It's mid-November and today we have eaten our last Hokkaido pumpkin, nicely roasted with one of our free-range roosters. Some herbs and the Swiss chard are still growing in the polytunnel but the first frost on October 6 killed off any of the more tender plants.

Irish people talk about the weather. A lot. So let's get that out of the way:
Worst summer in 26 years. Cold, dull, exceedingly wet. Not nearly enough sunshine, in fact many many days with no sunshine at all. No sun means no heat in the polytunnel; it means unripe pumpkins and green tomatoes.

On the upside, we did harvest a good bit of food for the small space cultivated and the little bit of work involved. And I found a most delicious recipe for unripe pumpkin soup...

So what did we get out of this polytunnel?

First of all, plenty of enjoyment. It was always a pleasure to spend time there, smell the flowers' scents, see the plants grow and fruit, see the bees and other insects foraging, and harvest bits and pieces for dinner.

I don't usually weigh harvests but for the sake of this blog I did. Aside from some flowers and herbs (parsley, chives, basil, dill, fennel) we got:

* about a pound of pumpkin shoot tips for stir-fries
*2.25 kg Swiss chard so far, more to come. The pumpkin had shaded out the chard but now the pumpkin leaves have died back it's back and growing in the currently mild (c. 12C) temperatures.
*4.3 kg of young courgettes and crookneck squash (harvested young at max. 20-25cm in length)
*0.2 kg of Amaranth leaves for stir-fries and a handful of seed (mice got a lot more...)
*3.3 kg of runner beans and French climing beans (in pods, eaten whole) and a bunch of seeds for next year.
* Sweetcorn was pretty much a failure with 6 tiny measly cobs, partly because it was so cold and partly because the pumkins smothered them (more on that below)
* only a handful tomatoes; they simply did not ripen
*7.2 kg of Red Kuri and Hokkaido pumpkins (these did fully ripen)
*16 kg of unripe Connecticut Field pumpkin (turned rind, seeds and all into several rather large pots of yummy soup with some potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic and coconut milk)
* One 10kg pumpkin that had fallen and cracked for the chickens to enjoy
* 20 kg (3#) Halloween pumpkins for ourselves and others

All this food formed the basis of many's a dinner and resulted from very little work: As I had written in earlier updates, our surplus cockerel gang had cleared and manured the polytunnel; I spent two afternoons in early June doing the last little bit of clearing and the sowing/planting, then watered every second day for the next six weeks or so (about 20 min. each time) and after that did nothing except to tie up the pumpkin vines and water the container tomatoes. By mid-July the plants had hit the high groundwater table in that field, so no more watering was needed. The dense planting ensured that no weeding was needed.

What I shall do different next year:

* Plant in time, not 2 weeks late
* Don't plant a pumpkin called "Field pumpkin" in a small polytunnel...

* Plant more delicious Hokkaido instead or some low-growing Cabocha-type pumpkins, so that the sweetcorn doesn't get totally smothered.
* Protect the Amaranth seeds from hungry little mice.

I also hope to get time to finally put the centre keyhole bed in place, and I certainly hope for better weather next year.

The photos were all taken in late September shortly before the frost hit.