Season of mists and well, dampness generally, really
Autumn is definitely here. The trees are suddenly all turning and the grass is littered with sycamore leaves. Many more will come, I'm sure.
We have a horse chestnut tree with drops it's crop onto our patio every year. Usually the resident squirrel then collects them all up and deposits them around the garden. This year we have a good crop but I haven't yet seen the squirrel. The last time I saw it was a few weeks ago when I could be bothered to put feed in the bird feeder.
Either way, I decided this year that I didn't want horse chestnut seedlings all over the garden anymore so I'm collecting the conkers up instead. I read you can use them as laundry agent. As I'm currently using soap nuts imported from some country that probably needs its inhabitants to be able to use these things themselves, I thought it would be useful to try them.
First, it's not easy to crack the conkers to get the skin off (there's a risk of staining if you don't, apparently). When you have removed the skin, it's all straightforward. stick a couple of ounces in a little food processor to crunch them up smallish then steep in hot water for 10 minutes. Hey presto, milky looking water. This is due to saponins released from the nut, I believe. Pour this liquid into your dispense and wash.
So far I've only done this once. An odourless clean wash came out of the machine.
Elsewhere, my husband has been collecting and saving his own vegetable seeds for a few years now. We've left some runner beans on the plants to collect this year's seeds. I'd picked a few dry pods from each of the two rows a week or so ago and it looked like one row had black seeds and the other had white. However, I picked some more dry pods today just off the one row and got a real mix of bean types. Not sure what this means for the crop next year but they are very pretty.
There's very little going on in the flower garden at the moment. We have Japanese azaleas, supposedly, but although I can see some leaves, there is no sign of buds or flowers this year. We have some sedum that is looking pretty good at the moment, and one buddleia which I thought had died during the drought but we pruned it back and gave it lots of water and it's still going strong.
In the veg garden, most of the summer crops have stopped producing now, but the greenhouse crops keep going. The autumn/winter salad is starting to come in, too. Rocket - much prefers this cooler weather to high summer - mustard greens, chard, kale. We had a decent salad for two, today. Mizuna is sprouting, too, but far too fine to cut yet.
We haven't had anything decent off the courgettes for a week or two. Not sure why I haven't pulled them up.
Although we had a frost a few nights ago, it doesn't seem to have actually killed anything and even the outside tomatoes are still producing.
Yield wise, we are running at around 750 portions since May or just under 25% of our yearly needs.
Finally, it seems to be a good year for mushrooms. We don't normally see anything edible locally. At least I don't. But a few weeks ago we found some boletes on our favourite walk. This week we had what I believe is a shaggy parasol in our garden. And now there's a shaggy ink cap as well.
Will we be eating them? No. My husband doesn't trust me!
We have a horse chestnut tree with drops it's crop onto our patio every year. Usually the resident squirrel then collects them all up and deposits them around the garden. This year we have a good crop but I haven't yet seen the squirrel. The last time I saw it was a few weeks ago when I could be bothered to put feed in the bird feeder.
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| We're adding to our haul of conkers every day |
First, it's not easy to crack the conkers to get the skin off (there's a risk of staining if you don't, apparently). When you have removed the skin, it's all straightforward. stick a couple of ounces in a little food processor to crunch them up smallish then steep in hot water for 10 minutes. Hey presto, milky looking water. This is due to saponins released from the nut, I believe. Pour this liquid into your dispense and wash.
So far I've only done this once. An odourless clean wash came out of the machine.
 |
| Runner bean seeds from one row of plants |
Elsewhere, my husband has been collecting and saving his own vegetable seeds for a few years now. We've left some runner beans on the plants to collect this year's seeds. I'd picked a few dry pods from each of the two rows a week or so ago and it looked like one row had black seeds and the other had white. However, I picked some more dry pods today just off the one row and got a real mix of bean types. Not sure what this means for the crop next year but they are very pretty.
There's very little going on in the flower garden at the moment. We have Japanese azaleas, supposedly, but although I can see some leaves, there is no sign of buds or flowers this year. We have some sedum that is looking pretty good at the moment, and one buddleia which I thought had died during the drought but we pruned it back and gave it lots of water and it's still going strong.
 |
| One (small) portion of salad with today's spring onion hoard. |
We haven't had anything decent off the courgettes for a week or two. Not sure why I haven't pulled them up.
Although we had a frost a few nights ago, it doesn't seem to have actually killed anything and even the outside tomatoes are still producing.
Yield wise, we are running at around 750 portions since May or just under 25% of our yearly needs.
 |
| Probably an elderly shaggy parasol. 15cm across |
Finally, it seems to be a good year for mushrooms. We don't normally see anything edible locally. At least I don't. But a few weeks ago we found some boletes on our favourite walk. This week we had what I believe is a shaggy parasol in our garden. And now there's a shaggy ink cap as well.
Will we be eating them? No. My husband doesn't trust me!
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