Squash/Birdle/Books/Wild Things/Mulching/Growing all year round

Do you ever find yourself looking something up and then spending ages following links and finding all sorts of interesting snippets but have deviated wildly from where you started? So do I. I can disappear for hours down the rabbit hole that is a search engine and so here are some of the things I found that appealed to me this week. I was looking for more information about Chilean Guava but hey ho!

Many thanks to Garden Ruminations for hosting Six on Saturday.

Thing No. 1 Squash

At the height of summer, I look around the allotment and wonder how many plants I am going to lose to the invading army of squash. This year, they sat looking like a losing army for most of June, and then, like an explosion, they shot off in July for a raid. They swamped my early chicory, a few late peas and the paths either side of the bed, making it difficult to trace back to where each fruit had come from. I wanted to shorten some of the plants but have a habit of chopping off the squash whilst doing so.

Dating back to 8000 BC from the Peru region, the longest I have managed to store a squash is 13 months and that was a Queensland Blue, but the Butternut such as Hunter have a far shorter storage time even though they have sat in the sunshine curing for the same number of sunny weeks.

My favourite squash soup is from Soups, Tarts and Thursday Nights: an Otterton Mill foodbook, produced many years ago and where they are still a venue for live bands and great food. Their soup is for sweet potato which I used to make, but sweet ptoatoes are a very variable crop even in a polytunnel here in Exmouth, and this year would not have produced much, so I substituted them for squash.

Spicy Squash Soup

100g cashew nuts olive oil 2 carrots peeled and diced 450g squash of your choice in chunks 1 medium red chilli finely chopped fresh ginger – as much as you like 100g cashew nuts olive oil 2 carrots peeled and diced 450g squash of your choice in chunks 1 medium red chilli finely chopped fresh ginger – as much as you like

2 cloves of garlic crushed 1 pint of stock 50g of creamed coconut chopped 3 tbsp tamari handful of chopped coriander 1 box of silken tofu (optional)

Place the cashews in a dish and pour over the tamari. Put in a hot oven and bake until the tamari is sticky and then remove and cool.

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and saute the carrots, chilli, garlic and ginger until they begin to soften. Add in the squash and cook for a few minutes and then pour in the stock. Cover and simmer until the squash is tender. Add the silken tofu if using and blend. Place back on the heat and add the chopped cream of coconut and stir until melted.

Serve with the cashew nuts on top along with some coriander.

Thing No. 2 A game

You’ve heard of Wordle – surely? Well now is the time to test your knowledge of birds in the UK using Birdle created by the Museum of Zoology. (I am disappointed that there are not three os in the word zoology.) I love these games and have a revolving group that I play until fed up. This one has kept me occupied for several weeks now.

The sliding scale means that you can choose how many letters – I use 5 or 6 depending on how brave and knowledgeable I feel that day. I thought 9 or 10 letters would be easier but not with my bird knowledge!

There is a different Birdle here and here (this one has a picture as a clue).

Thing No. 3 Garden book club

If I mention Garden Book Club to people they often ask if we read gardening books, i.e. non-fiction and we have read some, but I would say that the majority of the group prefer fiction. Here are some of our favourite books – to qualify for Garden Book Club they only need to mention plants, gardens or animals in some way.

Our next book is North Woods by Daniel Mason and we will be meeting on November 26th at 7pm.

Thing No. 4 Here the Wild Things Are

This wonderful, short documentary details the Wild Things project where people photograph plants and animals in their location to document what is happening in cities across the world. It has been going since 2019 with 2024 having 83,000 people logging 65,000 species. We are not a city but it is a fantastic citizen-scientist project.

Thing No. 5 Mulching with compost

I intend to spend the months of November and December mulching all the beds on my plots. I use home made compost and have managed to increase the amount I make over the last couple of years which means that I buy manure in once every three years just to add a bit of variety. Now is the time to do it when the soil is still warm and damp – both conditions that suit the soil biome – and will mean less waterlogging next year if we have a very wet winter/spring like this year.

I use two wheelbarrows of compost per bed which amounts to about a 3cm layer – sandy soil needs more than clay soil but I still only put it on once a year and grow two crops in across the year in most beds. At this point in the year I also have temporary compost bins which I build on beds that have nothing in them as I seem to produce endless quantities of green material. These bins I build using layers of green, brown and manure until I reach the top. I then wait a week or so, it sinks like the pot hole outside my house, and I can put on another three layers. They are ready in the spring whereupon I pull up the wire container and spread the compost. It is rough but ready and saves me carting piles around.

Thing No. 6 Growing all year round

One of my favourite gardeners is Steve Richards and his Youtube channel, along with his ebook and website. His niche in this overcrowded market is that he grows all year round and is self-sufficient. He and his wife are not keen on spending hours freezing food and so he plans and manages his plots and garden to have fresh food every week of the year – at least 30 different veg. It is impressive, as is his sharing of his knowledge in his ebook and the views of each week’s harvest. This is a gardener who makes the absolute most out of varieties and timings to grow optimum vegetables. He is definitely worth following.

He cuts the top off his carrots so that he can interplant over winter and so that he can see if there are any slugs and snails in the beds and whether they are doing any damage. I wondered if I might give that a go. I suppose I think that the carrots might still grow slowly over winter but if they are big enough, why do they need to? Definitely an idea to trial this winter when the numbers of slugs and snails has been unprecedented and they will have all laid eggs at some point.

Anything caught your attention this week?