Sunday 17 July 2016

Feeling Foodie

It was another hot, humid day. In fact there was a short rain shower while we were on the plot this afternoon. We were mowing some of the grass paths, which look good but need a lot of maintenance. It was so hot that we didn't stay long, so I made the planned fennel and courgette soup. I used this little bowl that my brother brought me home from Dinard, Brittany about 35 years ago - just as a taster, you understand :-)
We're looking after our neighbour's plot (Hungerford in Bloom Marsh Lane winner, Neal) and the three green courgettes in the trug are from there - he did say we could pick them! The potatoes are the 2 Annabelle from one of the bags. A First Early which we haven't grown before - they look good and we'll have some of them tonight.

I intended to use this recipe for the soup, but didn't stick to it. I fried the fennel and then the courgette, which was only roughly peeled; I scraped quite a lot of the inside out, as I used the big courgettes. I had to buy the onion as it's too early for ours.
Mm, I could have eaten that lot straight from the pan, but I refrained and added it to the fried onion and 600ml of vegetable stock - for once it was the right consistency without any extra fluid to be added and has made a litre of soup for a few days lunches.
This is the broad bean curry we had last night - we were going to add Quorn but it really didn't need it.

Saturday 16 July 2016

Take Care...

.. whilst barefoot-gardening. Ouch! I found this in my foot. I thought it was a bit of thistle until I looked closer. It's the jawbone of a common shrew! It's tiny, about 7mm long.
It was such a lovely hot day (26°) even I removed a couple of layers while we spent the afternoon weeding, and watering.Even though it was mostly cloudy.
The cloches are off the sweetcorn and I planted out the Speedy dwarf french beans.
Some of the fennel is beginning to grow tall and thin, rather than the bulb fattening up, so I'm going to make soup with those tomorrow, before they go to seed.
The garlic has got rust - a common fungal disease, but it's due to be pulled anyway, so won't impact on growth at this stage. I've lifted some of the bulbs and will remove them soon because we don't want the rust spreading to the onions. I'll dry them out in the greenhouse, but need to check that rust can't spread to anything in there.
The runner beans are beginning to set, but seem quite slow growing across the site this year. Even with lots of empty plots the site cheers up when the towers and walls of scarlet flowers appear.
We've got a broad bean curry tonight and I'll have the yellow mangetout on the side so that the plants keep producing flowers.

Sunday 10 July 2016

From Trug to Table

There you go, that's our first potato crop of the year. We emptied the bag where we planted two Chopin potatoes and producing 1.6kg of spuds. It looks like the nematodes worked as the tubers aren't slug-eaten, even though we found several snails living in the haulms.
The compost in the bag was very dry so maybe if we'd watered it a bit more we would have got more tubers from it.
And that's a better looking trug shot.

And that's the beginnings of my tea going in the oven: roasted fennel and courgette, topped with cheese and pine nuts served with fresh boiled potatoes. Mmm, smells tasty so far

Saturday 9 July 2016

Little Things and Longpods

A warm, windy afternoon on the plot, attempting to make it look like a reasonable entry to Hungerford in Bloom, for the judging tomorrow. We're not expecting great things - we've seen the opposition and their plots have less bare earth and less weeds. But, we've got fresh broads beans for tea, so who cares? :-)
The greenhouse tomatoes all have little fruits appearing, but it looks like we're going to get less on the Indigo Rose at the moment ..
As do the peppers, slowly but surely...
And the loofah is beginning to go a bit wild, but no flowers yet.
The marigolds are flowering though, aw, they're so pretty.
The garlic is beginning to go rusty and I think I may pull one or two up tomorrow. They can start drying off in the greenhouse.
A slightly larger yellow courgette this time. That's part of my tea tomorrow, but I didn't want it to get any bigger on the plant overnight. The broad beans are Longpods and some of them were very long.

Wednesday 6 July 2016

An Extra Day on the Plot

I had plans for Tuesday, they fell through but once you've booked leave it's difficult to go back on that, particularly when the sun is shining, so we had a fabulous sunny day on the plot. We were doing more tidying of the plot - mostly Plot 7 and Plot 8. And we picked our first raspberries of the year - so tasty when eaten with strawberries.

Jamie found this tiny, tiny mushroom - look how small yet perfectly formed it is!
 I haven't been able to id it yet.
We're pleased to say that our second sowing of carrots has germinated and all the second sowing of mangetout have also popped out of the ground now. These are the yellow-podded ones, which are doing far better than the purple-podded. They're still a bit weak, but the flowers are pretty.
Whilst weeding and clear hundreds of tiny grape hyacinth bulbs (I'm drying them out in the greenhouse) I pulled this couch grass stem - look how nothing gets in its way! We've seen it growing through a potato before too!
The butterflies have re-emerged since the weather cheered up. Here's a white - I think it's a small white.
And in the evening we had the HAHA AGM. Not a great turnout, but more plotholders than committee members, so that's good! And we had a nice drink and chat after the hour of talking 'business'!