Slow and Steady

The squash tunnel is enjoying the rain - we had torrential showers yesterday. The tromboncino have reached the top first but others are joining them. I have been manipulating them skywards but they do prefer to grow sideways and along the ground. 

We didn’t visit the plot today as we had stuff to do at home, plus Hungerford is jammed up because the M4 is closed this weekend. The Sun didn’t show itself at all and there weren’t even rain storms to encourage as outside.

I’ve finished varnishing the crate that I decoupaged using seed packets, allotment magazines and seed catalogues. It’ll be useful for displaying things at the food festival and other HAHA events when they start happening again.

I made a lovely rice dish last night (well, I thought it was tasty) with turmeric and smoked paprika flavouring. It was just courgette, onion, tomato and garlic - I love this kind of meal and it’s so colourful too.

And I did my Big Butterfly Count in the week. I thought I’d hang round the lavender but all I counted was:

3 x Large whites

1 x Small white

4 x Small tortoiseshells 

1 x Small skipper

If the sun re-appears I’ll try again. I’ve seen so many other butterflies on site recently, so it’s a shame they were a no-show but not so unusual!

I’ve made a Google album showing the different flowers on the HAHA Wildlife plot, it’s looking rather lovely at the moment - lots of pinks and purples.

So that brings us to the end of July and just one day left of my holiday, shame as it’s been a lovely break but I know I have another few days off at the end of August so not too bad and obviously I’m still working from home so no commute - hoorah! The song, by Of Monsters and Men, is in reference to the decoupage, which I see that I started in March - well, there was no hurry 🙂

Up in the Sky

I’ve been enjoying my holiday so far. The weather has been perfect, not too hot and some evening (heavy) showers so we haven’t needed to water too often.

Ivan let me pick a punnet of blackcurrants so I made a load of sauce and we’ve been having it with ice cream, it is delicious. I added sugar at a ratio of 1:3 so it still has a tartness to the flavour.

We had a lovely picnic on the plot for my birthday - my sister gave me a veggie hamper from a local deli which was perfect for the hot day; better than the planned bbq.

We’re doing quite well keeping up with the courgettes. Now joined by Patti-pan squash, which I think have a bit more flavour than the green bush courgettes.

I’d not really appreciated how delicious cold roast veggies are before. I’ve been having them for lunch over a few days. Beets, garlic and courgette from the allotment plus other bought veggies at the moment. I look forward to it containing all home-grown, one day soon. Cheese, onion and nut stuffed courgettes are our other current favourite meal (particularly when I fried the onions in Oak-smoked oil prior to stuffing).

I’ve pulled the remains of the broad beans, where the leeks will be planted. The broad beans left on the plants were well past their best, but there were enough good ones to make broad bean and courgette soup using this recipe from Riverford Organic. It tastes really nice and creamy.

The Jermore shallots have done all that they can, so they’ve been moved to the polytunnel for a bit of final drying. They didn’t grow as much as expected, with some very small bulbs and the clusters per planted shallot were rather weak. There are enough reasonable-sized ones to have a jar pickled for Christmas and the rest will be nice additions to various meals.

Most of the beans are flowering (not the edamame or dwarf french yet) and a few tiny beans are appearing on the Scarlet Empire runners. I think the Borlotti flowers are the prettiest, so delicate, but the pure whiteness of the Gigantes beans is also rather stunning.

Monday was a sunnier day than we expected so we took some photos with the camera on the end of a 6ft bamboo cane.

It gives an interesting alternate view of the world.

But then Ivan offered us his fishing rod extension - 4m gives an even better view! Can you see our sun umbrella at the further edge of the site, near the tree?

All the plots are looking so amazing this year. It’s beautiful to wander round. Even the less well-kempt ones look nice because there are so many butterflies (I really must try to do the Big Butterfly Count today) and birds - we’ve been enjoying watching a family of bullfinches on a neighbouring plot (see my wildlife blogpost).

So that’s why I chose today’s song by Oasis. If you’d like to see more of the photos, they’re on the Marsh Lane Allotments Facebook page or here on Google Photos.

Pink, Orange, Red

Phew, it's been a sweltering few days - Close to 30°. Both Saturday and Sunday we got up the plot reasonably early and then had to return home for lunch and a siesta. In fact, it was really too hot to do anything but we had to water, water, water of course!

They're my flowery ice cubes - pretty aren't they? They clouded up a bit more once they were fully frozen. I need to try again and be a bit more careful with the design. None of the flowers are poisonous, though I'm not intending to eat them - there are borage, viola, calendula, runner beans, cornflowers, daisies and buttercups (though these are toxic if eaten in large quantities). I think they'll be a marvellous addition to a Pimms 😊

And here come the Rocky mini cucumbers to also add to that Pimms! All the squashes have gone crazy. The two New England Pie pumpkins are winning with the fruits getting quite large and the foliage providing good ground cover.

In second place are the Tromboncino squash which are going to take over the world, maybe two plants was too many! They're only tiny at the moment, but I see that you can eat them as baby squash so I think maybe I'd better start...

This is a Spaghetti squash, which is climbing well.

 And, I think these are a Boston and either a Honeyboat or a Crown Prince.

It's getting a bit crowded in the tunnel. I keep lifting the trailing shoots and encouraging them upwards rather than along the ground. I haven't needed to use string yet as the tendrils are hanging on tight so far.

Jamie pulled the first Nicola potato - he didn't furkle too much as we only needed a few spuds for a couple of meals. Very nice small salad potatoes to go with our courgettes ... so many courgettes! We've added one to the freebies shelf on the allotment and even had to compost a couple that were marrow-sized already. Again, two plants was clearly too many of the All Green Bush variety!

I was going to use a sunny song, I've been waiting for blue skies for most of July and it is lovely but I heard this song on television the other day (Guy Garvey's From the Vaults programme - it's great) and knew I could match that to a blog post 😊

So please enjoy The Cocteau Twins. Try to singalong but it's a made up language, so don't bother trying to understand it!

Mas Que Nada

This post is mostly going to be about food, with the occasional ‘Come on England!’ because I’m so excited that we’ve reached the Euros final!

The broad beans have been serving us well and I made hummus today using the recipe from The Lazy Cat Kitchen. I did add a bit of chilli and used sesame oil, instead of olive oil.

It’s a tasty dip for charcoal crackers. (Neal, if you’re reading this I meant to say that I pinched a bit of your mint. Hope you don’t mind!)

We enjoyed this broad beans dish as part of a tapas meal. So tasty fried with onions and paprika. The red onion makes it look very different from the recipe I used from The Fiery Vegetarian.

Another tapas dish was this bean salad, with last year’s Gigantes beans, peppers, spring onions and tomatoes. Again, it looks completely different from the recipe, but was so delicious. It covered me for an additional 3 lunches too.

As well as broad beans, the courgettes are now coming thick and fast so we had my favourite courgette stuffed with cheese, onion and mixed nuts stuffed courgette for dinner last night.

We went to the allotment this afternoon, it was cool, grey but at least dry after some torrential rain yesterday. Jamie fed all the plants and I mostly played about with our new camera. It’s an Olympus Tough TG6 and look how tough… This is how you wash it!!

It’s a good handy-sized camera and is particularly good for macro shots. These are two microscope mode shots of a pumpkin flower. So far, so good.

Some of this year’s garlic had fallen over so I pulled it early and it’s dried off nicely so they went home.

I pulled the rest of the garlic today and have hung it in the polytunnel to dry - it’s quite pungent in there! I don’t know whether it’ll help or add to the amount of insect life we have in there.

So that’s what we’ve been doing to pass the time while waiting for England versus Italy; England’s first time in a final since I was one-week old! COME ON ENGLAND 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 

The fab song title means ‘more than nothing’ or ‘more than everything’ and is by Tony Hatch.

Loser

It was Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging at the weekend so it was a busy site on Thursday and Friday, with lots of plot holders making their plots look their best. It’s a nice time to walk around because labels appear so we can see the varieties that people have chosen this year.

All our edges were trimmed - I don’t think they have to be straight ☺️, just tidy 🙂. That was where we uncovered most of the ants nests. Red ants and black ones. They sure get agitated when disturbed and both of them nibble when they get up your arms!

We only entered Plot7 and Plot3 into the competition; plot8 has a mass of weeds which we haven’t had time to clear, it’s the most ‘in bloom’ of all our plots though. At least the tidy edges may reduce the slug and snail damage - 2 of our 5 'tallest' sunflowers have been eaten down to skeletons already and they've definitely eaten more of our lettuce than we have!

We sowed some Chinese Cabbage into modules and leeks into a pot at the weekend. They're in the polytunnel for now but we'll move them outside once they've germinated. Jamie bought a basil plant from Waitrose and has divided it into 3 pots which are in the polytunnel by the tomatoes.

We've just had a quick visit to the plot at lunchtime to pick some broad beans and it's so windy! Lots of our tall bean plants have blown over but plenty more beans are available. Poor broad beans after they survived the hardest frost of the year they now find themselves snapped off in their prime :-(

I hope the wind doesn't cause too much damage, particularly to our runner beans, cucumbers and squashes which are beginning to make their way upwards.

At the weekend we picked the first of our courgettes, there are bound to be more to come given the number of little ones on their way - as long as the wind doesn't snap the plants. We've added some bamboo poles to hopefully hold them in place.

The song is by Beck, because we didn't win any prizes in the competition - well, we knew we were up against some brilliant plots!

Good Day Sunshine

Look at those feathers! Interesting aren’t they? I never realised that greater (probably) spotted woodpeckers literally have polka dot feathers! Unfortunately there was a pile of them. We have a sparrow hawk which leaves piles of feathers around the site every few days.

Photo courtesy of Ted

Our HAHA chair, Ted, was lucky enough to get this photo of the sparrowhawk with some prey. It was busy protecting its dinner from a red kite overhead so Ted was able to get pretty close. Amazing. We wish it would take out rats rather than our bird life though.

We’ve been enjoying broad beans over the last couple of weeks. They’re so delicious; hot or cold. We’ve had them in these dishes: broad bean & tofu sweet chilli noodles, broad bean & ‘Vivera bacon’ gnocchi, with seitan fillets & mash, covered in parsley sauce and in allotment salads for lunch.

I actually made a cake too - I know, twice in two years - unbelievable! This one was just as a topping on strawberry & rhubarb, instead of doing a crumble. I used this recipe and it was really delicious. We don’t have any vanilla essence so I used a splosh of honey rum instead.

We had a lovely day on the allotment last Saturday. It’s our Hungerford in Bloom judging this weekend so we were doing a lot of weeding. We’re only entering Plot7 and Plot3; Plot8 is still a bit out of control 🙄

Plot3

I made another bottle waterer for the patty pan on Plot7, all the squashes and courgettes have one now, so watering is directed straight to the roots. We chop the base off the bottle, Leave the lid on and burn holes in the lid and in the cone part of the bottle so the water doesn’t pour through too quickly once it’s pushed into the ground. With trailing squash it also helps you remember where the plant’s roots are!

And can you guess what’s going to be appearing on our meal lists quite soon..?

I’m unusually writing this on a Thursday as I have 2 days off work - yay and the sky is blue-ish! We’ve been enjoying the year-late Euros, especially when England beat Germany so we’re on to the quarter finals this weekend.

So, a happy song for you to enjoy, provided by…Paul McCartney. Sing along now 🥳