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!
Like other plotholders, I decided to pick the ripest squashes before the rain came.
The two blue Crown Prince aren’t very big and I was disappointed that the plants only produced one fruit each, but there will be enough for at least two meals from each squash, so I shouldn’t complain. The green stripeys are Honey Boat. I picked three and there should be more to harvest probably in a couple of weeks. They’re my second favourite tasting squash. The fancy multi-coloured Festival are my favourite for looks and taste pretty good too, there are a few more of them to come. The two round yellow squash have been confirmed as Spaghetti squash by Kate, our plot neighbour who gave us the plants. We’ve never seen fruits like that before, but they’ll be fine, just for me as Jamie doesn’t like them.
In fact, I like them so much that I took one from our site’s ‘Freebies shelf’ the other week and had these two lovely meals. I’ve used fresh Borlotti beans in both these dishes. They are so tasty. They're boiled on the hob for 40minutes, which is the same amount of time I cook the spaghetti squash in the oven (open-side down). Then bits and bobs are added before returning to the oven for 15minutes.
That second meal has the tiniest Nicola potatoes. I couldn’t bear to throw them away and they cooked up nicely in the oven with the tomatoes, garlic and shallots before I added the beans.
We got a good haul of Nicola potatoes from that bag.
There’s my handful of Borlotti beans, I only used 6 pods for each meal. And look how pretty the fresh beans are, though they are rather dull-looking when cooked.
Most of the beans I’m going to dry and, because of the forecast rain, I picked the semi-dried ones and have put them in the netting attached to the top of the polytunnel. There are still loads more Borlotti to pick and the Gigantes have hardly started drying on the plants yet.
The edamame are the same, they were slow to start but have podded up now and are just beginning to go over.
As well as plants dying back, there are signs of things to come.
The raised bed has been prepared for the garlic and shallots which should be delivered next week (if such deliveries aren’t affected by the HGV crisis we’re now in the middle of 🙄)
The bed is prepared and holes prepped for popping the broad beans in next month. And at the weekend we potted on some strawberry runners. The strawberry bed is a mess but we'll sort that out sometime...
So the polytunnel is looking like a storage area now for a few things and we're hoping to get a few more ripened peppers before the plants get removed.
I thought I'd start the post on a happy picture, as the next photo is a less happy one - our tomatoes haven't escaped blight so this lunchtime I chopped off all the leaves in the vain hope that some may actually go red. I'm envious of all the tomato harvests I'm seeing on social media!
What a poor show! So it appears that we'll have to keep buying tomatoes for the rest of this year 😔 It's a shame because everything else in most of my meals is home-grown at the moment.
The runner beans are really paying out. And a branch snapped off my dwarf borlotti beans, so I had some of them in their pods along with the first picking of Speedy dwarf beans.
All of the beans apart from the Edamame are producing beans now. The Edamame have only just started to flower, so not sure whether they'll produce in time - the plants look healthy but the weather is definitely feeling like September.
Harvests are a bit more varied, (well, different shaped courgettes!) but how many more courgettes, cucumbers and beans can I eat??
I've made another batch of marrow and carrot soup, flavoured with celeriac stems. I should have removed the centre of the marrow, as the soup is a bit watery; I may need to add a potato to it to thicken it up a bit. I’ll see how it tastes tomorrow.
We have plenty of garlic - good job I'm working from home and not socialising! And I harvested a first Tromboncino for this tasty meal.
That's the before photo and I scoffed half of it before getting a photo after it was cooked, with a bit of cheese on top. It has Ancho chilli flakes added to the carrot, shallots and garlic; they’re not hot but add a lovely flavour - it covered two meals as Jamie's refusing to eat any more Summer squash 😃
That’s me, making holes for planting the leeks at the weekend - look, the sun shone and it was warm. We now have 40 leeks puddled-in, thanks to our plot neighbour Neal. We’d be waiting rather longer if we used our specimens…! How pathetic are they 😄
Leeks are such a tasty addition, particularly as our shallots didn’t produce very much. Jamie’s been trying to buy pickling vinegar to pickle a small jar of shallots but has found that in short supply - along with other items. Is it COVID-related or BREXIT… or maybe a bit of both?
Anyway, (don’t get me started) I’ll drag myself away from my two favourite subjects. The song title is provide by The Jo-Boxers and I’ve chosen it because more and more I’m reminded of how much ‘luck’ can change people’s fortunes - good or, sadly, very bad. Stay safe all.
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 🙂
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.
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.
There’s my handful of Borlotti beans, I only used 6 pods for each meal. And look how pretty the fresh beans are, though they are rather dull-looking when cooked.
