Just a Little Bit Longer

It may be meteorological spring but brrrr it’s been a cold weekend with temperatures of about 5° and no sunshine both days. Needs must though so we got a few hours of plotting done both days.

There are signs of Spring, with these pretty primula and grape hyacinths giving a little colour in the dullness. The hedgerow is full of song from the robins, tits and finches and this weekend the first signs of new growth on the hawthorn (or possibly blackthorn). I had to use the macro, they’re very tiny buds.

My tiny hazel tree is also in bud. I know the bud isn’t in focus, but the stem is rather interesting especially compared to the smooth hawthorn.

The perennial flowers are beginning to emerge. Poor little things; it’s due to go much colder with possible snow this week. This is a lovely silvery delphinium that Aimee let us take from her plot last year.

I cleared our iris bed and the stems will need a bit more trimming after the cold snap is passed. They’ll also appreciate a bit of potato fertiliser.

We’ve been pulling lots of grass from the beds and have buried it deep in the bottom of holes that we’ve dug and manured. One is for a Jack-be-Little pumpkin and the other for a green bush courgette on Plot7. We have our planting plan worked out now and just a few more seeds to buy…

Not quite as fancy as some of my plans from previous years, but it serves its purpose 🙂 Of course, I fully expect to diverge from this as other plotholder’s spare become available - it’s so hard to resist!

There’s a lot of clearing and prepping happening all over site and we’re at that point where we just want to get sowing, but we’ll wait… just a little bit longer.. Thanks to Maxi Priest for the song title. (I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve used the Jackson Browne song before)

Death of Democracy

Look at those interesting clouds as we left the allotment Sunday afternoon -  I zoomed in on my phone which is why the foreground looks a bit weird. We got home just before a storm hit, with a bit of thunder and lightning. Last week was rainy with more than 30mm being measured, but it’s remained warm and on Sunday it was 17°.

It was a clearing weekend. On Saturday I cleared the sweetcorn plot, although the already-full compost bins need to shrink a bit before that lot can be added - it shouldn't take long especially if it stays warm. On Sunday we cleared the flower bed. The zinnia, cosmos, marigolds, chrysanthemum, lobelia and plenty of weeds were taken home for the Council green bin collection. The flower bed now has several perennial plants which should spread by next year and gaps can be filled with annuals, including a million nigella seedlings! The concern with perennials is that the weeds (I'm thinking of bindweed) can take hold and are more difficult to clear, but we'll try to keep them under control in the meantime.

Fellow plotholder, Aimee, is resigning her plot at the end of the year so she was offering her flower plants to people - in case the new plotholder decided to just dump them. I accepted a dianthus Doris, which is a lovely pink and has that pretty blue-green foliage, and this delphinium which has managed to avoid the frost. It has a silver/grey tint to it which the camera hasn't quite managed to pick up. I'm not sure what variety it is, but it's very beautiful.

Talking of beautiful flowers, some of Ivan’s irises have had a new flush of blooms. I love this one, what a fabulous colour!

That damp photo was taken the same morning that the Sun popped out for two minutes and bathed the site in this golden dawn light. Obviously the photo doesn’t do it justice - they rarely do!

The trees and hedgerow are looking amazing in their Autumn colour and the spindleberry (Euonymus europaeus) is showing off its inner seed - I so love those colours together! We have several spindle trees growing along our allotment site hedge and the leaves turn a fabulous red in Autumn.

Jamie pulled the last of our Salad Blue potatoes yesterday. He has plans for our Halloween meal next week. There were plenty of tubers; they’re rather scabby but seem to have escaped slug damage- unlike half of the remaining beetroot. I’m assuming that’s what has caused this damage though the pests I found at the crime scene were wood lice - surely not…

Thank goodness some have escaped this massacre so I still have some to eat! I pulled a parsnip - luckily I wasn’t expecting a prize winner 😄 but there’s enough flesh there for my needs. The Spring onions are still good and very pungent!

And this is what the beetroot (not the ones in the photo!), parsnip and spring onions became - served with a beanburger and fried chard.

I started with clouds and I’ll finish with clouds, this time early morning clouds with a sliver of a moon. Such amazing colours - when I saw it I thought 'someone could easily paint that, not me though'. It's a shame but I know my skillset and art isn't included!

And now, on the day we welcome our third Prime Minister in 2 months ... An excuse to share one of my favourite songs by Kula Shaker. Possibly the only good thing about having a historically appalling period of Government, although it should mean there will be a general election soon to actually let the people decide who represents us.

Ugly

The weather has been rather changeable. When the sun shone it was lovely but not so good when the cloud took over and that mass brought about 5 spots of rain with it, so the earth is still really dry.

This weekend we had two days of clearing away the three bean wigwams and then we dug the area for our broad beans. We've also managed to do a lot of weeding; it still amazes me how well the weeds grow with so little rain. The nigella have spread seeds and seedlings everywhere - beautiful, but rather a nuisance!

The remaining borlotti beans are drying on netting attached in the top of the polytunnel. The smaller squashes may go up there later when we need to use the chair!

More of the tomatoes are finally ripening but the peppers are remaining obstinately green. With the temperatures dropping to about 4° most nights I wonder if they’ll ever ripen…but you know some good things do come to those who wait. This Chinese Dragon radish was sown months ago, did nothing during the heatwave and finally started to appear a few weeks ago. I thought it would be woody, but no.

It’s hot fresh flavour was a great addition to this lunchtime potato salad with raw beetroot and Chinese cabbage thinnings.

I bought a julienne peeler recently and it’s perfect for carrots and radish but the beetroot was a bit too tricky and messy, so I just sliced that really thin. We’ve been enjoying carrots and pak choi in a couple of stir fries recently too, the Blue Dragon sauces make life easy. But as I’m mentioning brands, if you see these Itsu Bao buns for sale, buy them! They’re so delicious! Talking of delicious..Here’s the bean, carrot and courgette meal I made the other day with last years beans, a can of chopped tomatoes flavoured with smoked paprika, garlic and a little rose harissa.

Someone had cut back overgrown sections of the allotment hedge, so I thought I'd pick the rosehips if the birds aren't going to get to eat them - there are still plenty in the hedge for them. This is the recipe I intend to use to make rosehip jelly which I've never made before. The author of that recipe is quite funny and she is so right - the thorns are so nasty!! I'm a bit concerned that the irritable seed hairs get mentioned quite often in recipes, I hope my draining bag is fine enough to capture them...

The zinnia flowers are still creating a buzz - sorry 🤭 - with bees and hoverflies. I think this is a Common Carder bee (David, please correct me if I’m wrong!) and the hedge is alive with buzzing insects on the ivy flowers. We've also seen a dragon fly zipping about recently - such a huge insect but it never sits still for a photo.

So, you may be wondering, why the title song by the Sugababes? Well, Jamie dug up our single Desiree potato plant and …

Oh dear they're really not pretty and though a little scab on a baked spud can add to the flavour I wouldn't want to risk one of them! That’s what a dry Summer can give you. I just hope they taste okay once they are peeled and mashed. And here are the Sugababes.

Sunflower

Oh, it seems to be Autumn!

We've had some rain in the night and the sunshine was beautiful on the cobwebs early this morning. Actually, it's getting darker as the day progresses. The weekend was a mix of weather and the ground was perfect for getting our leeks planted up - well, Neal's leeks (thanks as always Neal!). 20 leeks, with plenty of room for hoeing in between.

I'm going to plant the garlic at the end of that patch, in front of the squash tunnel. I'm leaving the squashes on the plants until the necks dry off and the Honeyboat are finally beginning to produce a few fruits - I hope the weather stays reasonable so that they mature.

The brassica are a bit weird. We have two sprout plants and one has a problem, probably whitefly, but the other one has so far escaped damage.

And one of the three purple sprouting broccoli plants is decidedly weaker than the other two.

The single cavolo nero is small, but will hopefully produce enough leaves for a few meals.

I cleared a mass of overgrown plants from in front of our little pond on Plot7. Looks much better now  and the newly planted perennials should be a bit happier without being crowded out, but I'm sure the nigella and other plants have self-seeded everywhere and then there's the bindweed - ugh, what a horrible weed that is!

We had a salad last night which had potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, patty pan, carrot and spring onion from our plots. And these were the last of Iulia's plum tomatoes. I cooked them in garlic oil with grated horseradish, but it seems that cooking horseradish completely destroys the heat - not even a hint remained. I'll try again and grate the horseradish over the top after I've cooked the tomatoes.

I couldn't resist planting some horseradish in a pot, in case I decide it's worth growing. It's certainly hot when you nibble it raw, but it's a short-lived heat rather than like chilli so I quite like it.

That pot is in our 'nursery patch' behind the polytunnel. The hazel tree likes it there, as does this lovely fuchsia which was unhappy in the sunshine.

I was so pleased to finally get some reasonably decent shots of a hummingbird hawkmoth at the allotment on Saturday! Such a fascinating moth to watch and so nippy. I updated my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

And this morning we found that the little self-seeded sunflower had decided to open - what a cheery sight :-)

So this blogpost has moved from Autumn back to Summer, though it's raining outside and I now need to get back to work. Enjoy the ditty, provided by Vampire Weekend, though the video will make you dizzy!

Setting Sun

It’s an hour before sunset and it’s only about 3:30. Time is moving too fast for me at the moment.

After doing a bit of HAHA admin this morning, we got to the plot after lunch to do some November tidying. It felt cold but it was sunny and, after moving about a bit, I soon needed to remove my big coat. The temperature was about 10° today. During the week it dropped to -2.8° and was very frosty; We only visited the plot one lunchtime to collect a honeyboat squash, pick some sage and chard to make this delicious meal. It includes re-hydrated Borlotti, Gigantes and runner beans, shallots and garlic from the allotment too, but I had to buy the chopped tomatoes and it has smoked paprika. 

The honeyboat squash is so delicious and the dish has served me for three meals. Final night tonight and I added red chard and also made some crispy seaweed-style chard with sesame oil and seeds. (Neal, if you’re reading this, I owe you some red chard ☺️)

The broad beans have grown well over the last 3 weeks. We’ll leave their cloches on for a bit longer but don’t want them to grow too tall. The shallot bulbs have begun to sprout, but no sign of the garlic yet, although popping one back into the soil (probably a bird pulled it out) I could feel that the roots had started to grow.

The polytunnel is clear now, apart from stored squashes and now there’s room for our chairs. While Jamie was riddling the soil from the peppers grow-bags I was collecting Kestrel potatoes; one plant from a bag and one from the ground. I expect the ground-grown ones to have a few slug holes, but they all look pretty good.

We had celeriac for Halloween and this one I used in a chestnut and celeriac soup. It’s very tasty and will cover a few lunches. There are a few chunks of chestnut remaining for a bit of added interest. Yum!

Another job today was to cut off the strawberry runners which have rooted into their pots. They’ll be happy left outside, behind the polytunnel, over Winter and can be planted in the spring.

So another weekend is over. We’ve had our flu jabs and my 3rd, not booster, third COVID jab is booked for next week. Kidney transplant patients are to have two of the Pfizer jabs this time… hope they do the trick so that life can be a bit more varied and perhaps that will slow time down a bit! The song title is provided by the excellent Chemical Brothers.

Time of the Season

The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.

The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.

I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.

I had some of the podded runner beans in a dish covering a couple of meals, along with the orange pepper, chard, garlic and shallots - a fully home-grown meal. Very tasty and even better eaten a couple of days later when the flavours were enhanced. It’s apparently a peculiarly British-thing to eat the pods of runner beans, with most other nationalities growing them for the beans. And, I was surprised to see that in the US they are predominantly grown as an ornamental plant (hummingbirds love them) and are not even considered for food. See this blog, The Sharing Gardens, which is an interesting read.

My chard is looking better now than it’s looked all year, so I roasted some with sesame seeds yesterday, to eat as ‘crispy seaweed’ along with roasted veg - another fully home-grown meal, which up till now have been infrequent this year.

Jamie has some sort of flu (not COVID-19) so I’ve been to the allotment on my own a couple of times recently. I always think I don’t want to go, but am so pleased when I do. It’s such a lovely spot and there’s always someone to talk to.

Yesterday I moved all the ripe squash into the polytunnel, there are still a few more to pick as they may still further ripen. 

Now that the foliage has died back, it’s clear that we didn’t keep up with the Rocky cucumber production! That lot will go in our compost bins so it’s not really wasted and we did eat a LOT of cucumbers this year.

The kohl rabi are beginning to bulb up. I’m concerned for them because the purple sprouting broccoli (single plant) and Chinese cabbage are being chomped by something - it looks like caterpillar damage but I haven’t found the culprit yet…

We also didn’t see who tucked into the sunflower seeds, but they’ve nearly cleared all of them now.

I had a couple of hours on the sunny plot again this afternoon. I took down the runner bean and Borlotti bean plants and poles. All the foliage will go in a trench under the squash tunnel once the plants are cleared and we’re expecting a HAHA manure delivery in a week or two.

And the cycle starts again with the Aqua dulce broad beans sown under their bottle cloches.

We’re hoping the garlic and shallots will be delivered in the week so can get them planted into their prepared beds. The title song is provided by The Zombies because, well, it really is that time…