Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
Hoping for a good year and it seems an opportune time for a brief look back over the last decade on the allotment. I've selected a couple of photos from each year...
2010
After almost losing the site in 2009 we were given a 4 year reprieve so we could really concentrate on growing our own.
Look at how dry the earth looks - not suprising, as we were having to collect water from the nearby river. The borehole was dug in November - when it didn't stop raining :-)
Here we are painting parts of the container - one of the first jobs for newly-founded HAHA.
2011
I had a diary previously, but so much easier having an electronic version so I started this blog in June 2011.
The purple Conga potatoes (mini tubers) did particularly well - just look at that mash, with no added colouring!
We bought our first bench for our plot and clearly found that spending evenings on the plot (with a bit of wine) were a great part of allotment life - some habits stick fast :-)
2012
This was my busiest blogging year, with 142 posts! We took over Plot 8A and this was the year that the Edinburgh Fringe acting group performed their play on the site.
We had some freezing Winter weather and saw -9° in February, but showing how keen we were we were working on the plot in those months that we tend to avoid these days.
My cousins visited from Hastings in October, for the wettest Hungerford Food Festival on record.
We all got a drenching when we showed them around our plot - the pot marigolds were a lovely display that year, but I'm sure we didn't plant all those :-)
2013
We took over the other half of Plot 8 in a year that started with thick snow and suffered a heatwave in July.
We spent months encouraging this little robin to get braver and eventually he ate from our hands. We haven't been so successful with subsequent robins but they're lovely to see on the plot.
Gluttons for punishment, we also took on an empty plot for HAHA 'unusual veg' to show at the Hungerford Food Festival - we did rather well, don't you think? All those lovely bright colours. We haven't grown mooli since as they weren't that tasty, but they do look good.
2014
Neither of us were very well in 2014 and only 32 blogposts as a result. I was off work for a bit but the plot didn't get all that extra attention - which I'd love now, though I'd rather stay healthy!
This was a Spring workday - well attended for those early days. Look at that lovely blue sky and happy workers :-)
These were the tallest sunflowers that we've ever grown - I don't know what we did to make them so happy, but I'd like to grow them that tall again!
2015
We finally erected our polytunnel - our lease says we're a 'no structure' site, but it's easily de-constructable if we ever need to ... :-(
Our bench was the perfect spot for viewing the partial solar eclipse - what a great event that was, definitely worth getting up early for!
Jamie's HAHA-carved pumpkin was a great success at the Food Festival. The stripey Cornell's Bush Delikata squash on that table were some of the tastiest we've grown.
2016
We had a further year's reprieve for the site - still under threat as a pawn in a building contractor's plans for the town...
We took on another plot - to encourage more plotholders to a rather
abandoned section of the site. Plot3 is a nice square plot with just tree
roots and mares tail to contend with...
Growing the cucumbers in moulds gave us these great star-shaped and also heart-shaped additions to salads and we still grow the little Rocky cucumbers as they're so abundant and tasty.
2017
I started using song titles as blogpost titles. I like having a song for each post but finding an appropriate one is by far the hardest thing about writing this blog! I'd like to stop, but I'm a bit obsessive....maybe I'll stop in 2020...
I love this amazing cloud formation - so interesting, I think they're a type of cirrus
I began planting a few more flowers on the plot - they are such a lovely addition and there's still plenty of room for veggies. The trouble is, I have so many that self-seed now that I've lost control a bit...though it looks beautiful!
2018
Visiting frogs laid frogspawn on the empty plots' white tarpaulin so we made a little pond to save some of them. It was lovely watching them develop. What a sweltering year that was!
Two adult frogs moved into our little pond after the tiny froglets had moved on - there's certainly plenty of slugs for them to enjoy.
HAHA joined in with the lantern parade in the Hungerford Christmas Extravaganza with vegetable-shaped lanterns - they ended their day on the plot.
2019
Last year was the 10 year anniversary of the Marsh Lane site, so we had plenty of social events including our best ever plant sale on the Town Hall steps.
Everyone helped out
Our Open Day was also our best attended with lots of games to enjoy in the hot, sunny weather.
Ivan and I enjoying some healthy competition on the Squirty Boats.
We got some great local press coverage and lots of visitors discovered the little corner of Hungerford that we've been raving about for the last 10 years.
Our plots looked pretty and produced plenty. We hope we'll have more time next year to enjoy a few more days/evenings just sitting and watching things develop in 2020.
We've had a very busy month. It's been extremely wet, but luckily on a few important dates it didn't rain so it's been a lot of fun getting ready for Christmas. We had our usual trip to Oxford and I had some delicious tofu Singapore noodles in the Gloucester Green street market.
Then bought a few pressies at the Christmas Market before having a cuppa in the Covered Market - visiting some of my favourite places in the City.
The beautiful Elisabeth Convent (Belarus) convent - I should have bought more there
Back in Hungerford we saw Will Young (local singer) switch on our lovely Christmas lights and enjoyed the Christmas Extravaganza, including being in the lantern parade - this year we made the HAHA lanterns in the shape of snails.
Somebody paid me £4 for mine at the end of the parade! I gave it to The Big Issue seller.
Kerry's is now residing on her plot - although it's a skeleton again because the rain removed all the paper.
We managed to avoid rain at the Newbury lantern parade - huge compared to the Hungerford one, but we're hoping ours will grow and more people join in in future years.
It's been a very wet Autumn/Winter so far.
That's not the allotment. It's the River Kennet in Hungerford which is very full and fast-flowing at the moment. We did actually visit the plot yesterday and it was very soggy, although it was a crisp clear blue sky day. We only visited to pull some carrots for our, now traditional, carrot lox which we'll have on Christmas Day. We have our big Christmas meal late this evening.
Here's the latest addition to our Christmas tree. Unfortunately we had
to buy sprouts but we may get some from the plot for another meal this
Christmas.
We had lovely visits to family and lots of shopping trips. And this is a photo from our window as the sun set at the end of the shortest day of 2019. Hooray, we're on the way back up now - but I wouldn't mind a bit of snow before Christmas holiday is over (or maybe just at the end of the holiday so I can't drive to work)!
Here's a lovely version of this song performed by Cara Dillon. Enjoy and Happy Christmas!
