Jobs for the month (September 2005)

September 1st, 2005

  1. This is the time of year to turn surplus into preserves.  Got loads of green tomatoes?  Good pickle recipe in recipe section.
  2. Got loads of pumpkin?  They store well.  You can also freeze them ready cut for roasting.There’s a good pumpkin soup recipe in the recipe section. If you’ve grown a variety such as ‘Sweet Dumpling’ which is delicious but resembles a cannonball in size, shape and durability, then you need to roast it whole and scrape the seeds out when it is cooked and soft.  The flesh can be scraped out and mashed with butter and curry paste  -  nice! Pumpkins and their seeds are specially good for men -  something to do with pollination!
  3. Your onions should be lifted, dried and stored now and also your shallot crop.  Onions are easily plaited on a string.  Baler twine is fine and riding stables will usually give you bags of it if you ask. A plait of onions keeps well as the air circulates and you can easily cut off one without the whole string unravelling.
  4. I’m told that cooked beetroot can be frozen.  Anyone tried it?  Sweet corn freezes very well andif you strip it off the cob, it takes very little room.  It’s not a difficult job.  Blanch the cobs first and plunge into cold water.  Take off the first column of kernels with a small pointed knife then the other columns come off easily when bent sideways.  Fortunately we all have good crops of sweet corn this year as the flocks of cob raiding pigeons, crows and magpies have not returned.
  5. Most soft fruit is finished, except blackberries and Autumn raspberries, so you can start pruning outdead canes.  Strawberry beds need a tidy up.  There’ll be plenty of runners to start a new bed.
  6. Check all brassicas regularly for caterpillars or you’ll get a rude shock!
  7. One might have hoped the slugs had perished in the dry spell but no such luck!  They are back, bigger and hungrier than ever.  You might be waiting for your sprouts to ’sweeten’ after a frost but they are already nice enough for the slimy ones.  They also find swedes tasty.  It helps to keep your paths trimmed as they rest up there in the day.  If you are on site at twilight, the number emerging to tackle your crops is quite depressing.  If you are very organic and a Buddhist, you can collect them up and put them in your compost bin where they will recycle your organic waste.  Keeping them there is the problem!
  8. Outdoor tomatoes have done pretty well on site but the dreaded blight is here now.  Taking off the leaves helps.
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