Squashed

It's the end for all the courgettes and squash plants. Powdery mildew won.

I think they might have been planted out quite late and it's been an extremely wet and cold year. We did get quite a good crop from the normal courgettes and a few Lebanese courgettes too.

Nothing whatsoever from the marrows, butternut squash and other courgette varieties.

We have one tiny pumpkin, just 3in big, which was growing at the end of 18ft of pumpkin plant. Somehow I couldn't see it turning orange in time for halloween, especially as the main part of the plant was dying.

Better luck next year! We like the courgettes so will definitely grow them next year. We probably won't bother with pumpkin or some of other things we planted - maybe one butternut squash, but we'll see.

Leeks

About a week ago, I dug over a bed and planted out some leeks. I planted the Musselburgh that I'd put in troughs about 5 weeks earlier. They'd grown well in the troughs, thickening up nicely. These ones didn't have the roots trimmed for transplanting into the pots or into the ground.

I planted something like 80 leeks approx 6in apart. They've taken well, growing strongly. It might be too late in the year to get full-sized leeks, but hopefully they'll do well enough for a decent crop. I might thin them by pulling alternate leeks as required, but we'll see how they come along.

The Bandit leeks are still in the tomato pots, doing well. These are the ones that were trimmed. It's far too wet to dig up the spuds yet so no chance of planting them out any time soon.

The Autumn Giant and others still in the original pots will probably end up in the compost bin if the weather carries on like this ....

Winter Onions

Just a note - 100 each of Electric (Red) and Senshyu (White) onions started in seed trays of compost about a week ago.The first ones have started sprouting.

We've had torrential rain so no chance of digging over the onion bed for more planting out yet.

Mushroom Hunting

It's a bit late, but was a great day out! Shame about the rain - we all got soaked through to the skin.

We went on a fungi foraging course run by Andy Overall http://www.fungitobewith.org/
There were about 20 of us in the group. After a quick chat, we all went off into the woods. We picked anything we found and took them back to Andy for identification. He was great - explaining the characteristics of each mushroom and how to positively identify it. We kept him very busy!

We found loads of Ochre Brittlegill (Russula Ochreleuka) and Orange Birch Bolete, as well as various other smaller mushrooms. Many were a bit raggedy, past their best, but we found enough to bring home for dinner. They were lovely cooked in a creamy garlic sauce.

We feel confident that we can go back into the woods and identify some of them again - some good and some bad. We feel confident that we can feed ourselves without poisoning ourselves, so it's all good!