Sunday 10 October 2010

surely I'm too young for senile dementia ?

spent bloody ages looking for my secateurs today - got loads of stuff to chop down ... anyone seen them ?

What a beautiful day it has been today - didn't start off so promising, but the afternoon was glorious - the Jerusalem Artichokes are in full flower:

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Hmm my strawberries seem confused !

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The little Alpine ones are adding some much needed colour:

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Finally got hold of some garlic - forgotten what the variety is already LOL ! Ambled up and down the lottie trying to decide which bed to put them into when I realised that last years garlic bed has geared itself up already. I took a closer look and was a little suprised to see that there are 14 very healthy looking plants - I'm sure I dug them all up in late Spring / early Summer ! Decided to take a chance and use the same bed - ended up using all three cloves.

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Am feeling very pleased with myself - that's my garlic in and my onions have been planted for a couple of weeks - they are already 1-2 inches high :) Just need to get some broad beans, sweet potatoes and sweet peas and then I think I'm set for the winter - well apart from my manure and new greenhouse !

Finally ! this is my Romaesco cauliflower. Blimey it's taken a long time to appear ... hope it's good - my cauliflowers were growing really well this year - until the two-week rain deluge that we had in the summer.

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Looks like I might be getting some broccoli soon - not quite sure what I did to it, but it looks like I only have one plant - still that's not such as bad thing as OH doesn't like it:

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Now, this is a leek head that went to flower ... and then little leak-lets appeared ... so I've potted some of them up - will they grow ?? I can't think why they won't. Free leeks :) :)

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Last of the Borlotties ... I'm going to grow stacks more of these next year - why not, we really like them. Got some podded ones in the freezer and made some more into spicy bean burgers - yum yum yum !

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Remembering my potato disaster last year (ie, when I didn't dig them up until Spring this year!) I've been slowly digging my way across the beds - but as the stems disappeared long ago on mine, I'm puzzled as to how Nick's (next door) are so green & vibrant and still in flower ??

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Here's my compost heap ... always feeds well this time of year :)

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The last of the summer flowers are just clinging on:

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and surprisingly the Phacelia is still going strong - not many bees around tho:

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I harvested a few beetroots and some strange looking thing - noticed a few of them growing in and amongst the beetroots - guess it's a turnip or something. Tastes like a sugar beet tho. Oh well, it's gotta be edible right.

Anyway next to the beetroots I spy my three parsnips - yep, three whole parsnips from a whole packet of seed. I decide to pull the biggest one - it's flipping enormous. It kinda made up for not having many - could have fed the whole street with it :)

The photo with Loki doesn't really do it justice - the widest part of the the parsnip was as wide as my head !! It was flipping heavy

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So what to do with a giant parsnip ... hmmm, cake !

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Here is my parsnip & maple syrup cake - it is delicious and unbelieveably moist - I can thoroughly recommend it. Best of all girls it almost counts as your 5 a day - parsnip, apple & orange !!

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The rest of the monster parsnip became parsnip soup - I'll discover what that tastes like tomorrow - anyone seen those secateurs ??

6 comments:

  1. Great stuff,Ducky!

    I've had dementia for... ...a long time anyway.

    You've got to roast some of your parsnip. Cakes is for when you're running out of other ideas. (My courgette cake was pretty impressive this year.)

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  2. no Mal, cake is the most important thing in the universe !

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  3. What sort of leeks are the leaklets? - They look as though they have onion shaped leaves rather than flat leek type ones or is it just how they look on the photo

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  4. I think that one is a musselbrough - it was definitely a leek, so think it's my photography skills ... or lack of haha !

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  5. cat looks glad that the parsnip is pointing the other way....

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  6. That's one heck of a parsnip, it must see the roasting tray....although the cake does look good!!

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