I have spent a fair amount of time over the last week cleaning up and sorting potatoes (starting with a second sift of the Vales Sovereigns that we had initially identified as keepers).  Only a few of the sorted Vales Sovereigns were showing some signs of damage and as we are planning to only put unblemished potatoes away for storage I sifted those out before leaving all of the re-washed potatoes out for drying.  I bagged up the Vales Sovereign potatoes, with 4 stone being put away for keeping.  With the stone and a half of Rudolphs we probably already had enough potatoes to see us through to next spring.  However, there were also the Caras to be harvested.

The first impression of the Caras was of the size of the tubers, there were a lot of big ones and some huge ones – the biggest weighed in at 2lb by itself.  The second impression was the relatively high level of pest damage – certainly compared to the Vales Sovereigns, whether this is down to the variety, or because the last three weeks have been pretty soggy, so the slugs have been active I’m not sure.  I did a rough sort and put the potential keepers on one side to dry and put the quarter or so of tubers that were slightly damaged into a box for giving away at the roll-up.  The badly damaged ones I used for making chips immediately and the Caras are certainly good for this.  We have about 5 stone of Cara put away for keeping and a box in the kitchen for using, in addition we have given away a couple of stone of slightly damaged ones.

We have also started cutting pumpkins and winter squashes for storage.  We have been really impressed by the flexibility of winter squashes in the kitchen and have had them roasted, mashed, fried and stewed.  Their hard skins should ensure that they keep well, meaning fresh vegetables well into the winter.

The march of autumn is now very noticeable and I cleared out the “Xtra Early” sweetcorn patch.  The late peas are finished and I hope to clear these out on Friday when the forecast looks more promising.  I’ll also look to get the bonfire going that day to burn all the potato haulms, which are notorious as disease shelters and not recommended for composting.

While the “bonnie” is going I also ought to be able to harvest the Cara potatoes.

Despite the slowing growth, we are still harvesting courgettes and a week’s worth makes an impressive pile.  I also picked the first of the borlotti beans, which look lovely.  In theory we can use them as runner bean substitutes at this size and then store the actual beans as they swell.  A swift taste test of a raw bean confirmed that they’ll make lovely substitutes for runners.

A week's worth of courgettes

Young Borlotti Beans

This evening we wandered down to the allotment to do a bit of tidying and harvesting, including gathering a couple of winter squashes for Pat at the golf club who gave us the pumpkin plant.

The plot is starting to look rather autumnal now and things are slowing down.  That said the borlotti beans and the brassicas are still progressing well.  We will have to harvest the last batch of potatoes when we get a decent run of dry weather.

Last Friday I popped down to the allotment to see how things were bearing up after some very heavy rain.  The bad news was that we have got some serious sort of fungal infection on the tomatoes in the cloche.  Looking at our books it seems to be Botrytis (grey mould) so I cut out the infected areas and treated the plants with fungicide, but the infection was so widespread that there is not much, so the chances of a crop look pretty thin now.  If it is grey mould it has probably been a result of slightly careless cleaning out of the side stems.

More brightly harvesting continues with some carrots, a few courgettes and one of the winter squashes that looked really lovely.  I cut down the haulms of the Cara potatoes just to make sure that we don’t hit any late blight problems and dug the Vales Sovereigns (which look really good).

We had a letter from Cookham Parish Council telling us that we had won the best newcomer class in the 2011 allotment awards.  There may not have been much competition (perhaps only half a dozen other newcomers) but we were dead chuffed and wandered down at the end of the day for a bit of watering, harvesting and tidying.

We started today down at the allotment with some harvesting, weeding and watering.  Lynn’s sweet pea gateway is now bearing fruit (or rather flowers).

Sweet pea queen

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