Garden Journal | Heading into harvest and the autumn

Hello Silver Bloggers,
My first visit here and I'm bringing news of the monthly garden journal where you can catch up with gardeners around the world - indoors, outdoors, balconies, yards and smallholdings, food or flowers or both. Enjoy!

Lughnasa and Lammas - feast of the first harvest

Traditionally the 1 August, Lughnasa is one of the great ancient Celtic feasts of the British Isles, marking the start of the harvests. It falls midway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.

The ancient church helped itself, as usual, introducing Lammas, or Loaf Mass, where loaves made with the first harvest of corn (wheat) were brought to the church to be blessed.

There are many traditions around the corn harvest, including corn dollies and wreaths, and, counter to the loaves blessed in church (or maybe as well as), Lughnasa loaves were torn in four and placed for protection at the corners of the barn or grain store.

^{(Note: there are many variations of the Lughnasa story, I've picked the ones that appealled to me).}

I made a Lughnasa loaf using spelt, an ancient grain I've been trying. It's plaited to resemble a wheat ear, and to make it easier for tearing. Great with a bowl of potage, but not so good with our modern toasters. It's a very tasty loaf, quite mild, and perfect for other flavourings. I used sesame seeds, which are delicious baked on the top, but I had half a mind to use honey and chopped fresh rosemary from the garden. I did have bread and butter and north Norfolk honey: delicious.

On the right is a fruit crumble made with spelt flour, butter and demerara sugar, together with some chopped nuts and a few slivers of lemon peel zest. The fruit in this case was rhubarb from the garden. I have a heritage variety and this is the first year we've had more than one crop - there are more stalks waiting to be eaten.

I love rhubarb, that tart, slightly fizzy champagne taste. I cooked it gently with a tiny amount of water and a slug of ginger. Crumble is a favourite English pudding, easy to make. You can serve it hot or cold (I like room temperature), wth cream or ice-cream, custard or, the childhood favourite in our house, evaporated milk. The best crumble is light and crisp on top, with a little of the fruit juice bubbling through and caramelising.

In the Garden and the Kitchen

The spinach is magnificent, here it is basking in the late afternoon sun. My neighbour asked for some, she cooked the leaves yesterday and has kept the stalks for a stir-fry tonight. Anyway, there are two households tackling it now, so we should get the best of it before the season is over.

I've cooked a fair bit of spinach myself, trying lots of new dishes - sag paneer (I found my little local convenience store stocks paneer, that was a find), confit spinach and potatoes, cooked in olive oil and a little water, flavoured with garlic, lemon and bay leaves.

In the picture is a version of vegan Cornish pasties: the original uses potatoes, swede, onion and mushrooms. Here I've used potatoes and onion, with spinach, courgettes and mushrooms (you have to salt the mushrooms). The vegan pastry is from the local store and I used half for the pasties and half for apricot turnovers (top right hand corner), glazed with juice from the apricots. Lovely - I like a bit of pastry. Fruit turnovers are delicious on their own or with similar accompaniments to fruit crumble.

The tomatoes have been staked to within an inch of their life, and the tops pinched out to prevent any more trusses forming. Here you can see the four varieties: beefsteak and cherry tomatoes bottom left hand corner, salad tomatoes in the middle, and plum tomatoes on the right, half taken over by the potatoes growing on the terrace above.

This photograph was taken last week and the plum tomatoes, especially, have almost doubled in size. The weather is very cool with a lot of rain - I'm hoping for some sunny weather to help them ripen into the autumn. I was looking at some poly tunnel/tents that I could use to protect them as the temperature starts to drop.

This was a visitor I was pleased to see on one of the warmer days. I surprised to see two different species of bee gathering pollen, this one and a much more orange-y teddy bear looking creature. We also had a lot of butterflies on the buddleia. It's raining again today and has been for most of this week, so few bees and butterflies.

In the Fields and Garden Near By

Out in the sports field there's a mass of plums and gages starting to ripen - some are ready to eat and I have collected a few. There are thick brambles down by the pond with fat blackberrries and I've more in my garden. The Botanic Garden has a Bramley Seedling and I'm waiting for any apple windfalls to put with my blackberries for very special autumn crumble.

The Botanic Garden also has a fine crop of quinces and figs, but I would have to make an early morning reconnoitre to benefit from those!

Here's some poppies from late in the evening in June. I thought I had some of the flowers in my garden last week, but perhaps not, and now everything has been battered by the rain.

I'm tagging @ericburgoyne, who has a magnificent balcony garden, and @bearmol, a new gardener. Welcome to #gardenjournal 😍, read all about it here, and enjoy catching up with other gardeners around the world

^{Saturday Savers Club
I run a savings club every Saturday over on the @eddie-earner account. We're aiming to save £670 ($800) by the end of the year using the 365 day savings challenge. You can join any time of the year and set your own goals and plans (some people are saving Hive, others Bitcoin, some their local currency). We share savings tips and there's a free giveaway every week.}

^{Three things newbies should do in their first week and, for most things, forever afterwards!}