Out with the old, in with the new

It’s that time of year when there are plenty of leaves around on the ground, so time to stock up and start making next years leaf mould! Now many garden writers obviously live in the leafy countryside and never see a car. I only the other hand live in a city so inevitably end up picking them up from the side of a road that has many, many cars passing along it each day – completely against the advice of these rural-based writers. I figure any leaf mould is better than none, and it’s probably nothing compared to the crap kicked out here in the days when we had industry (and no clean air act) – there’s a reason why the stone on our house is black!

So after collecting 10 bin bags full I figured I’d better empty out the old stuff:

Black Gold!

It’s not fully rotted down, but it’s great to add as a mulch to the beds, and I put it over the bed where the old blackcurrants were and then covered it over with weed fabric. I can’t decide what to put in this new bed at the moment so covering it over will give me more time to decide. Maybe some more strawberries?

All tucked up for winter

Having emptied out the remainder of last years leaves, it was time to put in this years. Only after emptying the builder sacks I put them in, I discovered they’d excluded the light very well from the soil they were on. So I dug out the remaining roots (mainly nettles) and added a couple of buckets of compost from the compost heap to this area.

Blackcurrants here?

I’m thinking I might put some blackcurrants in here, maybe some Titania? Any recommendations?

I moved the leaf sacks to the other side of the  bath and put the leaves I have gathered in them. I also use Biotal Compost Maker with them which is supposed to help them break down quicker. And whilst it looks like a complete mess here at the top of the plot, this is a vast improvement to how it was at the start of the day! The plot slopes quite steeply here so is quite difficult to walk along here so I have leveled this part of the path past the leaves and generally got rid of a lot of the weeds

There’s a path here, honest!

Finally the first Brussels of the ‘season’ were ready and eaten for tea, the first Brussels I’ve successfully grown:

And very nice they were too!

It’s an allotment blog, what were you expecting?

You just can’t beat picture of soil!

This is where my strawberries used to be and has now been properly dug over with some leaves, the remains of a bag of manure and the remains of a bag of rockdust added to the soil – as seen above! Now just have to decide what to put here…?

Confused Strawberries

Over at the freshly weeded (honestly!) new strawberry bed – OK I still need to sort the runners out – they’re happily flowering away??? So I moved a bit closer to get a photo and was a little surprised to see strawberries!

 

Can’t see them ripening up now though – LOL.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen…

The apple challenge continues – the challenge being to use as many apples as possible in as many different meals as possible. Apples crumble was a big hit – although it would have been better with toffee as well (according to my son’s friend) – but sausage and bean casserole (with sneaky bits of apple), not so good. But that was more to do with the sausages to be honest. Slabs of apples sauce are in the freezer – it doesn’t take much cooking for them to turn to sauce – but the biggest hit to date (with the kids) has been apple fruit leather.

After a quick cook on the hob, followed by a quick blitz with the blender, it only needed the 20 hours or so in the oven…

I’m thinking maybe the mixture was a bit too liquid when it went in the oven? But it turned out OK in the end and the kids both took some into school to show their respective classes and give some away. The remaining ‘sheet’ rolls up quite nicely and should store in the fridge for a while yet – certainly longer than it’s going to last!

I’m dragging the rest of the family off to the RHS Harlow Carr ‘Taste of Autumn‘ event this weekend – waiting to see which day looks best on the weather forecast first – to reveal all on the apple tree, with luck. Speaking of which, picked another 50 or so the other day, still plenty left… Currently storing the good ones on top of the wardrobe and in the outhouse, may need to find more room soon!