Spuds....?

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I don't think it looks much in the picture, but this is a whole weekends work. We've not taken too many pictures of this area before as it's just been used to park our bikes, but here's one from a couple of weeks ago to compare with. There's a little more work to do to finish it off, mostly involving spreading something rather unpleasant across it.

Next spring, this should become our potato plot for next year. It's quite a large plot so we should get lots of crops in here. This is why I think it doesn't look much in the picture by the way, it looks much smaller than it is, not sure why, maybe it's my shadow? Bear in mind, the side of the shed you can see is 7' long so this bed is easily twice that.

We've both been sleeping very well, we've put a huge amount of physical effort into digging out all the couch grass. There's another reason as well though, there's a great amount of satisfaction to be had from finishing off the majority of our digging work. We have a little more to do on the brassica bed, but I think we're both quietly pleased that next years weeding shouldn't be as back-breaking as this years digging.

Beef stew (& homemade bread)

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So started with the following produce from the allotment:

Carrot, Turnip, Onion

Added some stewing beef (400g), 4 spuds, 1/3 bottle of red wine, 1/2 pint vegetable stock, some garlic, sage and rosemary. Browned off the garlic and onion, then added all the ingredients; brought to the boil on the hob, then put it in the oven (180 degrees) for 3 hrs).

In the meantime, made some brown bread to accompany.

Et viola!

Yum!

Let there be light

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This is the latest photo we have taken from the same angle as my most recent blog post "In the beginning". You can see the marked difference between where we started at the beginning of May, and this picture taken half way through October.

Everyone where I work is probably fed up of hearing me go on about how much digging we've done this summer. It almost seems like every weekend we've been out there doing some heavy graft. But, in reality, it's not been like that at all. We took the decision to only partly manage our plot for the summer, so we could reap the benefit of some crops in our first year. Only now is the site starting to take shape as a whole as we look forward towards next season and even more great produce.

I really like looking back through Beth's pictures, but rather than retrospectively blog all of these I'll stop here with the before/after type arrangement and continue on from now. I'm not sure how exciting the pictures will be over the next few months though, as we head into our first winter at the allotment. Here's looking forward to some great veg, and tasty recipies next year!