Tag Archives: Squashes

October 2017 Growing Update

The last of our 'Snow White' carrots harvested from our allotment plot.

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. This month we harvested the last…

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….

The first harvest of this year's winter squashes.

August has been a very enjoyable month for us. We’ve been merrily harvesting and weeding, and enjoying some lovely weather whilst we’ve been doing it. The month started with us away for the weekend camping, which naturally meant that it rained, and so our garden and allotment got a good watering. From then on the weather was a bit up and down, some wet and almost autumnal days, but some gloriously sunny days, including the hottest August bank holiday on record! Our biggest regret this month has been not getting more crops sowed, as we still have some unused space…

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…

Windfall quinces - thank you Storm Angus!

The end of October was a pleasantly autumnal affair, with some nice autumn sun and cool, but not cold, temperatures. That was true right up until the evening of the final day of the month. Then as of the morning of the 1st of November it became bitterly cold and we were hit with several days of morning frosts! This caught us unprepared, and so we were in a panic to harvest the last of our more temperature sensitive crops. The main crops that we were desperate to harvest before the frosts caused severe damage, were the last of our…

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…

How to prepare spaghetti squash.

Spaghetti Squash Recipe Introduction I’ve posted before about just how excited we have been to try a spaghetti squash. It is certainly a crop whose fame has outspread its availability, at least here in the UK. We first read about them years ago and ever since have wanted to grow them. But due to the sprawling nature of squash plants and our lack of suitable growing space, we’d never had the opportunity. We have never seen them for sale anywhere, so they were off the menu. That was until last year. When we moved into our new home and discovered…

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…

The 2015 winter squash harvest - more variety than you'd find in your local supermarket!

With the squash growing season now well and truly over here in the East of England, we are delighted to be able to able to share some photos of our very successful 2015 squash harvest. As long time readers will know, we only moved into our house and had use of its garden from May this year. We got off to a bit of a slow start due to other demands such as unpacking, work and raising children. But once we got the time we really went for it in the garden. One of our biggest projects was removing the…

A 'Turk's Turban' Squash Growing in the Pumpkin Patch. There are a couple of smaller ones too.

Here at Slightly Self-Sufficient HQ we’ve been very excited about growing our own winter squashes. We’ve never had enough space to grow them before. We did try a dwarf ‘Butternut’ squash variety last year in a large pot, but it didn’t produce any fruit. So upon seeing the garden in our new house for the first time, Liz and I exclaimed in unison that we could finally grow squashes! Why have we been so excited to grow winter squashes? First and foremost, they make for excellent eating. They are a very versatile ingredient. They make fantastic soups and, unlike their…

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Tag Archives: Squashes

October 2017 Growing Update

September 2017 Growing Update

August 2017 Growing Update

June and July 2017 Growing Update

November 2016 Growing Update

October 2016 Growing Update

How to Prepare Spaghetti Squash

2015 – The Year In Review

The 2015 Squash Harvest

Pumpkin Patch Update