I am slowly trying to catch up with garden chores – the whole kitchen garden looks a bit abandoned at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago I harvested the borlotti beans from the three sisters garden.

It took a while a pod them all but in total I got 5 lbs of dried beans to eat over the winter and to provide beans for next spring’s planting.

Every  year I resolve to plant more, and every year I kind of forget.

Despite the late planting of my squash plants I still managed to harvest 5 sizeable butternut squash – and there are another 5 volunteer squash in the polytunnel. There was also the last of the bi-coloured sweetcorn corn which despite being a little old was very nice mixed in with some polenta with sausage stew on top.

For the first time this year I am also storing some corn cobs and will try planting the dried kernels next spring.

After clearing the three sister garden, I cut back all the autumn raspberries and mulched the area with old goat straw and poo – yummy.

Next year I have a dream of sun flowers everywhere – along the edges of our fields especially in the pig fields. So to achieve this I have saved a vast quantity of sunflower heads. I wasn’t very good at getting the seeds out but I reckon they should work if chucked in a pot of earth or even just scattered on the ground – fingers crossed.

Hasn’t all been happy in the seed-saving world. The peas and mangetout I had carefully sorted  out and left to dry in the poly tunnel of dreams got eaten by rodents. We have a real rat/mouse problem and none of the lazy cats (or the elusive poly tunnel snake) are doing anything about it – slackers!