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.
We had such a lovely day in Oxford on Wednesday. We specifically went to see the Anglo-Saxon Alfred jewel, which Jamie’s wanted to see for a couple of years. Made in the 9th century with the inscription ‘Alfred ordered for me to be made’ it’s a very special item with amazingly intricate gold work surrounding enamel work and a rock crystal. It was ploughed up in the 17th century - imagine finding that!
We enjoyed wandering through the galleries seeing some incredible works of art and historic artefacts. Here are a few which I particularly liked (and I got a half decent photo of). Where possible I’ve added a link where you’ll be able to see better images than I managed, but even better, why not go and visit the Ashmolean- it really is worth visiting more than once.
I love the little satyr on the right who meets your eye.
The lighting in this painting is so stunning - just incredible what a few well-placed brush strokes can produce. Unbelievable to think it was painted over 350 years ago. I was raving about this to my sister and she said “Haven’t you ever seen a painting before?!” 😂
I could have spent hours staring at some of the art whereas a glimpse at others was enough to know it wasn’t my cup of tea. The still life works are amazing but are a bit samey - and there are a lot of them, this is just a small portion.
Apart from the Alfred Jewel this article caught Jamie’s eye. Not the most beautiful in the building 😊 but, you know, we all have our preferences.
The Martin Brothers 1898
This interesting tapestry of Oxfordshire and surrounding counties from 1660 fills a whole wall - it’s undergone quite a lot of restoration unsurprisingly.
Oxfordshire tapestry 1660
As you’d expect, Hungerford is there and Littlecote, that I posted about last week, but I’m surprised to see ‘Charnham Street’, which is our main road into the town, listed as a separate settlement. I’m hoping someone local can shed some light on that.
Anyway this fella with a garlic on his head 🤭 reminds me that this used to be an allotment blog..!
We’ve visited each day to water and check on progress. I was disappointed that something has tucked into our lettuce and emerging row of turnips so I’ve resorted to slug pellets and netted over the top of them. I’ve planted a few of the perennials around the plots to provide a bit of lasting colour, hopefully and tidied up one of the messy areas. I’ve sowed these beans in various locations:
Borlotti Lamon climbing
Greek Gigantes climbing
Jacob’s Cattle dwarf
We should have seen the last of the cold nights now and we’re moving into a mini-heatwave (hooray!). It’s lovely to see a few more flowers emerging and the valerian scent is on the air - beautiful!
The song title has been chosen as a few of us plotholders have been helping Hungerford/Britain in Bloom by weeding/digging and planting up one of the roundabouts as you enter Hungerford - we hope it’ll soon be a lovely mix of colours, rather than just the yellow and green of buttercups! It includes lupin, astilbe, verbena boreansis, golden rod, geranium, cow daisy and borage to name a few.
So here’s the song by Yes - oh dear, it’s the 8-plus minute version! Go and make a cup of tea.
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!
Tomato season has arrived on our plots. I’ve been looking up ways to use the tomatoes and passata was the easiest solution so I have some bags frozen now - they should last 3 months.
We used some of it fresh for this tasty pasta dish - it used up the last of last year’s yin-yang beans which I’d pre-cooked in the slow cooker for 8 hours, avoiding the overnight soak.
The British Tomato Association have some nice recipes so I may use the redcurrant tomatoes for a confit, otherwise they’re mostly good for salads or garnish. I was surprised to see that ‘Tomato Fortnight’ is in June which the Tomato Association consider ‘peak tomato season’ - shows the difference between commercial and home-grown! This was another trug from last week.
The radishes, carrots and aubergine were roasted with potatoes and halloumi and the giant courgette was cut into rings and stuffed with a chestnut stuffing.
Jacob’s Cattle, Greek Gigantes and Borlotti
You can see that I’ve managed to dry some beans, just in time as we’ve had some significant rain over the last few days and have measured 20mm on the plot. I may dry the runner beans too as the meagre amount that we’ve picked have already gone stringy - what a dead loss!
We were lucky that the rain stayed away for the Bank Holiday weekend. Hungerford’s Beer and Music Festival was on for three days. We had two lovely afternoons sitting in the Sun, listening to live music and drinking real ale plus the barbecue had veggie burgers - woohoo!
Cheers!
On Plot3 the squashes are trying to fruit - the Shark’s Fin melon (squash) has a couple of good-sized fruits but I’m not sure that the Festival or Taheri Melon squash are going to achieve anything edible but I do hope so!
Shark’s Fin melon squash
So today’s the last day of August, it’s seemed a quick, but beautiful Summer and I hope it’ll continue for a few more weeks giving the rest of our sunflowers time to bloom 🙄 Poor little plant desperately needed a drink that day!
Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush provide the positive song title as we move into meteorological Autumn and see what September brings us….
We had a trip to a local vineyard yesterday with plot-buddies Linda and Ivan. The Winding Wood Vineyard is a rare thing in Britain - it creates organic sparkling wine using biodynamic practices.
The tour was interesting and gave Ivan a few ideas for his grapevines at the allotment - one half of the vineyard is growing the same variety of Pinot Noir grapes as he is. Interesting that they use horsetail-tea to spray the leaves against aphids/fungus - we can help with that! They also use willow-bark and yarrow flowerheads and china-clay against mildew. They don’t do any watering - even this year - as vines have 5m roots. But they have a fancy heating system to avoid frost damage at vital stages - Ivan will need to stick with fleecing.
I wanted this photo of the ripening grapes in row 23 when Linda snapped me 😊
After the tour - it’s across 2acres, so not a lot of walking, we went into the lovely big barn for tasting of three 2020 wines. The rosé was mine and Jamie’s favourite.
The Winding Wood’s 2500 Pinot noir and Chardonnay vines are 13years old, so about twice as old as Ivan’s.
Winding Wood Vineyard - Chardonnay vines
These are Ivan’s 10 vines - I just know we’re going to find him stripping back leaves next time we see him on site!
Ivan’s are larger than the grapes at the vineyard, which I think were intentionally smaller but about the same state of ripeness. Harvesting will be likely. Be mid-September or October.
It was a very pleasant couple of hours in a beautiful quiet location, so peaceful. And very interesting to see their techniques for growing organically - I think I want to dig out my biodynamic gardening book…
Meanwhile, on the allotment I’ve cleared three areas - the over-Wintering broad beans will go where I pulled the leek flowers up. Look how dry it is! I disposed of the leek seed heads and composted the stems.
The sweetcorn patch has been cleared, apart from a few snapdragons, to get a bit more light to the Jacob’s Cattle dwarf beans which are drying on the plants - I’ll move them into the polytunnel before it’s due to rain. Last year my drying beans got such a drenching they went mouldy on the plants so couldn’t be saved.
Harvests have mostly been tomatoes now. All three of our varieties have produced plenty of fruits - I may need to make some passata to store.
Cocktail Crush, Black Moon, Redcurrant
I had fried veg which included radishes and radish pods - the radishes were really tasty, like a peppery turnip.
It’s a bank holiday weekend and we also get Tuesday off - yay - and the Sun is shining so I should get off my butt. Have a good weekend all. The song is provided by Empire of the Sun.
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 👏
