights then they should be ready to try. I can't wait, the tops look brilliant this year. Here are some pictures of them in June and October.

Spuds are up

Main potato harvest has revealed a whole barrow full of potatoes. 'Cara' the most successful, 'Sarpo Axona' less so, tending to be knobbly with rougher skins.

Beets, roots and leaves

I have found beetroot fairly easy to grow. Particularly nice is that you can use the young leaves in a salad or instead of spinach. They seem pretty immune to pests, which is another good attribute. They're a bit bland on the dinner table, but Moog's favourite recipe is for me to pan-fry them in balsamic vinegar and olive oil and serve with crumbled Roquefort cheese.

I have just spent an hour or so pickling the last of my crop. I am left with astonishing purple fingernails as a result. I also have four jars of pickled beetroot. Looking at them, I realised that this probably represents more pickled beetroot than I have ever eaten in my life to date. So, another vegetable creeps onto the 'not going to grow that next year' list.