Frost Fright already

Blimey we've not even left September behind and there are frost warnings out. I didn't have time to do anything about it during the week, so just had to keep my fingers crossed. The lottie looks fine, so I think it was just a warning rather than an actuality. Nevertheless I decided not to risk my lovely squashes and have been busy harvesting this afternoon.

I brought home two butternuts and left another one that is almost mature on the vine and two Crown Prince - they are not as big as I thought they were going to be, but they are really heavy I'm looking forward to trying them. The Winter Festival gave me 8 lovely creamy yellow-green fruits and I took the remaining two tiny turks turbans which will be saved for Halloween pumpkin 'fodder'. I brought home 14 squashes in total.



One of the butternuts is the size of a small dog - it'll take us weeks to eat it LOL. The plant is busy producing lots of babies, but it's way too late, I wonder why it takes them so long to get going. I'm going to start them even earlier next year and see if it makes a difference .... I may put them under plastic cloches during the season to see if heat helps.

I decided to leave my Queensland Blue's on the vine ... hope I don't regret it ! It'll be a couple of weeks before I can get back up there - will have to send OH if the weather takes a turn for the worse. They are also not as big as I expected - hope they taste good.

I'm extremely proud of myself today - I've managed to plant next seasons onions !! ta-dar !!!! how organised is that ... flipping amazing. Sadly no garlic yet - I'm still in disbelief that our allotment shop sold out in a week. Bizarrely though I've noticed 10 garlic plants growing in this season's garlic bed ... which is very puzzling. I'm going to leave them and see what happens.

I finally harvested the blueberries ... I thought I was picking them late, but I've been reading on the internet that they are harvested at the end of September - no wonder I've always thought they were a little on the tart side ! They've been made into blueberry pie with lemon pastry ... it's so good I'm on my second piece :) ... excuse the website - it's for the Daily Fail - just try not to read any 'stories' and you'll be OK:



With the left over pastry I made some jammy-tarts with some of this season's strawberry jam ... yum !!!



Now that the season is slowing I'm finally getting reasonable sized courgettes thank goodness. I've left two plants in in situ and put two onto the compost heap - I love this time of year when everything gets cleared away !! LOL, I know I'm strange :)

The tomatoes are almost finished - interestingly they've nearly all ripened. Usually at this time of year I'm struggling with loads of green ones. I've got around 8 kilos sat on the kitchen worktop ! eek. They are quickly overtaking the courgettes haha.

Yup, it's been a pretty good season I think. Did I say second or third piece of pie ...