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!
What a lovely long day we had on the allotment yesterday. It was warm and the Sun even appeared from between the cloud at times.
We’ve taken the net cloches off the broad beans so that the bees and other insects can do their pollination duty to provide us with some tasty broad beans quite soon. The photo above is one of the plants sown at the end of October- they survived the extreme frost; some of their gang didn’t which is why we have a bit of succession planting.
Yesterday we were mostly sowing (and chatting and listening to the birds) during our several hours on the plot. In the inner polytunnel tunnel we have: Flowers: Verbena bonariensis, Nicotiana Whisper, Ipomoea Iobata (Spanish flag), Calendula Officinalis ‘Canteloupe’, Marigold ‘Legion of Honour’, Sunflower ‘Tall Timber’ and veg: Rainbow chard, Asparagus pea and an All Green courgette is an early sowing at home. The nicotiana (Tobacco plant) has the tiniest possible seeds - there they are a tiny smudge in the bottom of that miniature phial. And only 20 seeds! But I know they're a pretty flower so I hope they work.
Most of these flowers are destined for the flower plot this year, around the bench. It's great to see the perennials re-appearing now the ground is warming up and the daffodils finally came out.
I'm trying to keep on top of the weeds which are appearing and also pulling up some of the masses of Nigella. Having said that, Ivan gave us this plant, which looks a bit like Nigella - but we're not too sure what it is at this point. It's probably a weed as it was growing amongst his irises. I do like the foliage and I'm sure the flowers will provide an identification quite soon and we can decide then whether it's a keeper.
I was going to sow some veg outside but the ground was too wet. I have a week off soon so hopefully the weather will be a bit drier then. If we get the spuds planted out next week we'll have some space under the grow lamp at home. I've started parsnips by germinating them at home on a paper towel - they are notoriously awkward germinators so this way I'll only plant viable seed to get the best chance of a few parsnips this year.
At the weekend we spotted our first swallow of the season and then yesterday it was joined by a pair of house martens so it's really beginning to feel Spring-like, although night-time temperatures are still dipping close to zero (centigrade) and frosty rooftops are still regular morning sights. The birds were in full song at the weekend though and Ted pointed out at least two song thrushes, by their songs. That would help to explain all the broken snail shells but there are plenty of living snails left!
I spent a lot of time scrambling around by the pond trying to get a 'from the bottom of the pond' style photo. I had my camera on remote control using my phone and had some tadpoles in a transparent pot. It was quite awkward and of the 20-ish photos this was the best but isn't quite what I was aiming for ... oh well, perhaps I'll try again another day.
But I thought this gelatenous outline was quite interesting on this shot.
Anyway, enough about tadpoles! Here's an arty photo of purple sprouting brocolli and chive flower buds which formed part of my meal the other night.
I used one of the frozen bean burgers that I made a few weeks ago. I squashed it flat like a pancake; it still fell apart, but I really like the flavour of borlotti beans.
At 3pm yesterday everyone (almost) reached for their phones as we received our first ever Government 'Emergency Alert' - great, what a hopeful new advance for the 21st Century...😕
Oh well, it gave me an excuse to use this song by Secret Affair. Let's hope we never have to hear the alert alarm again.
The weekend wasn't as sunny as we'd hoped and we only visited the allotment on Sunday. We needed to pick some purple sprouting brocolli.
As you can see we also picked some rhubarb. The stems are rather thin from our plant on Plot3 but we thought it was worth a taster before the large plant on Plot8 provides us with more substantial stems. The psb was delish though.
The mangetout is growing pretty well, I'll leave it in the polytunnel for a bit longer before moving outside a week or two prior to planting out. We've put up our inner-polytunnel for added protection for our seeds which we intend to start sowing next weekend. No sign of the beetroot germinating outside yet.
Our grafted pepper plants have arrived: Sweet Eternity, Sweet Solario and Sweet Campor. They're enjoying the kitchen window for a few weeks but we have to move them if the Sun shines too brightly.
So, as that was a rather short, dull post (like the weekend 😏) I spent time writing a blogpost about frogs on my Wildlife on The Allotment blog - why not hop over and take a look <snigger>
The song title is provided by House of Pain (don't judge me, like my work colleagues did when I shared my screen and the video was shared with them all 😁 Well, they shouldn't have called me when I was having my lunch 😂)
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.
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.
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.
