14th September 2012

The summer is just about over and the harvesting has been taking place for a fair few months. I have been getting courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, for a while now and they are beginning to show signs of either blight or are getting stringy. With children back in school and the weather a bit dodgy I have taken it upon myself to be the chutney queen this year, trying out lots of different recipes and phoning up friends to ask how they did a particular recipe.
Jobs to do: 1. Harvest all you can, if you have too many beans, you can par boil them then freeze them. As for the tomatoes and courgettes I usually make a ratatouille and then bottle them as a winter vegetable.
2. Of course do the odd bit of weeding, but in the vegetable patch I would just enjoy the crops to the end.
3. Watch out for the caterpillars on your brassicas, go and check them every day and pinch off any that you see eating your greens. I also still use slug pellets, they seem to love the tips of my courgettes and my lettuce.
4. Leaf clearing can drag on for a few months, but just keep sweeping regularly putting the leaves onto your compost heap. Leaf compost is full of goodness. You could even try stuffing them into specially designed leaf composting jute bags, I then put the bags onto my beds and let them decompose.

So today I would like to share with you a Beetroot and Orange Chutney Recipe, delicious in a cheese or jam sandwich.

1 kilo beetroot, trimmed, peeled and diced
2 large onions
3 large apples grated, you can keep the skins but not the cores Zest and juice from 3 oranges
1 tbsp mustard seeds
½ tbsp coriander seeds
½ tbsp ground cloves
½ tbsp ground cinnamon
400ml red wine vinegar
425g sugar

Throw all the ingredients into a pan and simmer for about 1 hour until everything has gone soft. Put it into warmed jars whilst it’s still hot and close the lids quickly to create a vacuum.