Let the Sunshine In (Aquarius)

Back in May, you may recall that a few of us allotment holders started improvements to one of the town’s roundabouts. At that stage we didn’t realise that we were going to suffer heatwave after heatwave so some hardy people have been doing a lot of watering to keep it alive and to help the seeds germinate.

I think it looks pretty good, considering. I can see we missed quite a few borage seedlings and the plants haven’t grown as bushy as we’d expect if we’d had rain but at least it looks much better than it has for the last few years and will hopefully be even better next year… Britain in Bloom results are due in September.

I took that photo early this morning. I was hoping it would be a glorious sunny morning so walked along to the River Kennet at about 6:30am. It was lovely with lots of birds and I saw a water vole swimming across but it was rather cloudy so the photos weren’t as glorious as I’d hoped and no otters.

The weather has remained warm/hot, and dry, over the last week. Although on the one day that the temperature was back to average it felt decidedly chilly(!) and I missed the sunshine. And look - the overnight temperature fell to 3.5°! That thermometer is in the shade behind the polytunnel.

I’ve been to the allotment watering every day - apart from one, which is why we ended up with two very large courgettes in the trug! As well as our first cucumber of the year.

Those potatoes were from a rogue plant which grew in our onion bed. It got frosted 3 times but kept coming back. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many decent tubers when I first put the fork in. Not sure what variety it is.

A couple of hot days it was really windy, threatening our sweetcorn which now have cobs forming. The magpies have taken a liking to these on site so we’re planning some kind of cob protection.

The aubergine plant is producing lovely fruits - look at this beauty!

I used that along with courgettes, onion, tomatoes, garlic and passata to make a large batch of “ratatouille” and froze 4 portions. We had one with fried gnocchi the other night and it was delicious.

We went to a ‘Summer Evening’ event at the Newtown Road Cemetery in Newbury at the beginning of the month. The recorder recital was a bit awkward but it was a nice evening so we sat outside and then wandered around the graves which date back to 1850.

The Bat Talk was what we went for and it was very interesting. The expert, Linda Clark, brought her two tiny pipistrelle bats along for us to have a close-up look. They’re so sweet. These can’t fly so she has them at her home and feeds them mealworms. They can live for 12 years, I’m not sure how old these are. It seems we’re doing all the right things to encourage bats on the allotment, which is good news.

I’ve been decorating the hall all week, still a work in progress… It’s a cheery bright yellow as you can see. I still need to paint the cupboard doors, put up shelves and lay a laminate floor 😮‍💨 All because we bought a pretty lamp on holiday 😄 Thank goodness Jamie can advise, I’m not very practical with DIY-ing. 

The song title is in honour of the new paint job, provided by The Fifth Dimension. It’s a sing-along for a Sunday morning. Look at that groovy bunch 🤗 It can also recognise that the solar panels were being fitted at the allotments for our water pump - much better than needing petrol for the generator all the time - a bit more work till they’re in use, but nearly there. And we have a partial solar eclipse to look forward to next week - hope the clouds stay away for that bit of excitement.

Dream On

I’ve put that lovely full trug of veggies at the top of this post as I’m a bit moany! That’s our first aubergine of the year and the extremely meagre haul from our first Desiree potato - we would normally expect more than this…

Desiree

We thought it was going to rain yesterday afternoon. The sky filled with dark clouds, the weather apps showed rain all around but not a drop fell on us 😮‍💨 Our last smattering of rain drops was on 22nd June, 40 days ago, no wonder the allotment site’s central pathway looks like this and the grass crunches underfoot.

Of all the squashes, our butternut is struggling the most. It looks so depressed with its drooping leaves; it cheers up after a 10litre drink but by the next day it’s flagging again. There are lots of squashes forming so I’ll keep watering and give it a bit of feed later.

And the rudbeckia has looked sad all Summer - it’s mostly had to fend for itself as I’m not really watering flowers, which is why there aren’t many!

The two Baby Lou plants that I pulled before we went away produced plenty of lovely small tubers.

Baby Lou

They’re mostly clean but one had this interesting damage. I’m not too sure what caused it but I’m surprised that only one tuber was affected. It went home to the green waste bin. Nb. Don’t Google Image it or you’ll be faced with numerous nasty human skin disease photos 😷

We’ve been enjoying these and the Orla potatoes in various meals including skin-on wedges for a fab easy meal with dips or baked Camembert. Yum.

And this pretty dish used up a few more veggies. It was loosely based on a Greek dish - Briami. (That’s red onion rather than aubergine by the way)

I’m trying to keep on top of the tomatoes and courgettes but Jamie’s already bored with them. I’ve frozen 2 portions of passata - 500grams of tomatoes produced 250ml of passata.

and I think I’ll be making more quite soon - these are our most recent harvests…

And everything I cook also includes onions/shallots and/or garlic - ideal really 😋

Onions and shallots drying

The sweetcorn have finally started forming their tassels and the water run-off from watering them is helping the Maximilian Sunflowers, as if they need help! They are pretty bobbing their heads in the breeze. This quarter of Plot7 is still looking the most alive.

The Baby Bear pumpkin plant on Plot3 has produced 3 orange pumpkins already and there seem to be 3 more just beginning to change colour so they’re visible amongst the foliage. We won’t harvest them till the stems have completely dried off.

This post turned out as less of a whinge than I expected. Who can moan when we have all this lovely veg, blue skies and a bore hole providing us with water. The hosepipe ban doesn’t affect us as we use watering cans - usually ~12 x 10litres to do our 3 plots. Backwards and forwards to the water trough - phew and that’s why I don’t need a gym 😉

We’re noticing the emergency services are much busier at the moment and there have been at least two field fires near here, though I fear they may have been aided by humans even more than climate change. Terrifying wild fires in France, Spain, Greece and other countries should be incentive enough to be careful but unfortunately some people are very stupid.

The fabulous song is of course by Aerosmith, from 1973, can you believe it?! And we’ll keep dreaming of rain for the timebeing….

Oh, What a Night

I’m happy (Jamie less so!) that courgettes are on the menu - still managing to pick small at the moment - along with shallots and our first two tiny tomatoes.

Other tomatoes are reddening now following that Rubylicious example.

Also in the polytunnel, tiny baby peppers have started to form and the aubergine has some surprisingly spiky flowers, which will hopefully produce a few fruits.

The hollyhocks are looking lovely towering over our weedy Plot8. They don’t mind the lack of water, but the weeds are helping to keep the soil damp on that plot

I really love this pale pink flower, but there are also some deep purple ones.

We've just entered our third heatwave of the year - our poor plants are gasping, as am I trying to water everything, but even watering at the roots isn’t really providing enough for happy plants.  

Look at that 😔 Not the lush growth we hope to see at this time of year and the potato haulms are definitely looking past their best - we’re rather concerned whether there will actually be any tubers in that dry soil. We’ve sown a few dwarf beans (Purple teepee) in that front area and I re-planted some lettuce seedlings but I think they may have frazzled. And we finally planted our mini-cucumber out - that’s in a big pot on Plot3 to grow up the bean tunnel.

In between watering it’s nice to sit and watch the bees and plentiful butterflies.

We’ve had another session on the roundabout. Unfortunately our previous work encouraged dormant borage seeds to grow. Normally I’d like a borage-covered roundabout but it was swamping all the perennials so 5 of us spent a few hours carefully pulling out all the borage seedlings - such a shame really.

The ground is rather bare again and would also benefit from a downpour but hopefully the regular watering (thanks to Nia and Kate) will be enough to encourage more flowers. The Britain in Bloom judging is imminent but surely they’ll take the weather into account… and it’s only the second year that Hungerford has been involved.

I really like the Bug Hotel sign that the team have made at the entrance to Hungerford.

Anyway, I really must get up the plot to water before it gets too hot again, it’s meant to reach 29° today. But before I go…

The Mexico v England World Cup match was delayed by an hour - to 2am on Monday (yesterday) morning. It was so worth being awake for. After England took a somewhat unexpected 2-goal lead in the first half, the rest of the match was as stressful as any other England match, particularly after England were down to 10 men. Both teams had penalties and at 2-3 after 60 minutes England heroically defended our goal for the remainder of the game, which included 11 agonising minutes of ‘stoppage time’. Ohhh, the relief and joy when the final whistle blew and England are through to the quarter finals 🥳 Such an amazing match 👏👏🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

And that is the perfect opportunity for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, with a little poetic licence for the title - December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night).

Beautiful Things

Before our weekend away I had to do a final water in the polytunnel - outside could look after itself for a few days, especially if this was the weather September was going to bring! Between torrential downpours I picked more tomatoes and left them on the Spares shelf, we'd already given some away to neighbours. I was tempted to take some away with us, but I think they have tomatoes in Bath 🤭 

The two redcurrant tomato plants are producing masses of tiny tomatoes - they’re a bit of a pain to pick, it would be considerably easier if whole trusses ripened at once, but they are so tasty and photogenic I’m glad I grew them.

I made the confit “con-fee” (apparently) with some of the redcurrant tomatoes as planned. I've mostly been having them as toppings for sandwiches and cheese biscuits. There are some left which we may have with halloumi tonight - they only keep for a fortnight in the fridge. They produce a delicious pop while eating them. The oil can be used for pasta, salads or cooking. I used some for frying aubergine this week.

Confit - redcurrant tomatoes and garlic

The aubergines have done well in the polytunnel this year - these were from the Graffiti plant.

They were used, along with tomatoes (obviously) for this tasty chilli.

And the radish pods were used in this concoction with non-chicken and an onion sauce - delicious. The pods didn’t last long, they’ve gone past their best now and rather stringy so the plants will be next in-line for the compost bin.

This is our latest trug which includes some Meatball aubergines. There are still quite a few small fruits on the plant, but that’s the last Graffiti for the year.

And this trug has more dried beans and our first melon, which I think is ripe. Plus a few tiny, tasty carrots -  not sure they appreciated being container-grown.

The flowers are really enjoying the sunshine and showers weather at the moment, even though the nights are getting a bit chilly for me.

We went early with making some sloe gin using sloes from the allotment hedge - they’re so abundant this year. The sloes were frozen before adding to the gin and the jars are shaken regularly so the colour is deepening for (hopefully) a tasty liqueur around Christmas.

And just to show how autumnal it is out there …. This large fungi emerged in the woodchip pile. Not sure of the variety so it didn’t get eaten!

And because this post contains some beautiful things, Benson Boone provides the title track - enjoy!