Our afternoons on the allotment have fallen into a pattern as we switch from planting and watering to clearing and digging.

After being dug over, some beds have been covered with weed control fabric. Hopefully, this will stop any weed growth.

We are still managing to harvest a few things. Some crops are being harvested to be stored. Our freezers are full of vegetables that we hope will see us through to our next season’s harvests. The summer house has now become a storage space for onions, fruit and squash. Potatoes have been bagged and stored in the garage. Beetroot is buried in crates of compost in the garden greenhouse.

 We harvested our Crown Prince squash the previous week so last week it was the turn of the Bush Baby and Autumn Crown squashes.

The Bush Baby squash looks very similar to the Crown Prince whereas the Autumn Crown are a yellowish colour.

Both have produced fairly small fruits in spite of being given plenty of water. We don’t know whether the size is normal for these two varieties but we do know that the Crown Prince squash were smaller than usual.

The beetroot has done really well this year. I’m not sure what we will do with all of them. One advantage of the dry conditions is that there is no slug damage.

The cranberries are growing in tubs outside of our plot greenhouse, Some were starting to drop off the plant and so I guessed that they were ready to pick.

Some beans had been left on the Pongo French beans so that we could collect seeds to use next year.

Some crops such as leeks and brassicas will be harvested as we need them. Both are protected under enviromesh. If we uncover the brassicas, despite their mature size, they will still be attacked by wood pigeons, We have made the mistake in the past of uncovering them.

The leeks are covered as protection from allium leaf miner. We did consider taking the enviromesh off them but first I decided to check the leaf miner’s life cycle. It was fortunate that I did as the adults lay a second lot of eggs in October and November. According to the article that I read, it is this stage in the life cycle that causes the most damage.

Our cucumber is still producing fruit.

A few weeks ago we picked some Tickled Pink apples and I mentioned that the flesh was reddish almost to the core. I have been meaning to take a photograph and last week I remembered to do just that.

We had a couple of afternoons out with Ruby, The first was to Temple Newsam.

The last time we visited, last December, some parts were fenced off as they were preparing for a light display. We were disappointed to find that again, our walk was restricted. A large part of the grounds was fenced off and instead of a peaceful walk, we were treated to the noise of construction vehicles. Apparently, they were preparing for a concert and we could only walk around the lake area. It’s put us off visiting again.

We were diverted through the farm area. Ruby was really interested in the animals.

We made our usual visit to Nostell where a flock ( is that the correct term?) of ducks were on a walkabout.

The cygnets had congregated by the banking so we could get up close. I think they were hoping that we had some titbits for them.

Their wings seem almost fully developed now as we could see as the birds set off up the lake. They don’t seem to be able to get airborne yet.

We are still picking lots of tomatoes so I decided to make a couple of batches of tomato ketchup. One has more spices than the other. The recipe said that the ketchup will keep for three weeks in the fridge or three months in the freezer. I decided to freeze some in ice cube trays. This way I can take out a few cubes when we need some.

We tried some of each recipe with a couple of meals. Once was as an accompaniment to some cheese and onion crisp bakes made with our potatoes and onions. These were served with a mixture of our frozen vegetables.

The second was with a piece of breaded salmon that was served with some red cabbage from the freezer and our potatoes.

Another meal was a bean and vegetable curry that used our, potato, carrots  and onion along with peas and sweet corn from the freezer.

I made a chicken and leek pasta bake which used some of last season’s leeks from the freezer and some of our frozen peas and broccoli. I put breadcrumbs with cheese scattered on top in my version which gave a crispy topping.

Finally, at the end of what has been a very strange week when our government took ten days off work to mourn the passing of the Queen but her own family had to undergo a gruelling amount of work under public scrutiny whilst grieving their loss. Does anyone else see the irony in all that or is it just me?

As always stay safe and well.

Again I am linking to Harvest Monday over at Dave’s Our Happy Acres blog