I’m back and miraculously my little plot is still alive! It seems that the drought broke not long after we left and there has been a fair bit of rainfall. I was fully expecting most of my crops to have perished through neglect but it seems Nature had other ideas.
I couldn’t quite believe how much I had to harvest. As well as the peas and beans I gathered earlier and the many courgettes and onions, I had lettuce, tomatoes, squash – only one butternut this time but eight “Mashed Potato” squash. I had savoy and red cabbages as well as beetroot. Such a lovely surprise after all my absence.
22nd of September 2022
It was a bit of a dull day but I hadn’t been up for a few days, so I needed to check what’s going on. Everything seemed pretty much the same as last week the red cabbages look like at least one of them might be ready for chopping. I pulled up a beetroot last week there are a few smaller plants in the green bag so I made sure to keep it watered to see if I got any more of those before the end of the season.
My miraculous green cabbages were looking great they are still coming along nicely. This just shows what a bit of perseverance can do. I’ve learned a lot from the cabbages this year. They have such a long growing season. When I thought they had been mauled by the ‘slimeys’ they showed that they are quite resilient and bounced back. There’s another nice big one that looks ready to harvest but I decided to stick with the red one this week. It always surprises me how far a cabbage can go.
The aubergine seems to have decided to come alive at long last it put out some buds and we’ve got a beautiful purple flower on it now I’m just going to take the net off it because I don’t want that ripping the flower off like it did with the first one.
My four-headed mutant cabbage is still growing so I’ll just see how that goes.
There are a couple of tiny courgettes on the yellow plant I gave him a feed last week but that doesn’t seem to have come on much since then. I’ll still persevere hopefully I’ll get 1 or 2 more before they finish.
Towards the end of October, the squash were ready so I picked those and took them home to cure. The final lesson for the year was that I can leave my cabbages in the ground until I need them. We were going away in November and I decided to pull them up for fear that there might be a frost but I was advised that they are so hardy they will ride out the storm.
I was so happy with my yield for 2022. My only regret was not to have planted more of some items. My 3-metre square patch was so productive and it just made me excited to try more in 2023.
To the roots of it 