Garden Bears' World - Harvest and Halloween

 

Hello everybody!  It's Endon Bear here, with another little episode of Garden Bears' World for you.  Mr Monty might have finished his programmes for the winter, but we bears are going to be busy right up to Christmas and into the New Year, helping our humans with garden chores.

There are things to harvest all year, thanks to careful planning by Polar, who was particularly proud of these lovely cauliflowers.  She has never grown them before on our allotment as they didn't do very well when she tried in back in Southampton but, this year, they have been a great success.

There were two ready to cut when we went to the allotment at the end of October, so we brought both of them home and stored them in one of the boxes in our out-house.  Polar cooked one of them almost straight away and we had half with Sunday lunch and the other half in cauliflower cheese the next day, but we are still eating the other one.

Grizzly and Polar brought home two nice cabbages as well.  They also store quite well in the cool storeroom.  They are white ones that can be cooked or used for coleslaw. 

Polar collected some seed garlic bulbs during the week, which her boss orders from the Isle of Wight.  There are three different varieties for us to try.  We will plant them quite soon, by splitting them onto separate cloves and putting them into the ground about 15cm apart, although Polar is also going to start some in modules to put in raised beds at her friends' house where she sometimes does gardening.

Of course it was Halloween recently too.  We are starting to eat up the squashes we helped to grow - Polar made a nice risotto from this one.  Polar scooped out the seeds and flesh very carefully, so that Hanley Bear could have a go at carving it into a jack-o-lantern.

He had to be very careful with the knife, which is very sharp, but Polar helped him and soon he had cut out a good scary face.

Sonning and I carved a little squash each, then we sat them in a pot next to the front door.  There were no human cubs doing 'trick or treat' this year, because of the nasty virus, so we left the pumpkin men out this week too, so the cubs could see them on their way to school.

They have started to get squishy now, so we will be composting them soon, but we have more tasty squashes to roast and cook for soups, casseroles, curries, tagines and risotto during the autumn and winter. 

I'll let Hanley Bear tell you how we compost our vegetable peelings and food scraps now in another GBW blog post, as he likes to be Science Bear and it is very scientific, so look out for that after Sonning's next post.

Bye, bye until then!