Although I shouldn’t complain, since the allotment has been so productive in so many ways, it hasn’t been a brilliant year for pumpkins and squash. But we laid out an entire bed for them for this, our first attempt. Since the plants have now died back, we’ve harvested them.
The two larger pumpkins aren’t quite ripe yet, but with luck they’ll go more orange indoors, rather like the small one, which has made up in colour what it lacks in size. They are all Charmant F1, and really should be rather larger than they are – the biggest is 4.5 kilos, and the next one 3.1 kilos.
The yellow squash are Festival F1, which have been much more successful. They are the right colour and size. The disappointment has been the butternut squash, notable in the picture by their absence. Plenty of the flowers set fruit, but they all rotted before they ripened. I guess that the wet August did for them. We’re by no means alone in this; other allotment holders have had the same experience.
But the courgettes continue to be productive, and we’re still getting a few gherkins. We’ll try again with the butternuts next year!
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