Sunday On The Allotment - 28 Oct - Pumpkins and Squash

It was pretty bleak this morning out on the St Ives Allotments site on the edge of the Penwith Hills - although the views over the sea and hills were as lovely as ever. Autumn is now well underway in West Cornwall and I've been attending to the last of my meagre harvest.

Its the weekend before Halloween - and so the traditional time to bring in the final harvest of pumpkins and squash. 

I've had some success growing these this year. I sowed Squash - Winter Golden and Pumpkin - Mars in pots back in May, then planted them out on the allotment in June.

I also grew a couple of Giant Pumpkins - more on those in a future post.

They are not going to grow on much more - so I've cut the fruit from the plants and brought them back home to the garden. I'll now leave them outdoors for a few days to allow the skins to dry out (if the rain stops !) for better winter storage.

I'll be looking up some different recipes this year - pumpkin and squash can be a bit bland if not cooked with some imagination. I'll also use one or two for Halloween lanterns.

Chilli Pepper - Harvest

Back in May I planted a few chilli pepper seeds in pots in the mini-greenhouse (£9.99 from Poundland Penzance !).

I chose two varieties - Jalapeno as a reliable cropper - Padron (labelled as 'The Tapas Chilli') to try something new. Also - I love Tapas and had visions of looking up recipes and creating some wonderful dishes.

Both germinated ok - but the Padron plants failed to thrive - whether due to the lousy cold weather or due to  a certain amount of neglect on my part I'm not sure. Two of the Jalapeno plants grew on well though  although somewhat "leggy".