h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Kelli, you're doing great. What you can do is leave them on the vines until you have a frost. A light frost will kill the vines, but will not be cold enough to ruin the squash. If you are expecting a freeze, however, you will need to cut them. Be sure you leave about 3 inches of stem on the squashes. Then put them in a cool dry place for a few of weeeks to let them cure. A wooden box filled with hay or straw or newspaper strips works well for this. You need air circulation around them. After they are cured they should store well if kept cool and dry.

Air circulation is very important

Also cut off the largest leaves to expose the squashes to the air and the sunshine - it will help speed up the ripening before you get the frosts. It will also make things much tidier and less crowded.

We are currently overloaded with pears - both our Conference and Concorde trees have cropped extremely heavily this year We took about two thirds of the fruit off last week - simply to keep the starlings, thrushes and blackbirds at bay

I've made Spiced Pickled Pears (a Delia Smith recipe) and Golden Pear Chutney but there are still about 200 pears to eat/use

We are also swamped with Bramley apples. We keep giving boxes and carrier bags full of apples away and a few keep returning to us in the form of chutneys

I've never grown squashes but butternuts are my favourites. Maybe I'll try them next year. We've had great success with green and golden courgettes in the past so I think we'll be OK.

Hope everyone is enjoying the autumn/fall

Armorel

Not sure I'd recommend them now I know how darn big the plant gets! I had no idea what it would look like when I planted the seed out of a squash from sainsburys, the huge monster of a thing has totally taken over now...

Ah well, you know better for next time Kelli

I got the garlic in yesterday. What I thought would be a little light weeding of the area (it had been infested with runners from the alpine strawberries) turned into a bit of a mammoth task. MC kindly suggested that if I lift the stone flags that make up the path we would have a much larger area to plant in. Silly me I agreed (well it's been on the todo list for a while). Then it was clear the area and eventually we got to the stage we could plant the garlic cloves. It's done now. All we need to do is move the flags back to where we want the path to go...

Garlic gets planted now?! Did you buy whole bulbs to plant or just individual cloves from a bulb from the supermarket?

I was wondering if there was anything I could put in now that the beds are emptying that would be ready in the spring...

We bought bulbs from one of our seed suppliers (The Organic Gardening Catalogue), though we have used shop bought garlic before. The garlic should be ready about mid summer so it's not plant now and harvest in spring.

Hello coohee anyone around? I think I'm lost where is the salon?

*has come into the greenhouse to get some veggies from the hydroponics section*

Good heavens, how did you get here? You must have wandered across the lawns from town. Well, welcome to the Atelier (about which, more at A304354). The salon is just up those stairs, past the conservatory and exhibition space, through the atrium, past the ambassadorial suite, and through the library.

Hmm, or perhaps you'd like to come back with me. We're on our 80-somethingth conversation, and that's a hexadecimal number!

*hands opticalillusion a plastic bag* Would you carry this lettuce for me?