Tag Archives: Apples

September 2017 Growing Update

A September apple harvest from our (and our neightbour's) garden

Well this month has been a very autumnal one. It’s been wet and cool, leaves are falling from trees and mushrooms are sprouting up all over the place. I do love the autumn. This month we’ve been busy harvesting. We’ve collected most of our squashes together (there are still a few at the allotment that we’re hoping may grow a little more yet), and hardened them off for storage. We’ve also collected the last of the runner beans and pea beans and frozen them. We’ve also been harvesting our chillis. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this year’s plants before now….

Another young squash fruit at the allotment. I think this one is a Sweet Dumpling.

Attentive readers may have noticed that there was no growing update for the month of June. We just about managed to get on top of things in the garden and at the allotment, but unfortunately I simply ran out of time to write the post. We were busy every weekend and we spent much of our free time during the week watering, weeding and planting. By the time I had enough spare time to write the post it was so far into July that I thought we may as well combine the two months into one post. June was a…

Apple blossom on one of the trees in our garden.

No work for me today as it’s a bank holiday, so we spent some family time together in our garden. We really appreciated all of the blossom on our fruit trees and took quite a few photos. We’ve posted most of these on Instagram today. Our Instagram page can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/slightlyselfsufficient/ Here are the photos we shared, plus a few bonus ones that didn’t make it to Instagram.

October 2016 Growing Update

An October curcubit harvest - courgettes that grew to marrows, a patty pan and a ball courgette.

October is always a fun month for us. We are still harvesting crops, and we are now also planting new ones for next year. This month we’ve sown some peas and broad beans in pots, which we will move to their final positions at the allotment once we have harvested enough carrots to make space for them. These pea and bean plants will then give us a bit of a head start for next spring. Although they won’t grow much in the short cold days of winter, when the conditions improve, they will already be established plants and should start…

Beautiful blossom on our dwarf quince tree.

Spring has well and truly sprung here in the East of England. We’re surrounded by beautiful blossom in our garden. We’ve also been busy planning this year’s crops, preparing beds and sowing seeds. It’s strange to think that we’ve been in this house for a year now. This time last year we were just sowing the first of our seeds – a very late start due to the move. Despite this we still had a very successful growing season. This year we’re better placed as we’ve started earlier – so we’re hoping for another bumper harvest. The many plum trees…

Just some of what we grew and produced this year. Top left - bottom right: winter squashes, parsnip, kohlrabi, a batch of jam, mushrooms, spiralised courgette ('courgetti'), plums, tomatoes and courgettes, squashes in our pumpkin patch.

This year was our first in our current home with our rather large garden. We moved into this house in May, and although we were late out with many of our crops, we’ve had a very successful growing season. In this post we’ll look back over the year and share where we feel we were successful, and where we were not. Soft Fruits By far our largest and most used soft fruit crop was our plums. We can’t really take much credit for this crop, as all of the trees were already here when we moved in, and we have…

Blackberry and apple fruit leather cut into strips and ready to eat.

I mentioned in my post from the Friday before last that we had plans for the blackberries that the kids picked in the garden. We were all very excited about this as it is something that we’ve never tried before but have been meaning to do for some time: making fruit leather. Fruit leather is simply fruit dried into a thin, chewy sheet. In the River Cottage Handbook on Preserves, Pam Corbin has a recipe for a blackberry and apple fruit leather, so we decided to give that a go using the blackberries from the garden (topped up with the…

A donation from a neighbour - some windfall apples and some overripe gooseberries.

The gardens here are filled with apple trees. It was a beautiful sight when we moved in back in May and they were all in blossom. It’s beautiful now too, as the fruits are really starting to fill out and the different varieties are starting to show their own traits. We had strong winds the weekend before last, and one of our neighbours gave us some windfall apples from her trees. This time of year they are nowhere near ripe and so far too tart to eat raw, but she wondered whether we might find a use for them. Now…

The pumpkin patch is coming on leaps on bounds.

Just a quick update from the garden. It’s amazing how much it’s come on in the two months since we really set to work. Particularly the crops that we didn’t plant until we moved in, for example everything in the pumpkin patch (every single plant in the image above), the runner beans, potatoes, beetroot and parsnips, to name but a few. Much to the kids’ excitement we’ve recently started harvesting our blueberries (potted plants we brought with us). Our potatoes have started dying back too, so the kids can get their hands dirty harvesting them soon (probably their favourite garden…

Slightly Self-Sufficient

Tasting The Good Life

Tag Archives: Apples

September 2017 Growing Update

June and July 2017 Growing Update

Fruit Tree Blossom from our Garden

October 2016 Growing Update

Our Growing Plans for 2016

2015 – The Year In Review

Making Fruit Leather

Putting Windfall Apples to Good Use

Early August Garden Update