Autumn is already here and the vege garden is almost empty again. All that is left now are the parsnips.

Summer was long, hot and dry and the radishes fell victim quite early on along with the strawberries. But with a bit of watering we managed to get quite a crop of some things.

The courgettes started off well and we ended up with many more than we could eat from just one plant. Also the gherkins went nuts. We had a couple of rows of them and ended up more than we could possibly handle. In total for the summer there was probably over 20kg and we managed to preserve only about 10 – 15kg out of that. In the end we had to pull out all the plants to stop them producing any more…

But the amount we have now should last us a while. We have jars and jars of pickled gherkins, sliced and whole, and a couple of different gherkin salads.

The carrots were a bit stunted and many were rather odd shapes, but what we could we froze (or grated and froze).

The latest crop were the pumpkins. I had hoped for a couple of pumpkins, but we ended up with few more than that!As I mentioned the parsnips are still in the ground. I think the row closest to the pumpkins was a bit overwhelmed and probably don’t produce much. But the next row looks quite promising. I think they will have to start to come out in the next few weeks.

As for the pumpkins we don’t know what to do with all of them. Hopefully they keep for a while, but one has already been sacrificed to pumpkin pie, some will go to pickled pumpkin (we have a couple of 5 litre jars :-). As for the rest, who knows…

In the future we might have to invest in a maakellari or earth cellar. For a 1000-2000 EUR you can buy the parts to build a room just at or slightly below ground level and then cover it in dirt. If it is covered enough it will be insulated enough to stay above freezing in winter and cool in summer. We just need one big enough to hold all the fruit from those trees :-).

And one last thing about the carrots… beware the little carrot people 🙂