Hip Hop Hooray!

Another weekend of cold nights but both days the sky was mostly blue and it was pleasant weather to work in. 

Unusual wildlife spotted at Marsh Lane

I managed to finish digging another quarter of Plot7. The digging is ok, but every fork brings up a load of roots - we think they're tree/hedge roots which benefitted from last year's bean trenches. Jamie tidied up after me to remove the lumps and bumps.

That photo makes the earth look awful, but it's not that dry really. Here, this makes it look more like real life. Two quarters dug now.

And I finally planted the three irises from Ivan. They should be happy there with their rhizomes in the sun - hope the slugs steer clear of them; I should clear all that junk behind really but I want to get on with digging and sowing now.

We got up early and walked up the plot both mornings to open the polytunnel door and then sit in the sun for a while before going home and returning for a few hours working in the afternoons.
This is Jamie's photo of our little Robbie. He's feeding his mate now - she's very demanding but sometimes he's too slow and she has to retrieve her own worms. Well, they have to be quick otherwise Mr B (the blackbird, obviously) or the magpies will gobble the lot down too quickly.

 Robbie tried that method but wasn't so successful!

We were sorry to find this broken birds egg - and it seems to be a song thrush. What a great shame that is. We have seen evidence of thrushes in the form of broken snail shells, so they're a most welcome visitor.

We've picked, probably the last, of the purple sprouting brocolli as you can see it's beginning to flower now. That one plant has served us well. Hoping to get more than one plant producing for us this year.

On the way back home on Sunday morning we popped into the Food Festival being held on the Croft Field, a very pretty area in Hungerford near the church and the canal.

There were some nice stalls selling food and plants. We resisted the urge to buy any plants but Jamie wanted some Chilli oil so we came home with this little bundle (but no chilli oil!).

Jamie's planted up our strawberry planter. Three layers with 9 plants. It seems a bit too heavy to hang from the polytunnel frame this year. We really need to clear the strawberry bed where these runners were taken from.

We're expecting some rain this week but the weather is meant to cheer up for Easter's 4-day weekend - hooray! And a 4-day weekend means two 4-day working weeks - hooray! Hooray! Or as the title song by Naughty By Nature - Hip Hop Hooray 😏

A Forest

So that's the last of this year's squash tunnel photos - I hope I didn’t hear a little cheer - the area is cleared and waiting for the trenches to be re-dug in time for the manure delivery so that I can prepare the bed for next year.

The watering funnels for the squashes do help ensure the water aims for the roots once the foliage makes it hard to tell where the plant starts, but the snails do rather take advantage!

This was last weekend. We found lots of ladybirds enjoying the last heat of the year and a lot of wasps were about too.

It was nice to have another warm weekend, but the weeds will love it if the weather doesn't cool down. We planted the Mersey White garlic bulbs and the Jermor shallots into the raised bed and they got well rained in during the past week.

I removed the remainder of the runner beans, Gigantes and Borlotti from the polytunnel roof drying area and took them home in their pods to dry out a bit more. I podded them today and was interested to find a few pods contained these plain black runner beans. They look lovely; so smooth and shiny. It seems they’re just an aberration of the parent plants, which were Scarlet Empire so I didn’t bother keeping for sowing next year - the pods didn’t look any different.

I’m keeping the beans in a paper bag in the warm for a while to completely dry out. I’ve decided not to bother drying the Gaia soya beans; they’re just too tiny to bother with.

A couple of the Festival squash seemed too small to bother with too, but today I’ve made soup using them. I roasted them first with a bit of oil and cayenne pepper.

There was more flesh than I expected when I scraped them out.

And it’s made a lovely creamy soup. I’ve added some cardamom seed which I hope will give an interesting flavour.

I’m making a pumpkin pie for the first time for Halloween next weekend. I hope it’s easy/tasty so I can use up more of our amassed New England Pie pumpkins. I definitely want the Crown Princes roasted, as they’re such a tasty variety. Not sure what I’ll do with the final green tromboncino - soup probably!

I had an afternoon off in the week. Work has been so busy and I’ve been revising for an exam on Tuesday (I know! An exam at my time of life 🙀) so it was nice to have a bit of time away from the screen. Our planned little walk around Savernake Forest, just down the road in Wiltshire, turned into a 10km walk! 

Our unused-to-walking legs were protesting by the time we reached the car and we never did find the ‘Giant Beech’ but we found the 700 year old ‘Cathedral Oak’ and other very impressive trees and fungi. I was surprised to see that most of the trees are still green.

It’s the time of year for sitting enjoying the last rays of sunshine, with a hot drink - although I was watching Jamie weeding and cutting the edges at the time 😄

The song title is provided by The Cure, there aren’t enough songs by The Cure featured in this blog!

In the Meantime

These weekends are flying by; the weeks are too, but I don't mind that so much! The previous weekend was warm and dull, but last weekend was mostly sunny and very warm. That’s when we saw this interesting cloud formation (cirrus uncinus?)

We had some rain in the week but have still needed to water, but as crops are dying back we have less watering to do (thank goodness!)

All those pumpkins, plus at least two more which have crept into the tunnel, are all on one plant! They're New England Pie variety so I'll have to try making a pumpkin pie this year. 

Some of the other squash foliage is dying back and un-ripe fruits are beginning to shrivel. The Festival still has the greenest foliage and started to produce later than the others. There aren't as many fruits as I expected; I don't know whether the Tromboncino hogged the water or whether making the plants climb used more energy. Anyway, they have a few more weeks to do their thing before they get composted if they haven’t ripened. On Sunday I decided to measure the longest tromboncino (drum roll please)… 134.5cm! It’s not a record breaker; it’s 42cm shorter than the European record!

We’ve been harvesting the sweetcorn over the last few weeks.

They are so tasty, I think I prefer the cobs grilled rather than boiled. The pollination was a bit hit and miss, with probably half of the cobs not being fully pollinated. Still enough kernels to slather in butter though 😋 

We’ve also been enjoying the Nicola potatoes, which were grown in bags. They’re very versatile and have been good roasted, baked, mashed or boiled.

Cold or hot.

Finally a couple of peppers; one red, one orange, have ripened and we’re having them in a meal tonight. I hope we get more than two peppers from the plants, but the slugs have enjoyed them sooo much 🙄

Up till now I’ve had to make do with bought peppers for lovely dishes like this (with Naked Glory soya-based strips). There are still a few more french beans to eat, but the runners have gone over.

I’ve had the last of the patty pans and I think the courgettes, which are now marrow-sized are past their best. So the year is certainly moving swiftly on. I’ve updated my allotment wildlife blog as there are so many interesting creatures about at the moment. This weekend the Ivy hedge was full of life so I made use of the macro settings on our camera, still need a bit of practice but some shots I was pleased with.

I sadly missed out on the Horticultural & Handicrafts Show this weekend because I’m still basically shielding until I get my third COVID jab. Well done to all who joined in - especially plot neighbour, Neal, who won the Banksian medal. We’ll be back next year… (hope, hope hope!) but in the meantime Neal can wear the crown 😄 Only joking, but here’s the song title by Spacehog.

So Long

I'm so happy that September has brought the heat and sunshine with it - aah, it's so welcome!

The cosmos flowers are doing weird things, as you can see. They started out with normal petals, but now they have something like an angry frill-necked lizard! Still looking beautiful though.

We emptied one of the potato bags yesterday - the haulms were chopped down a few weeks ago because of the blight. These are Nicola potatoes (2 plants). A quick rummage in the top showed that it could be a good haul.

Look at that lovely lot! Delicious small potatoes. They're very good as salad potatoes but we've enjoyed them mashed and roasted too. A couple had a bit of blight so they won't keep, but we don't intend to store them for long anyway. Talking of blight, here are the tomatoes that we saved from the blighted crop.

Lizzano are such a tasty tomato, such a shame that the growth was cut short. We're pleased that all of these semi-ripe fruits reddened up under our grow-lamp at home. Unlike the peppers which just went rotten! Clearly a fruit will only ripen if it's ready to. I'm having to make do with purchased peppers while ours are being mostly eaten by slugs in the polytunnel 😔

This lovely dish is roasted peppers, garlic and onions with olive oil and a bit of chilly with basil to make it look pretty. It's so delicious with a salad or in sandwiches and lasts for 2-3 days. I'm having it with a potato salad for lunch today, mmm, I'm looking forward to it already and it's only breakfast time 😋

We have started our first sweetcorn now. We plucked two large cobs. One was rather better pollinated than the other but still plenty of tasty kernels covered in butter. These are Early Bird. I don't think they're as tasty as the Lark that we usually grow but they are still good.

I'm back working from home after a few days off. More of my colleagues are returning to the lab but still in fairly small numbers - so many of us have found working from home to be beneficial to our work and home-life, as well as reducing our carbon footprints. I'm expecting a 3rd COVID jab to be offered in the next few weeks which could improve the immunity for immunosuppressed people. For now we're relying on other people to have the jab and take the test every now and then. Thank goodness for the allotment so I'm not desperate to travel further afield.

There's me with our longest tromboncino squash and it's still growing! I may have to enter it into our Horticultural Show just because it's so amazing 😏 There were 4 of us standing around talking about it the other day, it certainly draws attention! And that's the reason for this song title by Maya Hawke.

Living in the Past

With a few days off last week I was lucky enough for them to be the sunniest we’ve had in a while. We had a barbecue at the plot. The sunshine ripened up some of our tomatoes before blight got them. Not many, but happy to have had some!

The peppers are still green and we may not get any if the slugs have their way. Each visit to the plot we check the plants and invariable another healthy looking pepper has been ruined by slug or snail damage…and sometimes we catch them in the act 😖

Eurgh, so many slugs and they’re so big!! We don’t help ourselves really, with so many hiding places on our plots. At least we’ve finally cleared a rotten raised bed that was sheltering at least 15 big orange slugs and Jamie dug through the area. There, that looks better. Our broad beans will over-Winter there.

At least most of the beans are avoiding damage and runners or french beans are part of most meals at the moment.

And there’s plenty more to make a proper meal these days.

That green squash is a tromboncino. One of the plants has produced these green fruits. The flesh is slightly more yellow than the usual light green fruits; the taste is the same, pretty bland. Quite a few of the fruits are really long but are rotting at the flower end and aren’t forming the bulbous seed end; seemingly because they haven’t been pollinated.

Our carrots wouldn’t be winning any prizes in the Horticultural Show on 18th September! Sadly we won’t be joining in this year due to my shielding from COVID-19 but at least it means we don’t have to worry about “Don’t eat that! Keep it for the show” 😄

We’ve pulled our first Kestrel potato plant. They seem to have escaped slug damage too, which is quite unusual for our potato harvests.

The song title is specifically chosen for Neal who requested some Jethro Tull. As he won the ‘HAHA Tallest sunflower’ competition last week and he insists on using imperial (10ft 3 inches) rather than metric (3.12 metres) I opted for this song title.

😄 Well done Neal! This song will be with you for days!