I've started to do my first proper seed saving!! Pretty excited about that! Have saved some French and runner beans. Have got the seeds out of the pods, just need to make sure they're totally dried out before putting them in envelopes and storing them for next spring. I would like to save some cucumber seeds too, I just need to look it up. I already did some runner bean saving on the food growing course I went on the year before last so vaguely remembered what I had to do. Not that it's really all that complicated. I mean you are basically saving the seeds!

Here I am in action.

Had a productive day all in all yesterday, it felt quite cleansing for both of us, as if we were preparing the allotment for the winter, clearing beds and covering the ones without green manure in them, cleaning out the polytunnel, harvesting the autumnal veg.

I was actually really surprised that we had so much to harvest, this is what it looked like:

The purple Brussel sprouts are really tasty, and that is not an easy thing for me to say seeing as I have been trying to like this vegetable for the last few years, in an effort to overcome my dislike for certain things (have conquered olives, beetroot and fennel also).

Here are some pics of Baz:

Harvesting the chard....

..parsnip..

..testing to see if the leeks are ready to pick..

..and the last of this year's spuds. These red ones were my favourite of the three types we grew this year.

Here are some pics of my seed saving:

I really love the look of the runner bean seeds, they're so pretty.

I planted some onion sets about two or three weeks ago and I was pleased to see them starting to sprout through the soil:

Not sure what they'll be like but out of the onions we harvested this year there were several that were still really small and as we just left them supposedly drying out on the soil for weeks, they had started to sprout again, so I replanted them in another bed.

Baz was very excited to see his first broccoli, or rather calabrese (I learnt recently that what most people call broccoli is actually calabrese broccoli). Here it is in all its glory:

Not the best picture unfortunately.

Ok that's all for me for now. -x-