Hot Hot Hot

 

Finally got round to filtering the chive flowers from the vinegar. It’s so pretty and the chive flavouring is a lovely addition to chips or a salad. I’m thinking I may make some lavender vinegar, though I’m not sure that would work on chips…

Lettuce is now joining the harvests. The beetroots are the perfect ‘golfball-size’ that I’ve read about. I thought I’d try microwaving them rather than using the hob or oven for an hour. I’m no cook or much of a microwave user, but I can confirm that 7 minutes for two freshly picked small beets is much too long. I took the lid off to find two deflated splodges! I’ll try again… 

I did make a delicious gooseberry crumble though; gooseberries courtesy of Ivan. It served for breakfasts and desserts for much of the week. Ivan also gave me some redcurrants which are so beautiful and made into a sauce provide a perfect topping for chocolate ice cream. Yum.

We got a lot done on the allotment last weekend. I sowed another row of Salad Onions and Chinese Dragon radish - 5 days on and the radish are already up. Jamie potted up the pepper in the polytunnel and I planted the two final squashes in the tunnel - Winter Celebration. The melon and pumpkin are released and are heading off sideways.

Mangomel Melon

The cucumbers are planted in their pots, they’re very small plants at the moment but hopefully will be as prolific as they usually are quite soon.

I pulled all the garlic, but the bulbs are a bit smaller than usual. Lucky there are plenty of them, now drying in the sun on an old saucepan stand.

We did get some rain, but not enough so have been watering every morning. It’s taking us more than an hour to water everything now so need to start getting up a bit earlier, or starting work later…

Nice to see these early morning altocumulus clouds and seeing our buddleia there reminds me that I saw my first ever Hummingbird Hawkmoth on there in the week - what an amazing little moth! Not a great photo, but it was so speedy.

Anyway, that was all last week. I’m looking forward to a hot, hot, hot weekend though am rather disappointed that the blue sky has turned grey in the last hour! Song title provided by Arrow. Have a lovely weekend all.

Before you Leave

I received a 'help - urgent' message on my phone at the weekend, from a plotholder. It was because her partner and a fellow plotholder had to hide in a polytunnel while this lot decended on the site - the plotholders felt like they were being dive-bombed as the sky turned black and the buzzing built to a crescendo!

By the time I got there the excitement was over so I just took a few photos. I think they're honey bees. The swarm had selected a blackcurrant bush to rest on while the bee scouts went to find a suitable location to re-home.

They had moved on when we looked a couple of hours later so I was a bit disappointed to have missed them leaving. 

I'm suprised they didn't decide to stay on site with Ivan's amazing bearded iris plots providing a colourful centrepiece to our site. They really are stunning and a real talking point as people walk to their plots.

I'm pleased that we can sit on our bench on Plot7 and see the lovely colours. The whole site is looking beautiful at the moment, especially at the sunny weekend with lots of plotholders working and bringing various plants down to plant up - it's a fab time of year, isn't it?

The recent sun-rain-sun weather has been perfect for growing (weeds) and has made digging easier, so we managed to clear and dig the final quarter of plot 7. There are two deep holes filled with manure for the courgette and pattypan to be planted into in a week or two. The rest of that quarter will be for sweetcorn and maybe a few flowers and other bits and bobs.

The potatoes have all emerged, with plenty of space for earthing up when the time comes. And the beetroot and radish will be providing me with a bit of salad quite soon. The florence fennel mostly germinated but is always at risk from slug damage - I'm hoping that sown into the middle of a plot it may be less susceptible... 

The carrots and parsnips have been less successful.... germination has been very poor even though we've done two sowings of carrots (already). It looks like I may get 8 parsnips(!) from the thickly sown row. I may have to try another sowing of them as I do love parsnip soup.

At the moment we're only harvesting rhubarb but the broad beans are on their way, plumping up nicely. The aphids have found them, of course, so whenever we find a ladybird we put them onto the beans to have a good feed and hopefully stop the beans getting spoilt. I thought this one was a Pine Ladybird, because of the rim round its wing-cases, but it seems it is just a Harlequin.

We have various seeds germinating in the polytunnel - still no giant sunflowers though 😞. A few of all the beans need re-sowing but we expect to have at least five plants of each type which will be plenty for us. We've dug the area on plot 8 for 3 wigwams - over holes filled with manure.

I have a few days off soon and hope to get the holes, or trench, dug for this year's squash tunnel. Plot3 is looking a bit abandoned at the moment, but shouldn't be too tricky to get that ready for squashes. I haven't been doing much cooking but have prepared this year's chive flower vinegar.

And, I've been doing a bit of this.... but more on that another time..

The song title is provided by Pepe Deluxe - and is referring to the bees. I'm suprised to see that I haven't used this song before, it's so great! Dance along now 😄

Cuckoo

Yesterday was my last day of freedom - back to work today (it's too early for work at the moment, if you're wondering!!), still full-time from home so that’s not so bad, but I have so enjoyed the last week that I’m sorry it’s over already. Morning and afternoon visits to a warm, often sunny plot - perfect.

Pink, flavoured vinegar in-progress

The weather for the last two days was very warm, but not too much sunshine which (I hate to say) was a good thing otherwise we wouldn’t have achieved as much as we wanted. Like (drumroll please) my 10 squashes are planted. 

They’re being protected under netting, with slug pellets, until they get established, they look so vulnerable at the moment! The cut-off plastic bottles are for ease of watering when the tunnel has become a jungle (fingers crossed).

Regular visitors may remember that I bought celeriac plants because my seedlings were stuck at the ‘cress’ stage for so long. Well, I'm glad we didn't consign them to the compost as they eventually grew and so I made a trench for them on Plot3.

Neal gave us some Early Bird sweetcorn plants so Jamie dug the area on Plot3 where the manure pile was - clearing the many weeds and tree roots and they're protected by bottle cloches for the timebeing. I intend to try some Glass Gem sweetcorn (again) on Plot7 - I'm going to sow them direct one day this week, well that's the plan.

Plot3 is really looking like a worked-plot now!

But Plot 7 (and 8) will always be the favourites because they were our first. The polytunnel has been re-stocked with the following sown into modules or pots yesterday:

• Borlotto Firetongue (dwarf beans)
• Gaia (dwarf soya beans)
• Speedy (dwarf french beans)
• Gigantes (Greek runner beans)

• Purple Sprouting broccoli - these have been brought home under the grow light
• Moreton's Secret mix - "very mixed lettuces" from RealSeeds. I've sowed these in a tray and put them under the enviromesh with the carrots. The polytunnel would be too hot for them

The Scarlet Empire and Borlotto runner beans have a bit more growing to do before we'll plant them outside. And look at that big strawberry. Jamie assures me that if we wait till today we'll have a handful to eat rather than just one...

The flowers are enjoying the sunshine as much as us.

Aquilegia

Geum

The song title is an aide memoire, because I thought this was interesting but forgot to add to my earlier post. We've been hearing the cuckoo for weeks - it's somewhere over the marsh but the sound has been getting louder and closer over the last week.

Not a cuckoo

We commented that we'd never seen a cuckoo, but then last week the cuckoo and its mate were flying overhead across the allotment from North to South. The male was 'cuckoo-ing' all the way across and as it passed over you could see plotholders look up like some sort of mexican wave! It was quite a sight (and sound)! I'd certainly assumed that they only cuckoo when sitting and looking for a mate.

So here is Rising Appalachia to provide the song.

Daisies are our Silver

What a beautiful week off work - proper June weather for much of it. We were working on Plot3 and had to move our bench to this lovely spot under the trees in order to cool down a bit.

We’ve spent many hours on the plot since last Wednesday. I managed to finish digging the manure trenches for the squashes (nearly killed me). There are so many hedge/tree roots in Plot3 it’s really hard work.

Jamie’s planted up the two courgettes and two pumpkin plants, with plenty of slug protection. It rained one day so we sheltered in the polytunnel but the amount of slugs and snails that emerged was horrendous!   I’m a bit worried about my squashes because of the placement of the compost bins, but too late to change that now.

Molluscs aren’t the only problem. Not satisfied with eating much of my mangetout, the pigeons have taken a fancy to chard and beetroot leaves this year - I’ve netted the chard now, I’m sure we haven’t needed to do that in previous years.

This is my chive flower vinegar - I managed to get a few flowers so it’ll make nice a pink and flavoured addition to salads. Although currently my salad crops are rather sparse...

Back on Plot7 I filled two holes with manure and put up two wigwams: one for Gigantes beans, which I’ll sow direct, and the other for the Borlotti beans which have germinated and are currently growing on in modules. I’m hoping to get some things planted out on Monday - last day of holiday, boohoo.

The daisies, buttercups, speedwell and other wildflowers are beautiful this year (not the ones we sowed, yet). The Spring weather was perfect for them, if not for our needs. My cousin quoted “Daises are our silver” on a post and it brought back so many childhood memories I had to share it here.

I have to say, it had completely disappeared from my memory, but now I can’t shake it off - such pretty words (it’s a hymn, but I wouldn’t have realised it when singing it at infants school). So, here it is - pardon the nostalgia, but it’s so sweet.