Potter's Patch

We always seem to be up at the plot at the right time. Yesterday morning a man in a flatbed van arrived with manure for some of the plot tennants. After a few trips I asked him how we could get some of it and he said he had a couple more loads and came back and dumped a HUGE pile on our plot for us - what a result!! All for the price of a bottle of wine! We then spent the rest of the afternoon shifting it into a hastily made pallet bin (or rather hubby did most of it as we only had one fork. I was on wheelbarrow duty though!). It still needs to rot down a bit and has a fair bit of straw in it, but it will be perfect for in the beds in prep for spring and the rest can just stay where it is!Hubby made a start on the beds for my fruit bushes, both newly ordered and those I'm going to move from my back garden. The soil seems to be getting harder to work the further back we move, but still, Hubby's strong :o) ! It's here in the pic in front of the greenhouse.
  We've picked our first cabbage AND I actually ate a lot of it (was quite nice)!! I'm very impressed with myself (not a cabbage fan) and proud that I've grown such beauties since July.

I picked a small bowl of chillies that have finally started to ripen. I chopped them in half, de-seeded them and popped them in a small jar with some olive oil and pepper corns to make chilli oil. Looks good and will infuse over time. I think I'll make a few of these if they can keep turning red before the first frosts kill the plant off. I must say I'm much less impressed with the peppers though, none of them are ripening!!!! Arrgh! And a few are even starting to rot - what's going on there?
My lovely butternut decided to split :o( - so we chopped it off and roasted it. Nice enough but I think it would have been even better fully ripe. A shame! My pumpkin is going nowhere, lots of babies but none maturing - not looking good for halloween. Slug are big baddies here too!

 
Few other bits and pieces done too. Tried sowing some more (now very late) kale in cells in the greenhouse as something has eaten all the seedlings I put in. Weeded my smashing salad bed, moved the swing to the back, planted all my onion sets, marked out the fruit beds for Hubby and even experimented with 5 Christmas spuds!! It's all still busy, busy with no signs of slowing down yet. The yellow squash Sunburst F1 are happy as anything, can't wait to try them, they're supposed to taste smashing!