Ever since it was 'suggested' that I write the occasional vegetable blog by the girls in my life, a great pestilence has descended.  It has contrived to destroy by various means any, in fact most, of the crops I endeavoured to grow this season.  Words such as 'witches' and 'spells' did cross my mind for a period; silly old fool that I am!

The seasonal weather of Spring, Summer and Autumn was confused; it confused me, my seeds, my plants and my fellow allotment holders.  The one constant was the rain - and still is.  Add to this blight, pigeons and every colour of minuscule bug going and not all went well on the allotment this year.

Whenever I returned from my visits to the allotment I would be asked 'And what have you got today?' my answer as ever was 'a disaster'.  Mind you, I did still managed to fill the freezers with disasters, but unfortunately not those of the neighbours!  As I returned home each time with my meagre harvest I'm sure I felt eyes piercing into my back and heard a faint a chorus of 'where's ours you miserable old git'.

Were there any successes?  NO!  Well maybe the tomatoes and autumn raspberries were goodish.  Kept going on lettuce, and early and second early spuds were just about ok; main crop didn't happen. Runners were very sparse and as for any kind of green, cabbage, brassica - don't ask it only winds me up!

Never mind there's always next year, perhaps the girls will cast a different spell!  Don't forget your wormeries as the weather gets colder, mine are sheltered and may get wrapped in some garden fleece when the frosts arrive.  If not sheltered move them to a shed, greenhouse or garage.

September

September

Gosh doesn’t time fly, already it’s the end of September and I put my hands up to having been rather remiss in my blogging exploits. I’m probably still rather befuddled following my decision to accompany Grumpy and Izzy on a couple of the more adventuresome rides during our trip to Leggoland. Big mistake!

Grumpy hasn’t been forthcoming with his blogs from the allotments either, probably because ‘no news is good news’ and it has to be said this has not been a good year in the fruit and veg department. Every time he comes home it is another tale of woe over what has failed to materialise or just plain rotted out. Now me, I’m ever the optimist and have pointed out to him on several occasions that we haven’t much reason to complain; tomatoes (all sizes catered for) have been in abundance,

raspberries the same (got all my jam done and it is delicious) and today the Raspberry Vodka and Gin will be started; we got enough runner beans for our own consumption and chillies have been frozen down and will do me for the forthcoming 12 months,

so what’s to moan about. OK, what we don’t talk about is the blight and the numerous rows of main crop potatoes he planted!

Now, I wonder if this is a good time to run past him my plans to diversify. Having purchased a second hand spinning wheel and found a willing member of my knitting group to give me instruction on this ancient art, I feel an Alpaca would be a welcome member to our family!

Maybe not! Many years ago, however, we had a Newfoundland dog named Blue who used to shed loads of wonderfully soft fur and apparently this can be spun into wool. Must ask pesky mutts Daisy and Dora if they fancy a Big Brother Newfy.

So..... did I buy the Vitamix, darn right I did!  When it comes to spending money on naff kitchen gadgets, I'm the Queen.  However, I must report with all honesty, I am still (after all these weeks) pretty impressed with the thing.  I am getting fresh fruit (and veg) ice-creams and smoothies; it does chop rather better than my Magimix, which is now reserved for pastry making as it makes rubbing in so much easier (as demonstrated frequently on TV by the Hairy Bikers); the hot soups are a marvel and the iced cappuccinos are out of this world.  As you can see from the photo, it;s basically a very pricey blender, hey ho!

Not too much else to report this month, the weather has certainly scuppered a few of my plans.  The strawberries are first year plants so I wasn't expecting much from them, hopefully next year I can replenish my jam stocks.  The one preserve I am hoping to get done is Crab Apple and Chilli Jelly.  I love this with roast pork (or any pork in fact), cold cuts and cheese.  It keeps well and is oh so tasty.  There are various recipes around, the one I like best is:-

Hot Crab Apple & Chilli Jelly

600g of crab apples washed and chopped
35g of medium red chilli peppers, washed and chopped with seeds in
1ltr of water
White granulated sugar, 500g to each 500ml of juice

Method:

1. Put chopped crab apples and chillies into a large heavy based saucepan.
2. Add 1ltr of water.  Bring to the boil and simmer until the crab apples soften and become pulpy,
    lid on.
3. Strain through muslin square or jelly bag overnight.
4. Measure the juice and put into a large heavy based saucepan with the appropriate amount of sugar.
    Slowly bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  When the juice and sugar has come to the 
    boil take off the heat and skim well.  Return to the heat and bring to a rolling boil until setting
    point is reached.
5. Skim and pour into warm sterilised jars.

ENJOY!

When I started writing this morning, Grumpy had disappeared to the allotments.  He came home with one or two tomatoes so I think my afternoon will be taken up with making a few batches of tomato sauce; and there's me thinking I could put my feet up, watch the Olympics and do a bit of knitting!

Grumpy Again

Grumpy again and this time I am grumpy!  Last time I put pen to paper (or whatever it's called) it was raining, it's still raining and according to the forecast it's going to continue raining for the foreseeable future.  The spuds and me have had enough! I went to the allotment this morning to check the poly-tunnel and walking over the rest of the ground was like walking on water, puddles everywhere and of course the proverbial weeds.  My celeriac has been decimated by slugs, strawberries are rotting and the runners look like they have just completed a marathon.  Sowed some swede but I think the seed has rotted, same with the white turnips, drowned I fancy; never mind time yet to have another go.  I have been digging spuds for a couple of weeks, they aren't very big but they are tasty. I am digging Pentland Javelin, I know I said last time that I was scratching around the Red Duke of York and they are also ready, but the Pentland's are on a piece of ground that I wanted to clear.  The trouble is this particular piece of ground is very shallow and not really suited to spuds, but it was very weedy and although I'm getting a small crop, as I dig them I am clearing out any weeds that are left.  In the autumn I'll plant onions and garlic ready for next year.  Had a good crop of garlic which I lifted a few weeks back, they are dried and plaited now; the plaiting leaves a lot to be desired, don't think I would make a hairdresser, but it's hanging happily in the garage.  Tomatoes are setting but are taking an age to ripen, so far I have picked no more than a handful. Here's a picture taken a few weeks ago when hopes were still high.

We went to the Good Food and Gardeners World Shows at the NEC.  Came in a different entrance this time so managed to stay sober, even when we did make it to the booze section it was pretty stingy and not so many stalls.  I wasn't that impressed with the Good Food show, just how many curry sauces are there and anyway the Old Thing makes her own, with less salt I may add.  There weren't a lot of gadgets but fear not the Old Thing found the one and only, the best gadget in the whole wide world, the must have of the cluttered kitchen, the "but it does everything" gadget!  By the way it's called a Vitamix, or as they say in husband speak a VERY expensive Vitamix!

The Gardeners World show was much better, lots of wonderful tacky garden ornaments and things to adorn corners, cracks and crevices, much more to my liking and I have to admit, I spent freely.  Had I the room in the garden I no doubt would have purchased numerous plants, shrubs, tubers and rhizomes, but I haven't so I didn't.  The Old Thing didn't curtail me, she was by this point in an ecstatic Vitamix world of her own.  Mind you when I started hanging, draping, placing my tat around the garden it was to a chorus of "What is that you have there"  "Have you no taste"  "Take it down"  "No Grumpy, NO - is that a dead rat"

(Note from the Old Thing:  catch this in the corner of your eye first thing in the morning and believe me, it looks like a giant rat!)

Well it's still raining, a few things to do in the greenhouse, but apart from that I think the best thing to do is start planning for next year and hope we get some sun and heat.

The deed is done; yesterday I managed to enter the garage and tackle the pickle/jam problem without getting distracted by vodka - result!

This picture shows what I retrieved from the garage shelf.  In some ways not quite as bad as I had thought, but I have to admit I was a little optimistic in my last blog that the oldest jars were from 2009, I actually found 4 dated 2008!  I decided that I would keep 6 jars only and commenced my cull.  It was an interesting experience opening the assorted jams and pickles and scooping the contents into a plastic bag for disposal.  Some were definitely not for human consumption, either mould had formed on the top (poor jar sterilization I suspect) or the contents had kind of crystallized (no idea why that happened).  And interestingly, deterioration was not age related, in fact, the earlier jars seemed fine.  During the process, Grumpy appeared on the scene declaring his love for all my fruity jams and swearing blind he was about to start eating them.  I told him that he should have thought of that sooner, in fact 4 years ago.  A tense silence ensued between us, him glaring and me defiantly scooping out the jars.  A truce was called and I allowed a couple of extra jars to escape my ministrations and return to the garage shelf.  Voilá.

Last week we went to The Good Food/Gardeners World Shows at the NEC in Birmingham.  Had a nice trip up there from our home in Devon, calling in to see daughter and granddaughter on the way.  We stayed for a couple of nights at a Premier Inn right next to the NEC - very handy.  Now, I have to confess that I have a little bit of a 'problem' in that I am a sucker for buying kitchen gadgets, some of which could be classed as er..... unnecessary at best or just totally useless.  Lakeland is my favourite shop and I can happily sit at the computer for hours watching their videos of various cooking accessories.  Yes, some items are really useful but others, perhaps not quite so.  I remember the first time I used my battery operated sauce stirring thingy; I plonked it in a pan full of simmering parsley sauce so it could stir whilst I got on with other things.  Possibly my sauce was a little runny but this machine started gyrating around the pan like a swirling dervish and sauce flew everywhere!  So mesmerised by this was I, it took me a minute or so to think of switching it off, by then both the cooker and me were splattered in parsley sauce.

Anyhow, I digress.  At the Good Food Show there was a crowd of people around the Vitamix stand watching the man demonstrate the machine.  Too much for me to resist, so I join them and was duly wowed by the ice cream he produced from cabbage, carrot, strawberries and ice.  Next the soup; raw veg to hot soup in 6 minutes.  You can guess, I'm falling in love - with the machine not the young man demonstrating.  My fellow onlookers are captivated too but when he says the fateful words 'Of course, this machine is not cheap', the crowd suddenly thins (lightweights) and it is more or less me, him and a couple of others left.  Anyhow, by this time my little mind is ticking away - I can suddenly envisage using up the copious amounts of fruit and veg that will soon be arriving home from Grumpy's efforts on the allotments.  No more jams or pickles, just smoothies, ice creams and hot nutritional soups.  IT'S A MUST HAVE.

To be continued..............

Hi, I'm Dad, better known as Grumpy, a name given to me by my granddaughter.  I have to agree the name is most apt and I'm quite proud of it.  As the old thing says, we were coerced into this blogging thingy by the daughter, bless her!  Apparently I will blog words of wisdom on gardening and the old thing on cooking.  The old thing is a pretty mean cook; she manages to keep plenty of excess pounds on my waistline, hence my need to garden to try to contain some of them!  So there you have it, I potter in the garden and chat a lot at the allotments, I ain't no expert.  About the only thing Alan Titchmarch and I have in common is that we both kept an evil eye on Charlie Dimmock!   I also enjoy cooking, I'm a dab hand with the frying pan and wok.

Neither garden nor allotment will see much of me today, it's raining heavily.  Good for the allotment, especially the spuds.  Every year I say I will cut down on the amount I grow but I still managed to sow 21 rows.  They range from first earlies through to maincrop.  The red Duke of York are not far off being ready, I'll have to have a scratch around next week.  Everything else is looking OK at the moment and this rain is saving me walking miles with watering cans.  In the poly-tunnel all is well, some tomatoes have set, soon be picking.  The worm juice is proving invaluable as a feed yet again, it goes on everything.

Going to the Good Food Show and Gardeners World Show at the NEC next week.  Last time we went we turned right as we entered and ended up tasting all kinds of disgusting flavoured vodkas, rather splendid malts and most intoxicants in between.  All this before nine-thirtyish in the morning, by the time we got to the Gardening Show, old thing was Delia and I was Monty!  This year the plan is to turn left, but hey, I had a plan to not grow so many spuds and what did I do!

In my next blog (if there is one after this effort) I'll try and go through some of the varieties of veg that are growing and how they are fairing.  The old thing may slot in a couple of photos, far too technical for me.  It's still raining so time to cast a mean eye on the greenhouse and then sample the old things raspberry vodka, I think that's the order to do it!!

As Faith's mother I wish to thank her for roping us in (sorry, including us) in her Wormery Store Blog.  I just love her write-up about happy childhood memories picking soft fruit, I seem to remember a truculent little girl moaning like hell at having to work for her pocket money!

Ever onwards.  Today I decided I would attempt my first ever blog (well it is heaving down with rain outside) so I seriously deliberated what to say.  My primary job at the moment is to take stock of what jams, pickles, dehydrated fruit and veg etc are currently harbouring on a shelf in the garage and decide what is usable, what should have been thrown out years ago (I kid you not, some of the jam labels are dated 2009) and what to eat tout de suite!  I like to have a good cull at least once a year - ok, truth be told at least every 5 years!  Mind you, let's face it Marie Curie wasn't put off by a bit of mould so why should I be.

Anyhow, off I trundle into the garage and have a quick perusal of said shelf.  Daunting!  I casually cast my eyes around the garage (think more wall to wall shelving than a place a car could be parked) and there at the back of a top shelf, just behind the yoghurt maker (must use that one day) and the old deep fat fryer that gave up the ghost years ago, I espied two large Le Parfait kilner jars.  The old memory banks started rattling and I think to myself this could be interesting.  Step ladder in place,I retrieve two full 2 litre jars of - YES - Raspberry Vodka.  I made this last September and should have strained and bottled it in time for Xmas.

So, the jams and pickles are still happily festering on the shelf, but hey, the vodka has been duly strained, bottled and er........ sampled.  Very nice, even if I do say so myself!  Oh, the recipe:-  400g of home grown raspberries, 300g of sugar and a bottle of vodka; throw it all in a large kilner jar, shake every week or so until all the sugar has dissolved, after 3 months it is ready for straining, bottling and more importantly, drinking.  Dont waste money on expensive vodka, supermarket value brand just as tasty.  For human consumption only, dont recommend this for the worms!

Off for a little lie down now.