Harvesting Squashes & Pumpkins

On Saturday I harvested the majority of this years Squashes. It was nowhere near as impressive as last years Squash harvest but still pretty good considering this years conditions. The squashes are Butternut Sprinter, Festival, Futsu, Uchiki Kuri and Bon Bon.


I also picked the 3 fairly decent sized Pumpkins (Spellbound) produced from 2 plants.


Another job I've been working on the last few weeks was to move the Strawberry Cage. The Strawberrys had been in situ for about 3 years, so it's a good time to move the cage and start again, plus I want to put a shed where it previously lived. The photo above shows where the Strawberry cage was, and below shows where I've moved it too. Not far away!


In preparation for this I dug over the ground to remove any weeds and roots, added some manure, covered with black weed suppressing membrane and cut holes to plant the strawberrys through. Back in June I potted up the runners from the Strawberry plants to make sure I had plenty of new Strawberry plants to start the new patch off. With the cage moved to its new position I planted out 30 new plants.


The lid needs some attention when I get a chance over the winter, but apart from that the cage seemed to survive being moved.

Clearing up in September

By late September the Sweetcorn and Runner Bean plants had died and turned brown (see above). So it was time to pull them up and add them to the compost heap.


Here's the same scene after the plants had been removed and the ground covered with black plastic for the winter.


I also picked a few squashes from the allotment.