Harvest Festival 2011 Part 4 (the best of the rest)

Other activities at the Harvest Festival included Ask the Experts, pizza making and apple pressing (mmmm, delicious!), tombola and the Big Raffle.....

Harvest Festival 2011 Part 3 (the volunteers)

A big THANK YOU goes to all of the volunteers that made the Harvest Festival possible! A few of them can be seen here, enjoying the day....

Harvest Festival 2011 Part 2 (Scarecrows)

Many visitors to this year's Harvest Festival cam especially for our scarecrow-making workshop, run by Joyce Warrren or Scarecrowland (www.scarecrowland.co.uk). Over 60 happy children (and their parents!) made their own plant-pot scarecrows to take home with them.

Harvest Festival 2011 Part 1

This year's harvest festival

was a great success, with over 500 people coming to enjoy the garden, the weather and, of course, the wonderful food!

park piccallili

I've never been much of a pickler, but when Carmen from Capel asked back in July if anyone could take care of a cauliflower or two, I knew I'd have to give it a go.

Cauliflowers aren't an easy thing to grow, but she and the Capel team had done a great job. Obviously it would be awful if the effort and enthusiasm that went into producing them fell at the pickling post, but I am a die hard laissez-faire cook, so I took my regular approach surfing the net for the least effort to best perceived reward. I appreciate recipes that aren't to restrictive on ingredients!

I plumped for this one, but in retrospect this looks pretty appropriate too, but we were months ahead of the nasturtium seed pods.

It was pretty straightforward - a fair bit of chopping to get the veg diced ready for brining/salting, then a bit of mixing & jarring, and a healthy pause...


Well, now it's been two months, and I have to say it's a thumbs up from me - I had a big dollop of it with some buttery kale from the allotment. Tasty!


Just verified that is also an excellent accompaniment to cheese.

Some July pictures

Beautiful edible Lillies

Mark from Vertical Veg talking us through compost
Phacelia

August pictures from the allotment Garden

A wasp squabble in a pumpkin flower
Tumbling Toms in a hanging basket
Scabious Flowers

The BEST raspberries. Fact.

Some of the mid August bounty
A lurking currant
More marrows and beans, late August
A shield beatle nosing around the asparagus berries
Water marrows