Sunday, September 13, 2009

An abundance of onions

For the first time, we have enough produce to make it worth preserving some for use into winter 
Only a couple of things and not even much of them, but our first ‘surplus’ so quite exciting !
Today I read about how to ‘string’ onions and we now have a couple of amateurish-looking strings hanging in the shed to see what happens. Hopefully, they will dry out a little and keep for a few months and not just fall off the strings or rot where they hang. If they look to be working I may do some more as I have left quite a few of the smaller onions in the bed.
We also have a freezer shelf of runner beans. I decided not to blanch them, just washed and dried them, sliced them up, then a loose freeze ready to bag into portions. We have lots more runners on the way so we will keep eating fresh and freezing spares for the next few weeks I think.
Charlie is getting mini-cukes every few days and we are still enjoying multi-coloured carrots, potatoes, salad and raspberries, even Steve and I managed to snaffle a few rasps yesterday when Charlie was out playing.
I cleared the asparagus beds of weeds yesterday and found 3 separate families of toads ! Lovely little things, very welcome so I tucked them back in and hopefully they will stay and get fat on slugs.