Hello everyone! It's Endon Bear here, with a little Garden Bears' World item about our allotment and garden this autumn.
We've just had some very, very frosty weather, so we haven't been able to do any gardening for several weeks, but in October and Novembr there was still plenty to do.
In the back garden, the broccoli plants were growing well (and they still are). Polar will have to put some nets over them soon to stop the pigeons pecking at them!
We had good crops of squashes, courgettes and plum tomatoes too, so made lots of chutney this year.
The dry and sunny weather during the summer meant that, on the allotment, some of our pumpkins didn't get as big as we hoped, but they were very tasty and the slugs hadn't been gnawing at them so they have kept well. We still have some to roast or turn into nice soup over the Christmas holidays.
Hanley Bear came to the allotment with me on a sunny day in October and we helped Polar and Grizzly to find all the different squashes and pumpkins, then to take them back to the little greenhouse so their skins could dry out thoroughly for storing.
The biggest ones were those Polar had planted on the compost heap, where they had most moisture and lots of goodness - we are definitely going to do that again, and Polar says she might make a frame for them to grow over to keep them even safer from the slugs.
We are very proud of our allotment and, this year, Polar had entered it in the Britain in Bloom competition for our local council, which was being held at the New Vic Theatre, where Hanley Bear met Mr Nello Baldwin when he went to see the Marvellous play.
There were lots of prizes to be won. I hoped there might be an award for the best gardening bear, but Polar said we shouldn't expect too much, as the plots had been inspected when we were away on holiday and some jobs needed doing.
Polar was quite pleased that we won a bronze award, which came with a nice little certificate, a garden centre voucher and a packet of seeds for us to grow next year. She says she knows what we need to do next year to try for a better award, including putting in some little labels to show what we're growing, and doing some more weeding before the judges arrive.
We saved our biggest pumpkin for Halloween. We were very busy bears, helping Polar to scoop out all the seeds and then to put the pulp in boxes for freezing so she could make some nice soup for us over the winter. There was so much we almost ran out of freezer boxes!
We are busy planning what we will grow in 2023, so look out for more Garden Bears' World posts from me next year!
Happy Christmas from Endon Bear.
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