Allotment 5/10/10

 So a while ago I told you of a useful upside of running i.e. that you get to see where stuff grows. Well yesterday I put this knowledge into practise.

 It was a beautiful day so I decided to make the most of it. With my rucksack on my back I mounted up. This little journey would require my bike.

 Firstly I headed out to the road that leaves Dorchester and heads towards Bere Regis (it's the A35 I think but I'm not sure as I'm not my Dad). This is quiet a busy road so care was needed but luckily they are doing some work on the Roundabout so there were some big gaps in the traffic. I was after apples.

 People like me throw their apple cores out of the car window and some of them grow. I think that my haul would have been a little more impressive if I'd been out a week or 2 earlier but I don't think it was too bad, well, all free stuff is good.

They are not the prettiest apples in the world but that really doesn't matter as they taste fantastic.

Now, I wasn't going to do sloe gin this year because we've still got a couple of bottles of last years left but there are so many sloes about this year (well there are here) it seems a little rude not to.  This time it was a different road that leaves Dorchester, the one that goes to Yeovil (B3147 that joins the A37 according to Google maps), and I didn't have to go to far to find them. Loads, everywhere.

So I went shopping in the afternoon and bought some cheap gin. Soon the two will be combined and a lovely thing well be created.

I have to admit that I was inspired to go out by a repeat of a River Cottage Autumn that I saw on Sunday afternoon. One of the things that HFW made was Nettle Ale so I thought that I would give it a go.

 Nettle picking is never the most fun you can have but a glove and some scissors usually protect you. The recipe is here. As it is the first time I have made it I have made half the quantity in the recipe but I have just had a sneaky little taste and it is coming along nicely.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Allotment 21/9/10

Does anyone one have any recipes to use up a lot of cherry tomatoes? It seems my experiment with a blight free tom has gone quite well. Seriously, I have fuck loads (I believe that is the expression I heard them use on Gardener's World.) and I made BBQ sauce and some tomato sauce for storing on Saturday but the BBQ one demanded skinning of the tomatoes which became very boring very quickly. It is very tasty though, do you want to recipe? Well here it is,

BARBECUE SAUCE

24 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped

2 cups chopped celery

2 cups chopped onions

1 ½ cups chopped sweet green or red peppers

2 hot red peppers

1 cup brown sugar

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tablespoon dry mustard

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon peppercorns

1 teaspoon tabasco sauce

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 cup vinegar

Combine the tomatoes, celery, onions and peppers in a large pot. Cook until the vegetables are soft, this will take about 30 minutes. Press through a food mill. Return to pot and continue cooking until mixture reduces by half, this step will take about 45 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and cook slowly until mixture is the consistency of catsup, about 1 ½ hours. As this thickens up, be sure to keep stirring frequently to keep the mixture from sticking. Pour into hot jars, straining out the peppercorns, leaving 1/4 inch. Process pints for 20 minutes in a boiling water bath. This will make 4 to 5 pints of a very spicy barbecue sauce.

 As Autumn is sort of sneaking upon us, warmish days and cold nights, I decided that a bit of a harvest was needed so hence the large amount of tomatoes.

 I have had a good summer though, I hope you lot have too, and there was lots to pick. So there was the last of the melons, cucumber, beetroot, lettuce, carrots, runner beans, raspberries (a few anyway), cauliflower, sweet corn

and 8 apples from my tiny, tiny tree.

I am a happy man. Hurray for me.

 Hopefully it will stay warm for a while as I still have chilli plants in that are covered in fruit but they are taking ages to ripen, I now have a cloche on over them to try and encourage them to turn red.

 Over the winter I am hoping to move a number of the beds around in order to make better use of the space but I want to get it done pretty soon as I would also like to grow some green manure on the beds to improve my soil a little.

 I do think that we are going to have to invest in a small freezer to put in the basement though as our little one is stuffed full at the moment.

Allotment 17/8/10

Previous on Allotment blog,

“I’m impatient, is this melon ripe yet?”
“How do I know if it is ripe?”
Damn it! I’m just going to pick it and see!”

And now the concluding part of Melon of Destiny.

3 or 4 days after I picked the lovely looking melon I finally plucked up the courage to cut it in half and see what was inside. As the knife pierced the slightly unattractive skin of the melon juice flowed. This I took as a good sign.
I cut it in half and gazed upon the orange flesh. Well it looked lovely and smelt of ripe melon. So to cut myself a slice for the final test. To cut an unnecessarily long story short, it tasted bloody lovely. I rule!

One of the useful things about going for a run, apart from the getting fit, reducing the chance of heart disease thing, is being outside and watching the seasons come and go. You get to see the various blossoms of the hedgerow in spring and then as the year progresses different things flower and fruit.
As I have been running around Dorchester I have built up a little mental map of where various useful and edible plants are.
In late spring and early summer I can always find some elderflower but as we head into late summer and autumn more fun things start to reveal themselves in the hedges and on the trees, if you know where to find them.
This week I have found 2 plum trees in the hedgerows and the blackberries are coming on nicely, in some places they are ready to pick. There are also plenty of apple trees around that are covered in fruit.
Go on, go for a walk around where you live and see what you can find, you might be in for a pleasant surprise.