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!
So pleased that we returned home to warm, at times sweltering, weather. The hoverflies, butterflies, bees and other insects are very busy and finally the ladybirds have re-appeared. The rain that fell in our 2 week absence, plus watering by Neal (thanks Neal 👍), has encouraged some good growth - this is the difference in the peppers and aubergine. We had spare pepper plants so we now have several growing in pots as well as leaving some on the Spares shelf for other plotholders.
The tomato plants are looking hopeful for future harvests.
And the pumpkin is growing at high speed, with several viable fruits growing.
The yellow courgette has bright yellow leaves, which is normally a sign of lacking nutrients. We watered it with Epson salts and the new growth is green again. It has a few tiny courgettes at the moment - hope they continue to grow.
Our sweetcorn, sown the day before we went away, have germinated. Not many sunflowers have appeared amongst the sweetcorn but there are a few around the outside and the marigolds have bushed out nicely. The beans that I sowed (Borlotti, Jacob’s Cattle and Gigantes) have been a failure, with just one plant from each. I’ve re-sowed soaked beans now to see if they work better. Luckily the runner bean, dwarf bean plants and broad beans are looking happier.
I pulled the garlic yesterday - some good big cloves and other smaller ones. Can’t believe it’s the Summer solstice already!
Since being back, I’ve weeded all of Plot7 and it looks much better for it, but I do need to sow a few more veggies there is still a lot of bare earth to welcome the weeds back into. I’ve left plenty of snapdragon and redcurrant tomato seedlings so they can provide a bit of colour and tiny toms.
The trouble is… if you look the other direction…
Ugh, most of that is Nigella that’s gone to seed and all being choked by bindweed 😫 I’ve weeded round all the growing areas and started chopping down that weedy area to try and get it under control - at least the hollyhocks are looking great and may detract from the weeds once they bloom! In the meantime this creeping red thyme in the herb bed is providing the brightest spot of colour and the hoverflies love it.
Migrant hoverfly
I’ve been watering everything in the morning for the last couple of days and temperatures were mid 20s by 10am. Today is the start of the amber extreme heat warnings with temperatures expected to go up to 35° and maybe more 🥵 And I have a rotten cold - booo! I’ll have to go up a bit later today at least to water in the polytunnel, which is not somewhere to hang around long on a hot day!
We’ve been enjoying home-grown salad (not potatoes yet) with lettuce, sweet turnips, radish and chives plus a few small onions that I pulled whilst weeding.
We’re enjoying watching the World Cup and liking that Hungerford seems a bit more in the spirit for it this time - this is the window of one of our local tearooms (The Tutti Pole) where they always have some sort of Lego display.
And of course we have our England flag and World Cup bunting. COME ON ENGLAND 👏
Fellow plotholder, Maria, and I decided yesterday morning that it’s difficult to improve gardening skills because every year throws us something different. Oh well, we’ll keep trying 🙂 And that is the vague connection to the song title by The Korgis.
I took a couple of slices of bread and butter to the plot for a fresh and colourful sandwich 😀 To be honest, it didn’t taste of anything but bread and butter, but it did look pretty.
This sandwich was tastier, with the addition of a freshly picked cucumber, cheese and mayonnaise 😊. I only recently found out that snapdragons (Antirrhinum) and French marigold (Tagetes) flowersare edible and you can order tubs of ‘fresh’ edible flowers online…! Hoho, I don’t think I’ll bother.
Anyway, enough of that silliness, (though I think my sandwiches may include a few petals more often now). This is a row of nasturtium with self-seeded snapdragons - such beautiful colours, even on a dull day.
We are at the end of July and it’s raining, as it has been for much of this month. But the growth is amazing! This is the Jack Be Little pumpkins and the Incredible sweetcorn.
The Cornell’s Delicata that I sowed is clearly not the bush variety that I’d planned the space for! It’s a Winter squash and I’m pleased to see some fruits now appearing. I’ll try to encourage the plant to grow over the mangetout frame rather than over the path…
Meanwhile our sunflowers have peaked too soon - the measuring is 4 weeks away so we didn’t want them to flower yet. But they do look good and it’s so nice to see them all around site and the bees love them.
This really is perfect growing weather at the moment and it’s a nice temperature for working in - though the HAHA Work on Saturday morning was exhausting - clearing a mass of stingers and brambles from against the site fence near the wildlife plot - my arms were tingling all evening after so much stinging!
Here’s a Timelapse of the lovely bubbling clouds yesterday. We left before the rain started, with a trug full of veggies.
I was eating separately from Jamie so could have chard and fennel which he doesn’t like, oh yes, and asparagus peas 😃 and I used a few baby leeks as spring onions. The courgette had to be picked, but will have to wait a day.
I realise it looks like I was frying coleslaw! This is the mixture of grated carrot, grated fennel, chopped leeks, cornflour and a bit of seasoning. I should have chopped the fennel, or maybe added some of the foliage as the flavour didn’t really come through, but after frying for about 5minutes on each side, then 10minutes in the oven these fritters were very tasty with a satisfying crunch.
This was a teriyaki tofu and courgette meal we had the other night - I found it delicious. No home-grown tomatoes yet but they’re coming on in the polytunnel along with peppers and aubergines.
The French and Borlotti beans are flowering and growing over the old polytunnel frame so we should have some beans to add to our meals in a few weeks…
I’m into my second week of leave (feels like I’ve been work-free for ages) so don’t want to wish the weeks away! We’re enjoying watching England win their matches in the Women’s World Cup - supported by my new gnome 😀 - though the matches are tighter than expected!
Song title provided by Kate Bush - I was amazed to see that I haven’t used this title before. What a great song - but the Cloudbusting can stop now - we’ve had enough rain for the timebeing…
It's been a busy July, what with Open Day preparations, the World Cup and such hot weather that it feels like I should be on holiday, not working. Lunches are getting more varied; the peppery turnips were a very tasty addition - I blanched them before adding to salads. But they, like the radishes, have not lasted well in the ground, I may try another sowing.
This has been our largest harvest so far, with our first courgette and the shallots, which have grown very well this year.
And we're very happy with our first aubergine! The plant in the greenhouse has plenty more fruits to come; the outdoor plants are slower, but I think we'll get something from them.
The ladybirds are making a show now, but too late for most of our broad beans - we've only managed a few meals from them this year because of the blackfly.
It seems that all the cabbage whites have emerged at the same time too. Everywhere you look they're flitting about or supping up the minerals where we've watered.
Another England win at the World Cup (this time 2-0 against Sweden) - AMAZING - meant another late night barbecue on the plot for Jamie and me last week. And we listened to Croatia beating Russia (on penalties) on the radio.
Kate's leek flowers are a fabulous display.
Now the World Cup is over and France won. The hot Summer weather continues to amaze - we're just not used to waking up to blue skies every morning! We had one afternoon with just about enough rain that we only needed to water the greenhouse...
... otherwise we're watering everything each evening as the ground is so dry.
We're leaving the lettuces under their cover as they seem happy under there.. these are the plants that looked so sad on 3rd July- great recovery ability!
And I found time to pickle some garlic in red wine vinegar, with mustard seeds, pepper, a little salt and a little sugar. I used these tiny Kilner jars which are so cute! It should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks and can keep for up to a year, apparently.
I used 3 remaining cloves to make garlic salt - the sea salt and garlic were ground together and then dried in the oven at 80° until it had formed a dry crust. I'm looking forward to having that on chips - it smells very strong so maybe not on a week-night!
Hmm, now what song to use for this summary of the last couple of weeks.... Ahh, The Killers - please think of it as 'things that we've done'!
The main point of this post is to show off these lovely flowers we have, thanks to fellow plotholders. Beautiful, sweet-scented pinks (from Ivan's plot) and lovely cornflowers (from Alison's plot) - they're the tallest cornflowers I've ever seen and certainly aren't the larkspur that the seedpacket showed!!
And more beautiful sweetpeas from Ivan's plot. Mine still have no flowers.
It's been a warm week with no rain so we've been watering, watering, watering every day after work. We've got plants that are desperate to get out of their pots and into the ground, but there hasn't been time so that's the plan for the weekend, however, it's World Cup time (Yay - Come on England!) so we'll have to fit the allotment in around the matches. This photo is through the pot of Summer bulbs (Ixia and Dutch Iris) I planted in March, which are looking lovely.
We've had lots of delicious strawberries during the week and I've had some tasty salad leaf and radish additions to my lunches - not enough to make a full salad yet though.
The coffee lounge at work has started bagging up their coffee grounds - I couldn't resist, so added these to our compost, I need to think of a better way of making use of them really.
We’re enjoying watching the World Cup and liking that Hungerford seems a bit more in the spirit for it this time - this is the window of one of our local tearooms (The Tutti Pole) where they always have some sort of Lego display.
And of course we have our England flag and World Cup bunting. COME ON ENGLAND 👏
