October 2007

1 Boy, has it rained today, all day.  That might herald the end of the blackberries and plums.  I stayed indoors, made a birthday card for my brother, cooked Red wine pears (some for freezing), preserved 2 jars of pickled pears and 5 lb of Dumpsie Dearie jam.
2 Another birthday card required for a work colleague from Marconi Bill Quay, over 30 years ago - my first job after university.  What memories that brings back.  Of course Marconi Radar is no more and the riverside site has been redeveloped now for a mixture of businesses.
Preserving: 10 lb plum & apple chutney.
Harvest:  14 oz blackberries (that's the last of them), 57 oz cherry plums, 29 oz pears.
3 Yet another birthday card for one of Crow's rallying buddies.  I tried Pilates at the gym this morning, but don't think it's for me.  Been catching up on Nigella Express  - must try her instant chocolate mousse, white bean mash and chickpeas with cumin & sherry.....
Harvest:  4 lbs of cooking apples, 6 tomatoes, 1 green pepper, basil.
4 Harvest: 5 lbs of cooking apples.
Preserving:  9 jars of plum, apple & blackberry chutney and over 7 jars of apple amber jam.
5 Apart from harvesting apples & pears, I spent some time clearing the greenhouse and veg garden, but still lots more clearing to do!
Harvest: 130 eating apples wrapped & packed plus another 1.5 lb eating apples, 10 pears wrapped & packed + 2 lb more pears, 79 oz tomatoes, 20 oz chicky tomatoes, 1 melon.
6 Harvest: 6.5 lb plums, last 17 pears, 2 tomatoes, 2 lb courgette, corn & spinach for chicks.
7 We had a 5 hour power cut today.  We were told that it someone local had felled a tree and taken down the power line and that only 5 houses were affected - just our luck!  Couldn't find any sign of such local activity.....
When the power finally returned I made fresh tomato soup, followed by Nigella's chickpeas with cumin & sherry, served with eggs.  Interesting & different and I think I probably would make it again.
I can't believe it.  This year's crop it almost finished and after 2 years, at last I have found the best method of stoning cherry plums.  I wash them, toss them into a big pan with just a drop of water to get them going and turn up the heat.  They soon start to cook and split and produce lots of their own juice to cook in.  After cooking for about 10 minutes, I leave them to cool, then push the mixture through a metal chip pan basket.  The mesh is large enough to get the plums through easily and just small enough to trap the stones. It's a bit more wasteful than picking the stones out by hand, but much quicker!  Obviously, a bit of a late discovery for this year - ho hum...
Preserving: 7 jars of plum & apple chutney, 7 jars of plum & mulled wine jam.
Harvest: 27 oz melon, green pepper, basil.
8 Harvest: 7.5 lb plums, over 2 lb tomatoes, 2 carrots, my first squash, 10 oz runner beans, 1 green pepper, 21 oz cooking apples.
9 Not going into the garden in this persistent and heavy rain - will have to catch up with outdoor activity over the next couple of days.  Indoor exercise consisted of yucky housework.
Craft:  At last, I finished the fair isle waistcoat - just need seven buttons now.
Preserving: 10 jars of plum & mulled wine jam  (I've decided this jam is ideally festive for great xmas stocking fillers), big batch of stewed plum & apple with fresh lime & orange juice.
10 Spent quite a while labelling all of my jam & chutney jars, before I forgot what they all were.
The waistcoat is really finished now, complete with buttons and Chick Original label.  If you want to see it, look in the "sold" section of Chick Originals.
11 Harvest: 44 oz red tomatoes, 6.5 lb of green tomatoes.  Outdoor tomatoes have been  a bit hopeless this year, lots of green ones but no sun to ripen them.  However, I don't feel too bad about this as Monty Don's (Gardener's World) outdoor tomatoes all failed to blight this year, except one, along with his potatoes.   My hanging basket stand in the net tunnel fell over - managed to rescue the tomato plants without too much loss.  As you can tell from my harvest, I've started to clear out the veg garden & greenhouse of remaining tomatoes.  Still some left to do as I ran out of time.  We took a trip into London to have a meal with Crow's two girls and their boyfriends.  Went to the Canteen again.
12 Preserving:  no prizes for guessing - 9 lb of green tomato chutney.  I don't know of anything else to do with green tomatoes.
13 My veg garden & tunnel clear up is ongoing.  Sweetcorn plants removed today.  Except for four cobs, overall these failed for human consumption, but the chicks enjoyed them.
Harvest: 2 lb of green tomatoes, 2 lb of cooking apples (the last), chard for chicks.
Preserving:  another 9 lb of green tomato chutney
14 Crow completed the potato harvest in the net tunnel and I did lots of weeding in there.  A good bit of work, although the potato harvest was a little disappointing.  Still, it's not really fair to compare with last year when they did so well and I think I planted less this year too.
It's also reminded me that I must get my paving stones organised to lay a central path in the tunnel.  I've already spotted some very basic ones in B&Q which will do the trick.
Harvest:  potatoes, 14 oz cooking apples (the very last), 13 oz courgette (maybe the last).
15 Walked down the road to barter today and swapped a jar of chutney and a jar of jam for a big bag of cooking apples.
My next knitting project is a Sirdar Silky sleeveless top, intended as a Christmas present, if it turns out ok.
16 We have Sky+ and I sometimes wonder whether it is worth the price, especially when the box stops working and the monthly fee doesn't cover an engineer.  We had to pay £65 (and get up before 8am - eek) for a visit, but we did get a new box as ours was way beyond repair.
Just got to use up tomatoes, overflowing in my fridge.  So, a vegetarian curry for dinner, a herby tomato base ready for another meal and some preserving.
Harvest:  7 oz carrot, 27 oz beetroot.
Preserving:  5 jars of red tomato chutney.
17 Crow made one of his excellent cheese omelettes for dinner, while I made a salad to accompany it.
Preserving: 8 jars of beetroot & apple chutney - another new brew.
18 The veggie tidy-up just goes on & on......  Tomatoes were targeted today.  All cleared up yielding the final red & green yield.
Harvest: 3lb 12 oz red tomatoes, 4.5 lb green tomatoes, 10 oz courgette.
19 Sadly my potting shed west indian gherkins were a complete failure.  Lots of foliage but no fruit - lack of pollination perhaps?  Meanwhile the outdoor melothrie did ok, despite the cool, rainy summer and the final batch were picked for pickling.  Also a last helping of raspberries and the only helping of physalis.  This too, was a great disappointment after the bumper crop last year.
Harvest: 19 oz turnip, 1 squash, 8 oz melothrie, 1.5 oz physalis, 2 oz raspberries.
20 Crow strimmed flower border 2 this afternoon which makes it a very sad sight.
So what else can be made with green tomatoes?  A yummy green tomato curry.  In fact, an enormous pot of it, split into three meals each.
Shame England couldn't beat South Africa in the rugby to retain the world cup.
Harvest: 1 large green pepper.
21 Visit to mum-in-law's for a lovely Sunday lunch after a walk in Hatfield Peverel, on part of our old running territory.  Then, another sporting disappointment as Lewis Hamilton failed to win the F1 championship.  I've been altering some ready made curtains for our bedroom.  They're all cut and pinned, but now I need to dig out the sewing machine.
22 Mmmm, I brought some carob pods back from Portugal and I really must do something with them.
23 The night's are turning chilly now so I cleared all of my outdoor peppers.  Another crop for which it was too cool and wet.  Indoor peppers have been a bit slow but I'm now getting a good crop in the potting shed, with several very large green peppers ripening to red.  I also completely cleared the greenhouse of physalis (and found two fruits to eat, yum, yum), just leaving two pepper plants in there.  Except that I decided to have a go at winter salad, so I sowed some seeds in the greenhouse - corn salad, spicy mixed salad and oriental mixed salad.
Harvest: 6 small green peppers
24 A day just for me....  A session in the gym, a swim, then a visit to my best girlie friend in Chelmsford for an afternoon of gossip and catching up, followed by dinner and relaxation in front of the TV with my knitting, before reading my novel in bed.
25 Dug our the sewing machine and finished those bedroom curtains. I'm not ecstatic about the result as I should have made the full length ones 2 inches longer :-(  Never mind, it is nice to have matching bedding and curtains.  My latest knitting project is a tunic length jumper in Patons Cargo, chunky tape wool.  The back is already finished and the first sleeve started.
26 We've had our paddock cut by a local farmer and what a wonderful job he did...
That first sleeve is finished.
Harvest:  6 tomatoes
27 The veg garden is now cleared of all courgette plants.  I dug up two sweet potato plants but it looks like another failure here - again a hot & dry summer was required for these tropical vegetables.  The plants look healthy enough, but they never flowered and the tubers are still tiny.  I harvested my prize cabbage, grown in a pot, for dinner.  I've got others but they're not a good as this one.  Crow did more flower garden strimming, around the barrel, under the bird table and some of border 1, while I helped with the clearing up.
Harvest:  last rhubarb, first celeriac, first cabbage, courgette.
Preserving: one jar of pickled melothrie.
28 We took part in a local motor club treasure hunt today.  Fun, even in the rain, and we were third.  It's amazing how you think you are so observant until you do something like this.  Rounded off with an indoor barbeque, it made a novel way to spend half of Sunday.
29 16:30 Don't seem to have done much today except worry about Salt, gym & swim and mess about on the computer.  Bedtime update - I've finished sleeve two of my latest creation.
30 Dig, dig, dig in the net tunnel - weeding, then digging in leaf mould and planting green manure.
Harvest:  cauliflower, green beans, 6 tomatoes, fennel, 1 big red pepper, basil.
31 More net tunnel digging.  Nine beds now sown with green manure, some rye grass and some white mustard.  All in all, it's looking very neat and tidy.  Just need to get a nice path laid down the centre to finish the job.
Harvest:  lettuce, 3 onions, 2.5 lb eating apples (nearly the last from the tree).
Talking of my tunnel path, I've been trying to place a £450 order for paving slabs with B&Q Chelmsford today and I'm so angry with them.  First I called and they promised to call back.  They didn't.  So I called again and held for 5 minutes and was cut off.  So I called again and held for 5 minutes and was cut off again.  Next time I was cut off as soon as the gardening department answered.  Finally I got through but the person couldn't help me as she had never taken an order for slabs before and she couldn't see the computer because it was dark !?!  I called back and spoke to a manager who personally went to check their stock and did call me back, but they didn't have enough.  I could place an order but delivery would be at least four weeks and they would take the money immediately.  He then suggested I might want to try elsewhere?  How's that for customer service?  I did try B&Q Colchester and a very friendly lady promised to check stock and call me back.  I'm still waiting......  Anyway, they can't take phone orders, you have to go to the store to place an order for home delivery.
Whilst I'm moaning, I also chased up the plumber who promised in May to come back to us with a quote for another job.  He assured me he hadn't forgotten (?), but made no excuses and said he would call me back when he got home.  Guess what?  He didn't.
Finally, I went onto the easyJet site to book flights for my mother for Xmas and the site went down before I could complete the transaction.  Just wasn't my day, was it?