October was a windy month, with two storms battering us here on the east coast of England. First was Ophelia, then came Brian. It’s been a beautiful month though, with lovely autumnal colours. It’s been a relatively quiet month for us in terms of our crops. Our hard work in the spring and early summer has left us with a lot to harvest, which we’ve been busily doing. But our failure to sow more crops for most of the summer means that we’ve got a lot of growing space not being used at the moment.
Two small ‘Turk’s Turban’ squashes that we harvested this month.
This month we harvested the last of our winter squashes. These were all small specimens that we’d left on the vines as long as we could in the hope that they would grow bigger. But with the temperatures now far lower than desired for growing plants of the curcubit family, the parent plants have died. We’re using these small squashes in the kitchen now, and we have quite a few large squashes in our store cupboard ready for use over the winter.
A small ‘Cushaw’ squash from the allotment – the last one of the year for us.
This month we’ve also harvested the last of the pea beans that we had left on the plants to dry. We’ve kept some for next year’s seed, and the remainder has been kept for culinary purposes – most likely stews. A couple of our runner bean plants have still been producing beans, although I suspect we’ve now harvested the last of them, as we stripped the plants bare at the weekend and I doubt they will fruit any more now.
We have also harvested the last of our carrots. I wish we had sown more. The final few carrots that we harvested were the white ones, the variety is named ‘Snow White’. These final few were all quite small, but nevertheless they were nice to eat.
The last of our ‘Snow White’ carrots harvested from our allotment plot.
Now that the squash plants (which took up about a quarter of our allotment plot), have died back, the plot looks quite empty. We still have a row of parsnips, some leeks, our asparagus bed and a lot of main crop potatoes still under the ground, but there is a lot of space not being utilised. We aim to remedy that over the next few weekends. It’s tough this time of year though, as by the time I get home from work it is completely dark, which only leaves the weekends to work in the garden and allotment.
That’s about it for this month. Check back next month when I hope to be able to report that we’ve been busy utilising our currently unused growing space! Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram for more regular updates: