Finally harvested the last of the people sprouting brocolli so we pulled our the plants and opened out the last section of the central path. we now have a handy central path running all the way down the centre of the plot. This has ben a bit of a bone of contention but now finally sorted.this should make things much easier for the wheel barrow.

Picked quite a lot of psb at the weekend and made this large tart with it. First time at making my own pastry too – not sure why it took me so long. The resulting tart lasted a few days worth of lunches.

The cherry tree is blossoming nicely. Looking forward to a bumper bucket full of cherries again this year..

Spent the morning at the allotment on Saturday and tidied up the collapsing bean wigwams/structures.
I collected all of the withered beans first and filled a huge carrier bag with these.

I have now tidied up all the canes for the winter and since the roots are rich in nitrogen I also left the bean plants in place to rot back into the soil.

Not much left on the allotment now – I did bring home one Kohl Rabi – there are still lots more but they are not swelling up yet – I guess it has been too dry and I have not made enough effort to water the plot recently.
my cabbages were a real disappointment – I picked a few on Saturday and they are all riddled with slugs and snails right through to the middle – I guess I should have used more slug pellets.
My Brussel Sprouts, Kale and Brocolli plants all seem to be weathering OK though.
I had an on-site feast of raspberrries – think that was the last of those though.

Another job I finally got round to was pruning the huge cherry tree. I am sure it is the wrong time of year for this but I have been too busy since getting the plot back in March.
I chopped all of the pruned branches down to managable sizes and have put them in my log-store (it will be soon time to start using the open fire at home) – and the leaves were all raked up and pushed around the base of my raspberry canes – I felt they would make a good mulch.

Anyway – once I was home I podded the withering beans and collected plenty of seeds for next year.
I only got half way through the beans that I had collected and had plenty – so I threw the rest onto my compost heap.

I now have plenty of white and black french bean seeds for next year – plenty more than I need I am sure – I’ll have to pack them up in envelopes and give them away.

Made some sloe gin at the weekend.

I was on a walk around the countryside surrounding Eastbourne – walked from Polegate to Hankham and then back via Stone Cross.
I was walking up a country lane and saw the largest Sloes I had ever ever seen. This climate change seems to be doing us some amazing favours. The long extended summer this year has obviously meant that the sloe growing season has definitely not been slow. it’ s been long and fast.

I picked as many as I could reach and took them home and used my usual recipe to make up 7 bottles of sloe gin.

Quantities for 7 x 750ml bottles:
4 x 750ml bottles of gin
About a bucket of sloes – or about a mugful per bottle.
About 3 mugs of sugar – granulated or castor – I don’t think it matters.
dash of vanilla essence

Half fill each bottle with sloes – pierce or cut them before they go in the bottle.
cover these with sugar
top up the bottle with gin ( I have also done this with Vodka in the past)
add a drop of Vanilla essence.

Job done!

But over the next few weeks and months try to give each bottle a turn to keep the sugar from settling down to the bottom for too long.

After a year I usually sieve and funnel the flavoured gin into other bottles and it will probably make a lot less than you are expecting but should hopefully still equate to the original 4 x 750ml bottles – although the sloes will have soaked up some of the gin. This is where I usually decide to re-use the gin soaked sloes in a chutney – and then spend the rest of the year spitting out the pips when eating the chutney. If anyone has any better ideas what to do with the gin soaked sloes please let me know.

You don’t have to leave them for a year but a year always works well for me – as that is when I need to use the bottles again for a new batch.

Here are 5 of the 7 bottles. I like to use a big black marker pen to write over the existing labels.

Went for a walk in the woods the other day to seek out some mushrooms – since it is the season for free food – it’s everywhere!!

It did rain fairly soon into our walk and my son and I had to shelter beneath a dense tree. but we were already about 2 miles form the car by then. We ventured a bit further once the rain had abated then on our return to the car we found a huge beefsteak mushroom attached to the base of a large Oak tree. We had seen it on they way into the woods but it looked quite dull brown.
Once it had been soaked a bit by the rain though it was looking really crimson Red and dripping with a red blood-like liquid.

I know quite a bit about wild mushrooms so I knew what it was 100% (I wouldn’t recommend anyone else try this unless they have a reference book to check off all the identifiers) so we pulled it off of the tree and took it back home.

Its quite a solid heavy fungus – and unlike anything else – apart from beef steak – which it looks like!

I looked into a few ways of cooking it and opted to thinly slice it and stewit in shallow water along with some salt, pepper, shallots and garlic. It made a great stew and I ate this with a couple of sausages and some more roasted onion. it was Lovely – although next time I would add in some more vegetables.

The usual metallic sourness that I had heard about was not present when cooked this way – so I think I’ll try this again.  there was another fungus growing further down the tree – so I may have to go back and get the other bit at the weekend if it is still there.

Anyway – here are a few pictures of the process.

Here is the stew – not the most beautiful looking supper – but damn tasty!

My cabbages are producing heads already – surely this should happen much later in the year – I don’t need them until the winter.

I have been planning to grow Sorrel for a few years but only got round to it this year. I am really pleased with the result – the red veined variety are very delicious and will hopefully last the winter to re-produce next year.
I have the plain green variety too – and these are just as tasty – but not quite so distinctive to look at.
My lunch every day includes plenty of these leaves along with Rocket flowers, Mizuna and Orach (still doing amazingly – although this is now starting to flower – I’m not sure if this means the end to them).

Red Veined Sorrel…

Orach…

One lovely looking dark Green pumpkin has emerged from amongst the runner beans – I had given up on this plant – I thought it had withered away but has suddenly started crawling around the base of the wigwams.
I’ll be keeping an eye in this and probably making sure that it doesn’t try to produce any more fruits – as I would be amazed if there is enough nutrients in the soil after the runner beans have depleted it.
The largest pumpkin I have been able to produce so far was about the size of a lawn bowls ball (not a bowling ball) so I am hoping to better that at least – I would love to try to grow more next year – i love pumpkins and they store so easily.

The second wave of sunflowers are now flowering – These ones have much larger petals – and smaller centres. Some of them are about 11 feet tall.
they create a bright colourful welcome each time I arrive at the plot.