I love this time of year, the rich autumnal colours, the cosy fires and of course… pumpkins and squashes! I harvested my one and only squash from the pumpkin patch this year and that happened to be a beautiful blue skinned Crown Prince. I bought the seed packet from Sarah Raven earlier in the year and was drawn in by the unique colour and reputed taste that the flesh had to offer. The skin is a lovely vintage blue colour and the flesh inside is orange, they aren’t meant to grow very big in size but I was hoping for more than one to appear on the vine this year! I think for now this pretty little squash is going to sit pretty on the fireplace for a good few months until it goes in the oven for dinner.
I also harvested a nice little bowl of fresh raspberries, they have produced a good amount this year, so good in fact that I’m struggling to pick them quick enough! They are an Autumn fruiting variety called Autumn Bliss and are currently two years old. These were taken home and demolished with some ice-cream, I think it would have been a little selfish gobbling them all up at the allotment seeing as there were so many…
The last thing I harvested was some pretty flowers, zinnias, verbena, scabious, calendula, and a few dahlias. The flowers are starting to near the end of the growing season now and some are looking a little deflated like the verbena for instance. Although the bees are still enjoying them and I love how colourful they make the plot look on a very cold Autumn day. Hopefully next year they’ll be lots more flowers to enjoy!
4 thoughts on “A Small October Harvest”
What a perfectly charming post. My goodness, your photos are amazing. Just beautiful!
What a lovely little squash! We had a long, unusually hot summer and it was fairly good for squash. My tiny vertical garden yielded 11 sugar pie pumpkins, five butternuts and one nearly microscopic buttercup. It will be fun to serve home-grown pumpkin pie for our American Thanksgiving this November. Please do share how you use your Crown Prince when the time comes.
It’s a beautiful little squash. And I love those beautiful raspberries from your garden. We only grow Australian native raspberry canes at the community garden where I have my allotment. They grow with a vigour - but they have barbs on the stems just like roses so picking them is a challenge. But worth it.
I grew crown prince this year too, and I only got 1 little pumpkin from it, though the plant grew huge an spread right across our patio area. I can’t wait to try it though!
xo April