Harvest

I think I should post more photos of the food I harvest from my allotment. I normally drop by on the way home from work and collect just enough for my tea. This evening I decided to try digging up a few of my maincrop "King Edward" potatoes - they are huge!



I also collected a small basket of random goodies. The tomatoes are coming thick and fast now - luckily I really love tomatoes! I'm building up a stockpile of courgettes too...



There are loads of wild Blackberries around the edges of the allotment site, and I wasn't the only one picking them!

Cannock Chase

I visited Cannock Chase with friends at the weekend. It was beautiful!

We saw lots of interesting animals and plants, including Lizards, Frog tadpoles, Deer, Dragonflies, various Butterflies, wild Raspberries, Strawberries, Bilberries and Cowberries (or possibly "Cannock Chase Berries" - a rare hybrid Bilberry/Cowberry, apparently!).


Bilberry


Cowberry

I'd never tasted Bilberries before, but they were really sweet and juicy. The Cowberries were more mealy and had less flavour, but were still nice. The wild Strawberries were absolutely gorgeous!

Lizards!

There is a family of lizards on my allotment : )
Well, I assume it's a family - there are at least 4 baby ones, all about the same size (tiny!). They like to sunbathe on the wooden edges of my raised beds:

Crochet gathering baskets

I'm addicted to wicker/handwoven baskets - they look good (in my opinion!) and they're perfect for bringing home the harvest. I've collected loads over the years from charity shops etc and I've always fancied having a go at making my own.

The problem with such baskets is that they're too bulky to carry around on the off-chance that I might find something worth collecting. To solve this problem I've desgned some collapsable, crochet baskets that fit in my handbag, *just in case*...





One day (soon!) I'm going to try making cordage from Nettles, and crocheting or weaving a basket from that. I'm also going to experiment with recycled materials. In the mean time, I've made these baskets out of natural garden twine, which is eco friendly and smells like compost : )

Courgette loaf

My breadmaker cost £24 from Argos. I've *easily* saved that much money on bread since I bought it last August. It's simple to use, and it's fun! This loaf was based on a recipe for carrot bread, simply replacing grated carrot with courgette.

Preserving the harvest

A productive lunchbreak has yielded one large tub of wild cherries. I'm thinking Cherry vodka....

Yum!

One thing I learned in my first year of allotment gardening (last year) was to harvest as much as possible while it's still young, tender and tasty - there will always be lots more to come!

Tonight's dinner was quiche (made with homegrown leaf beet), baby new potatoes, broad beans, peas, teeny carrots and salad. Pretty much all of it was my own produce : )

I would have had wild raspberries for pudding, but I scoffed the lot on my way home...