On WfH Wednesday last week it was too hot and I resorted to laptop-working in the room with the portable air-con... today, a week later? Today it is so cold it feels like winter and I'm fully hoodied up at the desk.
Dinner was summer #allotment in a bowl... of pasta.
Allotment eggplant, tomato, garlic, chilli, and basil. Plus some olive oil, salt, pepper, and, of course, pasta.
Just realised this is actually vegan too, huh.
Beetroot cake is in the oven. 🤞🏻
This recipe: https://www.riverford.co.uk/recipes/beetroot-cake
But I omitted the sultanas as they're the Devil's dingleberries and put in 100g of walnuts instead (from the Devil's nutsack maybe?), plus a little ground clove, and a fresh grate of nutmeg.
No chocolate, as what is the point of making a beetroot cake if you stick chocolate in it!
I did 1.5x the recipe for our larger springform tin... so used an entire ... ⅔ of one #allotment beetroot 😅 so much for making a dent in the glut.
Went to the #allotment with low expectations and met them, which is much nicer than the total opposite of that, that being my usual approach.
Anyway, the two new low raised beds are done. The near one has three double rows of dwarf beans sown, yellow/green/purple varieties. Nothing in the far bed yet, need to decide what (thus my earlier query).
Kat has done some serious escavating inside the front gates as we need to recontour the area to handle the slope down towards the trackway.
I finished the base boards on the front fence.
A lot of watering happened and garlic water was applied in places to hopefully discourage rodent tunnelling.
And harvesting of course. The tomato production is going strong.
**What surprising thing could I be sowing now**, mid August, aka late summer, in Norfolk England (roughly sorta USDA 8b, but interested in varying takes on "late season" [edit to be less specific])
In this area, in a "good"* year, we can still be harvesting ripening tomatoes in October (in a polytunnel). So there can be up to about 2 decent growing months of time ahead.
We have outdoor bed space and understory space around the polytunnel tomatoes.
Today I will be sowing dwarf french beans outside, which have a good but not guaranteed chance of giving us a crop depending on the weather. That possibly isn't too surprising though!
I am thinking "surprising late season" mainly, though also "surprising over-winter" is interesting.... like I was fairly recently surprised to discover coriander grows well under cover in UK winter months. (Coriander is actually slightly frost tolerant!)
* aka: harbinger of impending climate doom racing our way...
#Allotmemt
#GrowYourOwn #GYO
#Gardening
