Home grown soup

I grew butternut squash this year, only two set and for whatever reason they didn’t grow very big. I harvested them a few weeks ago and kept them in the fridge, even though that’s not strictly necessary.

I made butternut squash and sweet potato soup tonight, I boil them up, peeled alongside a couple of chopped onions, some garlic, chicken stock cubes, cumin, coriander, ginger and just a touch of chilli. When it’s all tender I blend it with an immersion blender and the result is a thick but smooth soup that feels like a hug in a bowl.

I’m feeling just a little off colour today (I have chronic asthma, and sometimes it kicks up), but that soup is just lovely and soothing. I like to claim that it’s good for what ails you.

I also knitted myself a Benny hat yesterday evening and this morning. The allotment is sheltered north to south, but very exposed east to west, and yesterday I got colder than I expected. No two ways about it, I grabbed a ball of Aran yarn, a pair of needles and got busy. My next visit to the plot will not be an endurance exercise of challenging myself to get out of the greenhouse.

I think that’s it for today. Stay healthy!

Starting the winter work and a Noob mistake

I’m back again. After a very wet weekend, I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do on the allotment this week, but it’s not been too bad.

I’ve removed the netting from several beds and stored it away for the winter, I’ve also composted my runner bean vines and stored the canes they grew up. I’ve had quite a good crop of beans this year, but the vines had stopped flowering and the bean pods were no longer developing. That bed will be dug over and prepared for garlic to go into the ground for the winter.

I’ve trimmed back the grass around the strawberry beds and cut away the excess runners. I’ll be mulching them with straw in the next week ready for the winter. I still have leeks in the ground close by the strawberries, which I’ll be weeding around tomorrow weather permitting, but the next years crop will go in the ground in the same bed as the garlic (I like onions, garlic and leeks to be in the same growing bed)

The National Allotment Society which my site is a member of have told us we can have fires on site on November 5th (Bonfire Night here in Britain) so I’m busily trying to get as many perennial weeds as possible out of the ground and into my burnable weeds pile ready to go in the incinerator. There’s a lot of grass to cut back.

My sunflowers have done me proud this year. Half have now gone over for the year, and I’ve left the stems for insects to hibernate in. The marrow and butternut squash and courgette in the same two beds did produce but not quite as well as I’d have liked. I definitely will have more courgette plants next year, I’ve decided that courgette jam is delicious and worth growing lots of courgettes for!

My Noob mistake today was to put my charging cable for my phone in my sweatshirt pocket rather than my gardening bag before I left home. It fell out of my pocket on the way to the allotment and an enterprising local clearly claimed it in the hour or so that it was lying on the ground before I retraced my steps looking for it.

I think that’s all for now. My darling man is home from work, my phone is charging and my coffee is delicious.