Hot 'n' tasty

So, Saturday was a busy day. It was very, very hot, so I made best use of the shed and a rather attractive, if not droopy, sunhat to avoid as best as possible going pink. Adam only has to look at the sun to go nice and brown but I - alas - am not so lucky and have to work at getting a tan. I am getting an allotmenteer's tan - brown arms, feet and face/neck but sadly pasty legs. I'll have to hit the bottle before going on holiday, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I digress...

Adam chopped down all the broad beans, leaving the roots in the soil to make use of their nitrogen nodules (sounds like something out of Star Trek). We also picked the past of the pea pods which we'll dry to save for seed for next year. There weren't very many, but Frank the Italian came over to see how we were getting on and he was quite adamant (Oh! I've just 'got' the name of Adam Ant... he he... oh dear) that we should save some. We picked the first kohl rabi - I still think it is possibly the cutest vegetable I've ever seen - and inspected the tomatoes for any red ones. Not yet. But they are coming along nicely. 6 cherry tomato plants, about 20 beef tomato ones and 7 regular sized ones. We'll have a taste test when they're ripe!

We also discovered that the nicely laden bough of the damson tree behind the shed Has Been Cut Off! Seems we may have suffered from the lack of bees that the paper keeps mentioning, cos not very many of the blossom from spring have been pollinated, and now the one branch that had has gone!! We think it's the new people behind us, who've done a fantastic job clearing the plot and attacking a bramble bush with gusto, but still... looks like we'll have to buy damsons again this year for the gin purposes. Bah!

So what else did we do on Saturday? We weeded and weeded, watered and tweaked. I got excited about little yellow courgettes and tiny cucumbers. We tried some asparagus peas raw (Bleurgh! Don't try this at home!) and picked and ate some mange tout. Now, here's a thing. Waaaay back, we bought the sugar snap peas and mange tout from our local allotment shop (not attached to ours - it's at some allotments the other side of Bedford) and one of the nice, rustic brown paper bags actually had 'Mange Tout' crossed out and hand-written 'Sugar Snap' instead. Now it's come to cropping time, I think they ballsed up, 'cos none of our sugar snap peas are sugar snapping. They're all mange tou-ing.

Never mind, still very tasty.

And carrots! Finally, they've decided to play ball. We had a grand total of ten (count them!) carrots which had germinated from the second sowing we did - the first was an outright disaster, even though we covered them with snuggly fleece an' everything. But now, we've got proper rows of carrot seedlings, god only know which ones are which though, I'm just hoping we end us with some of the 'Rainbow' multi-coloured ones , 'cos strange coloured veg is fab.

And then, Saturday evening, it was time for the barbie. I popped back home for get the chicken portions, local Bedford sausages (Lingers butchers' pork and Bombardier beer ones are highly recommended) a red pepper - not one of ours, sadly they're no where near that stage yet! - and plates, knives forks etc, and away we went. Tried barbequeing the sliced kohl rabi, which was nice, but I think it'd be better boiled. The highlight - of course - was the courgette, picked and sliced straight onto the BBQ. About 30 second from plant to grill and five minutes from plant to mouth. Just add olive oil, salt and pepper... Mmm.


How's that for cutting down on food miles?