Harvest Recipes

Now the harvest is here there's the fun of finding out what to do with all the fruit and vegetables. 

I enjoy trying new things so I've been Googling for ideas and found some websites that I think are worth sharing:


 www.beetrootrecipes.co.uk


www.courgetterecipes.co.uk


Everything Runner Bean


VegBox Recipes


If you have a favourite recipe site I'd love to hear about it.

Allotment News

Here's a gallant soldier smiling up from among the beetroot, just one of a billion potential plants from last year's crop of weeds that seeded on the plot before I took it over. I'm hoping that, if I can pull up every flowering weed this year, next year will be easier. 

This beetroot was simmered, unpeeled and with just the leaves twisted off,  until soft and until the skin lifted off easily. It was cooled and peeled, then sliced and put into a clean jar and covered with cider vinegar - because I like cider vinegar. My daughter used bought pickling vinegar.  The pickled beetroot keeps in the fridge for two to three weeks but is usually eaten well before the three weeks is up!

Harvest and Weeds

Sweetcorn, courgettes, pattipan squashes and Desiree potatoes

In between trying to keep up with the weeds we've been enjoying our crops. I can hardly believe that the main growing season is nearing its end and it will soon be time to put large parts of the plot 'to bed' for the winter. If I had organised the planting more carefully this would be relatively easy but I've got plants all over the place! Next year I hope to do better.

The sweet potato plants are growing but I may have left it too late to put them in. There are squash and pumpkin plants sprawling everywhere. One of the pumpkin plants is producing striped fruit - pumpkin, or something else?? 

The bindweed and gallant soldier continue to march across the plot - it's a shame they're not edible.. 

Home Grown

I dug up the last of the early potatoes yesterday 

and harvested more courgettes! The beetroot are doing well and taste delicious, they are such a deep, dark red.


I had to buy more vinegar yesterday to pickle them in. I use cider vinegar and simply slice the beetroot thinly, pack it into a jar and cover with the vinegar. We usually eat it so quickly that I don't need to do any more to it - however, I'm having such a good harvest I might have to do a 'proper pickle' if I want to preserve all the crop.


Saw a recipe for mash made from potato and beetroot - brilliant colour - I might try that today with roast chicken to brighten up our Sunday!

Courgettes!!

I'll have to say goodbye to the sugar snaps - only four seeds have germinated and have been clobbered by weeds - mostly 'gallant soldier'. I had a major weeding session on Monday and Tuesday of this week and cleared the seed bed but only four straggly, sad plants have emerged. Not a success story.


The courgettes, however, are another story altogether - they are growing like mad. I've never had such good plants - must be the well-rotted manure doing its job because I've not done anything else to the soil.

And there's one of those 'gallant soldier' weeds smiling up at me too. I'll get you!

I've been eating courgette soups for the past several days - very soothing when you've got a summer cold, as I have at the moment. We've had sauteed courgette, steamed courgette and when I've bought the vinegar, we'll have courgette chutney..... and I must try some of these recipes too.