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. We’ve got a few small plants in pots on the patio, and they are laden with chillis. We’ve neglected them somewhat. We had planned to put them into bigger pots. We never got round to potting them on, but the patio is a suntrap and they’ve been relatively happy all things considered. We’ve had some good chillis from them.

A potted chilli plant on our patio.

Some more chillis growing on our patio.

We have also continued in harvesting our potatoes this month. We sowed some in the big vegetable patch at the bottom of the garden and we’ve used most of those this month, although there are still some main crop ones down there that haven’t died back yet. We still have some main crops at the allotment that are in the same situation. Back in the late spring we had some first earlies that we had chitted but hadn’t prepared space for. Fearing they would get tangled, I asked Liz to sow them in a couple of the grow bags that we had going spare from previous years.

Tops shot up and grew vigorously from these grow bags which Liz positioned in a sheltered spot near the vegetable bed that we often refer to as ‘the pumpkin patch’. The tops had died back a few weeks ago, and earlier in the month we harvested them. Or more specifically, our son harvested them. He got a children’s recipe book for his birthday and he and I followed a recipe from there. I took him out to harvest the potatoes that we needed and he loved getting his hands dirty. We also found a newt in the grow bag, which we released into a nearby bush. Our son particularly enjoyed finding the newt, but we also got a lot of potatoes from those two grow bags and we all enjoyed the dinner.

Our son retrieving a potato from one of the grow bags in the garden.

Our grow bag potato harvest.

Another seasonal job that we completed this month was the harvesting of our Boddington’s Soup Peas. We left the pods to dry on the plant ready for storage and later conversion into pea soup. Soup peas are too starchy to enjoy fresh, but they do make delicious soups. We were happy that the summer sun and early autumn winds had dried the pods sufficiently, but we wanted to get the peas indoors before wet weather and the lack of temperatures sufficient to dry them out again affected their keeping qualities.

Some dried Boddingtons Soup Pea pods from our garden.

Shelling Bodding’s Soup Peas

We also shelled and stored a few pods’ worth of pea beans, although most of our plants are either still very green, or not adequately dry. It feels like a project completed now that our sou peas are dried, shelled and stored. The thought of them now being stored and ready for soups is especially appealing given the recent weather – soups and stews have frequently been served in our household in recent weeks. We’re now completely out of our dried beans that we grew last year for stews, so the new pea beans are a timely harvest.

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

Although Apple Day in the UK is officially celebrated at the end of October, it is the month of September that sees the majority of the apples in our garden ripening. We have several small potted trees which fruit later, but there is a large apple tree beside our large vegetable patch which fruits in September. We’re not sure which variety the apples are, but they are rather tart and the skin is always entirely green – they are quite like the variety ‘Granny Smith’ in both appearance and flavour.

Our neighbour also has a large apple tree which fruits around the same time, usually ever so slightly earlier. The skin of this variety is almost entirely red and the flesh is much sweeter than the variety growing on our large tree. Our neighbour invited us to help ourselves to apples from his tree, and he regularly collects the windfalls together and leaves them in a wheelbarrow beside the lane that passes our gardens for passers by to help themselves. Despite this there are still a lot that rot under the tree, as the tree is just so abundant.

Apples on and under our neighbour’s tree.

I’ve found that our neighbour’s apples go very well in porridge. I slice them thinly and drop them into boiling water along with the oats and it makes a deliciously sweet fruity breakfast. The flesh of this variety breaks down deliciously. The tart apples from our garden have a much firmer flesh and don’t work so well. I don’t mind tart apples, so I’ve been taking them to work as a morning snack. The kids aren’t so fond of them, so we’ve been taking our neighbour up on his offer and picking the sweet ones from his garden too.

One of the tart apples from the large tree in our garden.

The large tree in our garden laden with apples.

Our smaller potted trees are also bearing fruit, but these aren’t quite ripe yet. We do look forward to these ones fruiting, as we chose the varieties ourselves and look forward to trying the very limited supply of them we get every year. Our quince tree hasn’t fruited again this year, which is rather disappointing. This the second consecutive year that is hasn’t produced any quinces. We’re not sure why, it seems healthy enough, and produces plenty of flowers and immature fruits, but then none survive.

Apples growing on one of our smaller potted trees.

So a typical September day in the garden has invariably ended in us returning with apples. But it hasn’t only been apples, as well as the aforementioned potatoes, we’ve still bean harvesting beans (runner beans and pea beans) and, needless to say, our ‘Galina’ tomatoes are still yielding heavily.

A September harvest from our garden.

Now onto the squashes, and it is here that the change in the seasons is most pronounced. This month the summer squashes (courgettes only for us this year, we didn’t grow any patty pans) have been very few this month. Instead it is the summer squashes that we typically bring back with us from the allotment.

It’s starting to feel a lot like autumn – more winter squashes than summer ones at the allotment now.

We’ve got several hardened off and in our dry stores cupboard now, and some more on the patio hardening off as I type. We’ve still got quite a few growing at the allotment. We’re hoping they will get a little bigger yet. Do you remember the ‘Cushaw’ squash vine that had started growing up the bean poles in the legumes bed at our allotment plot? The photo in last month’s growing update showed a small immature fruit hanging from the vine. Below is a recent photo of it.

A ‘Cushaw’ winter squash growing on a bean pole in the legumes bed on our allotment plot.

What’s more, not only has that fruit really started to fill out, but it now has several young siblings on the same vine.

‘Cushaw’ winter squashes growing up a bean pole.

That’s about it for this month’s growing update. It’s basically a tale of the changing of the seasons and a lot of exciting harvesting. Next month will hopefully entail more harvesting and some sowing, as we look to plant out garlic and get an early start on our broad beans. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram to get more frequent updates:

Winter squashes hardening off on our patio,