Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strawberries. Show all posts

Tuesday 11 April 2023

These Days

What a welcome long Easter weekend that was! The site was full of plotholders each day and it was great to chat to newcomers and old-timers, like us 🤭

The rain stopped for a couple of days so on Saturday we managed some digging - where the carrots and parsnips will be grown this year. It was so warm even I was down to short sleeves. The birds were singing and one of the robins has found a mate to feed. There were quite a few butterflies on site including brimstones, peacocks, whites and tortoiseshells.

Comma butterfly

This is a comma butterfly with its wings closed. The little white mark is why it’s called a comma - funny isn’t it? The most striking thing about it is the wing shape; I’d expect it to have a name associated with that!
There were other interesting insects about too, including masses of bee flies and mining bees of different varieties. I managed to get some nice close-ups of these three. Based on data from various sources I'm pretty sure the ids are correct - more photos and info on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

Various insects
The dandelions are really putting on a show at the moment so these pollinators have made a very timely arrival and the dandelions have timed it so their seeds will be dispersed into the wet and windy weather this week.

Strong winds started on Saturday but it was still mostly sunny and it was warm enough for crop trousers. We burned a lot of gathered up wood and cuttings which finally had a chance to dry out. The wind was carrying the wind through the hedge to the canal, rather than towards our neighbours. We couldn’t have done it yesterday (Sunday) as the wind force was significantly higher and it rained again 🙄

Jamie's planted up two strawberry plants into tomato bags, with a pot to water through in each bag. We're hoping that the three bags and black covering will curtail the bindweed which is growing underneath in the original strawberry bed... We'll see, but at least should get a few more strawberries this year.

That freshly cleared patch now has a row of beetroot - I sowed them quite thickly as I enjoyed the early thinnings in salads last year and hope to eat the beets while they're small. I sowed mangetout into guttering in the polytunnel a week ago and it's just beginning to germinate. Along with other digging, clearing and weeding in various spots, the garlic got a chicken manure feed and we had some more tasty purple sprouting broccoli to harvest.

And these were some beanburgers I made at the end of March, with stored borlotti beans, fresh chives and shop-bought peppers - to be honest, they need a bit more seasoning so the two remaining I will have with some sort of spicy tomato sauce, but they look nice 😏

Song provided by Nico, aah these days.... and now, back to work.

Sunday 19 June 2022

Sweet Harmony

What a month June has been. In the last week we’ve had beautiful blue skies and high temperatures (~30° on Friday) but night-time temperatures still fell to 3.4°! And now we’ve finally had some welcome rain. What a great growing-month.

Teasels in the morning sun
So happy to have teasels on the wildlife plot

We had a couple of early morning visits to the plot in the week, to water and enjoy the sights and sounds of the waking allotment. So beautiful, but I only had an hour before returning home to start work 😔. A benefit of a morning visits is picking fresh veg to have for lunch. That scrummy salad included broad beans, radish and mangetout.

Freshly picked salad

Other days we’ve had lunchtime plot visits. Aah, working from home definitely has benefits, but I have my fifth(!) COVID vaccination at the end of month so maybe things will change… we’ll see.

Seedlings

Those are some of the flower seedlings that I potted on a couple of weeks ago including lobelia, zinnia and love lies bleeding. In fact I planted some of them out yesterday and their roots had grown well in 2 weeks. I’m concerned for the zinnia as slugs apparently love the seedlings 😖 Will discover later whether they survived their first rainy night in the wild…

Newly-planted flowerbed
Okay, I agree, it doesn’t look much at the moment but I’m hoping that will be a riot of colour in front of our bench quite soon.. If you want colour you have to visit the wildlife plot which is looking lovely.
HAHA Wildlife plot
I’m pleased to say that the squash tunnel is now mostly planted: 2 x Honeyboat, 2 x Festival, 2 x Sunshine  and, thanks to plot-neighbour Kate, 1 x Butternut and 1 x Spaghetti.
Squash Tunnel planted
I’ve left positions for the 2 x Winter Celebration squashes which have only just germinated, about 10 days after the other varieties. It seems that they may prefer the warmer temperatures.
Climbing beans
The climbing beans (French, borlotti, runners and one Gigantes) are, well, climbing and yesterday I planted out the three Yin Yang dwarf French beans that managed to germinate. The mangetout have been providing small harvests for me, if they make it home, and I’ve been enjoying the Chinese Dragon radish. They’re peppery and crisp and, as you can see, much better than ‘normal’ radish.
Radish
The ‘normal’ radish have all been resigned to the compost bin as they’ve gone to seed - like they inevitably do. I don’t think I’ll bother in future; I’ll stick with the Chinese varieties.
Radish and broad beans
Yesterday was a HAHA workday. We cleared the site of rubbish and surplus ‘junk’ followed by cake and a cuppa.
HAHA Work party
Which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the HAHA stall at the jubilee picnic. I wasn’t interested in the party, but when I went along to help set-up I couldn’t resist staying to help with the stall. We made over £60 and gained three new members on the waiting list, so it was very worthwhile. Our site is currently full again, which is great.
HAHA Stall
And our plots are almost full too! We’ve planted 15 Lark sweetcorn, chard, a love lies bleeding and 2 sunflowers on the last quarter of Plot7.
Plot 7 is full
So it’s been a busy month so far. I hope we get outside in some sunshine today so I’d better get off my butt!
We’ve been watching TOTP from the 1990s on BBC4, which is why the song is provided by Beloved and it refers to the DELICIOUS pairing of rhubarb and strawberries - mmmmm, that smell ❤️

Wednesday 27 April 2022

No Rain

April’s a tease; making us think it’s sowing time, or even Summer-time, then going cold and windy.

Tulip
We had a few hours on the plot last Saturday and Sunday. Lovely in the sunshine; chilly in the easterly breeze.

Hairy-Legged female bee
Hairy legged bee (female) on Dead Nettle

The wildlife plot is a year old this week. The bog garden plants have spread well and the cowslips will definitely need dividing for next year. There are seedlings popping up, along with a few more flowers, though mostly dandelions which we try to clear before they seed but the bees do love them.

Wildlife plot - one year old
The radish seeds sown last week have germinated and something is already enjoying them 🙄

Radish seedlings
We sowed some more sunflowers and rainbow chard - into modules so that I can plant on the coloured ones rather than the green leafed plants. Also, our grafted tomato plants have been delivered - Crimson Plum. We’ve potted them on and they’ll stay home until the weather behaves or the plants get too straggly.
Grafted tomato plants
Look at my Loves Lies Bleeding seedlings! They’re so tiny, like cress at the moment. I'm wondering whether I shouldn't have sown them in clumps.
Loves Lies Bleeding seedlings
Jamie put his new toy composter together. It’s a rotator and is meant to produce compost in 3-4 weeks! It doesn't hold very much, but if it's successful we could try a larger model.
Rotator composter
Beside the composter there is a pot of snowdrops. I planted those snowdrops about 20 years ago at home and they've never produced a flower or divided! I'm hoping it was their position rather than the actual plant. We'll find out next year...
Rotator composter
And I did a bit of digging on Plot3. Trying to keep up with our new neighbours 😀
Freshly dug

The strawberries are flowering around the site. The night-time temperatures are close to freezing at the moment though so those flowers may not make it into fruits - as happens most years. These plants are in the polytunnel so may get away with it, as the temperature is held up by about 1°

Strawberries flowering

The song title is brought to you by Blind Melon (although we did have a tiny shower on Monday, you get the gist!)

Sunday 7 November 2021

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.

Aquadulce broad beans

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.

Kestrel spuds
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!
Chestnut and celeriac soup
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.

Tuesday 28 September 2021

In the End

 Like other plotholders, I decided to pick the ripest squashes before the rain came.

Squashes in a trug
The two blue Crown Prince aren’t very big and I was disappointed that the plants only produced one fruit each, but there will be enough for at least two meals from each squash, so I shouldn’t complain. The green stripeys are Honey Boat. I picked three and there should be more to harvest probably in a couple of weeks. They’re my second favourite tasting squash. The fancy multi-coloured Festival are my favourite for looks and taste pretty good too, there are a few more of them to come. The two round yellow squash have been confirmed as Spaghetti squash by Kate, our plot neighbour who gave us the plants. We’ve never seen fruits like that before, but they’ll be fine, just for me as Jamie doesn’t like them. 
Spaghetti squash with cheese and Borlotti beans
In fact, I like them so much that I took one from our site’s ‘Freebies shelf’ the other week and had these two lovely meals. I’ve used fresh Borlotti beans in both these dishes. They are so tasty. They're boiled on the hob for 40minutes, which is the same amount of time I cook the spaghetti squash in the oven (open-side down). Then bits and bobs are added before returning to the oven for 15minutes. 
Borlotti beans, tomatoes, shallot, potatoes, garlic
That second meal has the tiniest Nicola potatoes. I couldn’t bear to throw them away and they cooked up nicely in the oven with the tomatoes, garlic and shallots before I added the beans.
Nicola potatoes from a bag
We got a good haul of Nicola potatoes from that bag.
Trugful of spuds
There’s my handful of Borlotti beans, I only used 6 pods for each meal. And look how pretty the fresh beans are, though they are rather dull-looking when cooked.
Fresh Borlotti beans
Most of the beans I’m going to dry and, because of the forecast rain, I picked the semi-dried ones and have put them in the netting attached to the top of the polytunnel. There are still loads more Borlotti to pick and the Gigantes have hardly started drying on the plants yet.
Drying beans
The edamame are the same, they were slow to start but have podded up now and are just beginning to go over.
Edamame beans
As well as plants dying back, there are signs of things to come.
The raised bed has been prepared for the garlic and shallots which should be delivered next week (if such deliveries aren’t affected by the HGV crisis we’re now in the middle of 🙄)
The bed is prepared and holes prepped for popping the broad beans in next month. And at the weekend we potted on some strawberry runners. The strawberry bed is a mess but we'll sort that out sometime...
Overgrown strawberry bed

So the polytunnel is looking like a storage area now for a few things and we're hoping to get a few more ripened peppers before the plants get removed.

The song is provided by Linkin Park - great song!

Sunday 13 June 2021

World in Motion

Another bonus for home-working. We visited the allotment for an early lunch and, although it was mostly cloudy, we saw the partial solar eclipse. In fact, the cloud helped with the photo.

Eclipse over Hungerford
I do enjoy an astronomical phenomenon!
It’s been a warm, moving on to hot, week and the weekend has been positively sweltering. We’ve spent lots of hours on the allotment and our runner beans are finally in the ground.
Those are Borlotti. Jamie has added wind protection round the Scarlet Empire as they’re a bit susceptible at the front of the plot, at least until they’ve got a hold on the poles.
The courgettes are freed from their mesh protection and seem to be happy. And, so far, all my squashes are intact. The plots are needing a lot of water at the moment, with no rain for a while.
It’s too hot for some of the seeds we sowed last week. The purple sprouting broccoli germinated, but succumbed to the heat yesterday and had collapsed. We’ll re-sow at home. Our peppers have been growing on at home for a while but they’re in the (tidy) polytunnel now in growing bags: Chelsea, Milena and Denver grafted plants.
Sweet peppers
Harvests are just starting - pretty meagre helpings but for lunch I had a nice salad with cold blanched broad beans, mangetout, salad leaf and chives and we’ve had a few strawberries. We’re hoping for more broad beans later this week. There they are… nearly ready.
The rhubarb has rather collapsed, not sure whether it’s the heat or because it’s so huge. We’re looking forward to this rhubarb and strawberry mixture with ice cream for puddings - it looks prettier before it’s fully cooked and smells amazing.
You may have noticed the England flag is in position - for Euro2020, postponed from last year. We do love a footie tournament and England won against Croatia this afternoon so we’re off to a good start 👏. So the song is one of the best football songs ever, by New Order and has a spurious link to the eclipse too 😊