Autumn vegetables

Autumn has come to the garden. I got back from holiday to a garden that was in decline.

In the sunshine it still has a certain something, especially as the cosmos plants have finally flowered (late as ever in my garden), but in the chill of early morning it looks rather bleaker.

The corn is now brown and old. My courgettes have produced one last, huge courgette, but stopped flowering, so there will be no more there. The cucurbits (squashes and courgettes) are also uniformly covered in a dusting of powdery mildew and many patches are bare where I removed leaves to try and prevent the mildew from spreading. Interestingly, the only places the cucurbits aren't consumed in mildew are where the plants have crept into and up my bean stalks. I'm not sure if there's something protective about the beans or if it's being off the ground they like. I will try to remember to give them supports next year so they can lift themselves off the ground.
My purple beans  also fell over in the winds of the storms while we were away, and my sunflowers lost a number of stalks and seed heads to the storms.

However, all was not lost. Despite having toppled to the side, the purple bean plants are still producing plenty of beans. My squashes are finally turning from deep green to ripe orange.

It is the season for harvesting, so there is plenty to eat in the garden yet. Last night, having finally finished off the latest crop of beans I was wondering what except chard (which I like much more to look at than to eat), I could possibly eat with my dinner. It was then that I had an aha moment. All those things I'd been ignoring all summer because they were too small were finally ready to harvest. So I pulled out two beetroot and two carrots.

I've been growing multi-coloured carrots this year, but it so happens that the two I pulled out were both a pale yellow. They tasted every bit as carroty as orange carrots, especially as I cooked them the way that retains flavour the best: remove the stalks and peel, but otherwise leave whole. Boil for 15 minutes, then chop once cooked.

I peeled and quartered the beetroots and roasted them along with my potatoes. Finally, I selected the smaller, fresher beetroot leaves and cooked them just like I cook chard. I cut out the stalks and chopped them into 3 cm lengths, then roughly chopped the remaining leaves. The stalks I boiled for 6 minutes (in with the carrots for the last 6 minutes of their cooking time) and the chopped beetroot leaves I boiled for 3 minutes (also in with the carrots). They turned the water a bit red, but seem not to have had any impact on the colour of the carrots themselves. In case you're wondering, the meat is roast gammon and I made a cider gravy to go with it.

Cider gravy recipe (serves 4 with a thick gravy, 6 or 8 with a thinner gravy):

1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp cornflour (=cornstarch in US English)
1 small bottle of (optionally low/no alcohol) cider
Optionally some of the juice that has collected in the pan from any meat you are roasting

1. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat.
2. Add the cornflour and stir to form a paste.
3. Gradually add the cider about 1-2 tbsp at a time. Keep stirring until the gravy is smooth each time before you add any more. Keep adding cider until you have a consistency you like. Once you have reached a consistency you like, turn up the heat and keep stirring until the gravy bubbles. Once it has bubbled, check whether you still like the consistency. If it's too thick now, add more cider as before.
4. Optionally add 1-2 tbsp of the juices from any meat you were roasting and stir in.

Grass doesn't need watering in the UK

Grass is a survivor. We had the longest rain-free heatwave I can remember in my life this summer. The grass became brown in patches and dry all over. It looked like it was a goner. But I didn't water, because I know grass is a survivor. And because water was scarce in the heatwave and I didn't want to waste it on grass when we had so little to go round. The rain started again in early August. And my lawn sprang back to life. It's now September and my lawn is almost entirely healthy green again.

After the rain

Before the rain

My beetroots and my chard also loved all this rain and the extra growing time. 

My cucurbits weren't so keen. Every time it rained, powdery mildew afflicted some of the leaves. It started with just a few spots.

These were often just on the back of the leaf, so unless you know to look from the mild discolouration on the front you didn't notice unless you turned it over.

Eventually it spreads to the whole leaf.

My initial policy was to remove all these leaves and destroy them (they can't go on the compost heap, as the powdery mildew would stay in the compost).

But more and more leaves were becoming afflicted. Every time it rained leaf after leaf would be affected, especially the older leaves. Getting rid of the leaves was becoming a nuisance and the plants were putting all their energy into regrowing the leaves and hardly any into making new courgettes. All except one, it turned out, which was hidden under the sage until my other half protested its messiness and chopped it back.

It's a bit big to be eaten in most courgette recipes, but will make a lovely soup.

So I've now got to the time of year when I'm not fighting it any more. I'm not chopping off any more leaves with mildew and am letting my courgette beds recover from the devastation I caused to the courgette beds with all my cutting, albeit with a dusting of powdery mildew over the top.

I fight this battle every year, each year knowing that there will come a point when I give up and let it go. Cucurbits are strange plants. They need a huge amount of water, but if they get it from rain, then they tend to succumb to powdery mildew. Only in environments carefully crafted by people, with water from a watering can instead of the sky, are they happy.