Many Rivers to Cross

This is the tightly packed leek flower head which is protected by the pointy hat until it dries and pops off - or I release it. Most are white but some are tinted pink. I do love these pom-poms! So pleasing to pat as you walk by, but watch out for wildlife! The pollinators arrive en masse: flies, bees, hoverflies, beetles - they can’t resist a leek flower.

The weather has been hot, hot, hot again but the wind is annoying - really howling at times. I’m glad the towering hollyhocks (seed from my Cousin Jen’s plants) are still upright, but I’m not sure how they’re managing it!

The wind has been so strong that we can hear the army practising on Salisbury Plain (about 30 miles away). I guess the noise is tanks firing, it sounds like thunder. And yesterday we could hear live music from a Summer Event about 3 miles away, that was fun. 

You can see that heat doesn’t necessarily mean blue skies, but, although we’ve had a few torrential downpours, the weather has been mostly dry and the wind and Sun evaporate the rainfall quickly.

Everything needs watering and it’s hard work in the heat. Actually, not everything needs watering - the bindweed is doing just brilliantly finding its own water 😖 Wrapping itself around all the flower stems, it’s so annoying! I pull armfuls out every visit and try to get the root but it soon recovers - infuriating!

I harvested our garlic in the week - all from two bulbs, amazing! We’ve starting cooking with one although it’s still a bit green. The rest are drying in the polytunnel now.

Apart from that we are eating mangetout, broad beans and shallots. I’m expecting asparagus peas to be included in my meals next week. I don’t usually grow a long row as Jamie doesn’t eat the pods, but they’re such a pretty little flower. I’m hoping the plants will grow a bit more upright like they did last year, but may need to provide some support. The radishes have gone a bit woody now. I’ll try planting a few more but I want the original plants to go to seed as they are pretty with white flowers and I like eating the pods. I’ve netted the beetroot again as the pigeons/pheasants are really enjoying the leaves this year.

The tomatoes, cucumber and aubergine plants have started to spread; both outside and polytunnel plants and all the beans - climbers and dwarf- are looking pretty healthy; they’re loving the sunshine as much as us. A couple of the Tahiti Melon squash I sowed direct last week have germinated on the old polytunnel frame on Plot3 and the Sharks fin melon plants have grown more leaves - I’m expecting a jungle from them. Both are varieties of squash, not melons. The Alvaro melons on Plot7 are sitting quietly forming roots before the top growth takes off (I hope!).

On these really hot days Jamie and I have started walking down to the river after dinner, only a few minutes away, to sit and watch the wildlife.

It is a beautiful section of river - the River Kennet - with trout and other large fish as well as plenty of bird life. The other side of the stone road bridge is a private fishery. I got told off for reading my book there about 30 years ago - it still smarts! Otters have been seen here, but not by us - yet… We’re still waiting for news of the Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve which will be across from that wooden walkway, if the plan is approved 🤞 

The River Dun sprouts from the Kennet and runs through Hungerford. This section, with the swan gliding by, is at the War memorial and is one of our stopping places when walking into town. There are plenty of benches for just sitting, it’s just a shame the road is so busy.

Anyway, back at the allotment we had a Sunday picnic last weekend - nice to get back to them. We lit the chimnea because the temperature dipped and we were competing with wind and rain, but we stuck with it, with umbrellas and a windbreak! So British 😀

It’s meant to be hotter today, with an amber heat alert. It was just about 30° in the shade yesterday - phew. Look how dry the earth is and the yellowing grass.

The potatoes have flowered, we don’t have many planted so it’ll be good to get a decent haul from each plant. They look like Nicola flowers, but I think that is where the Kestrels were meant to be planted - or perhaps they’re the Duke of York… oh dear, we really must work on our labelling!

The song title is provided by Jimmy Cliff - what a voice. Singalong, but don’t scare the neighbours!

November has Come

We had another picnicker join us on Sunday. The draw of the chimnea’s heat was too good to miss for the allotment cat. He was happy sitting on the bench with Ivan and me, but then Linda stood up and she lost her seat, which happened to be slightly closer to the fire 😀 What we discovered, as we cleared up for the evening, was that he’d killed a rat just behind us! At least he didn't plonk it down in front of us and put us off our cheese and wine. Last weekend we enjoyed roasted (charred) chestnuts which Ivan had foraged - delish!

We’ve finally had a few dry days though the weather has been extremely dull; we’ve been living in a cloud for at least a week. But it’s mild and I’ve only just picked the last of our outdoor tomatoes!

The tomatoes have been included in most of our lunches and were part of this delicious halloumi meal, with garlic, cavolo nero and peppers from the plot.

We've been able to clear some areas of the plots because it's been dry. I cleared up the radishes and bean plants which were surrounding the chard. And I found one borlotti bean plant - trailing along the ground 😅 I knew I'd sown some seeds somewhere and that explains why I had dwarf plants growing 'up' the tunnel 😏 I've saved some bean pods for drying but not sure if they'll be suitable for storage as they've got so wet. The yellow pods are Yin Yang beans.

The main reason for writing this post is to record that we've sown our broad beans Aquadulce. As usual they have their little cloche covers to offer some protection from mice/squirrels and maybe weather. They're planted into the soil below the mulch and, all being well, will be harvested next April/May.

The purple sprouting brocolli and brussels sprouts are the only other thing (apart from weeds) growing on that plot now. The PSB isn't looking too great but, dare I say, the little sprouts are looking pretty good...

I've completely filled our three dalek composters, but there are masses of worms, slugs and other beasties to help it degrade quite quickly. This is a Leopard Slug - amazing pattern - a good guy who deals with compost and also deals with other slugs...

On that note, I need to start work. Halloween provided us with a little celebration and the plot now has two pumpkin heads on sticks - perhaps the squirrels will get to them, but they should be out of reach of the hedgehog. Apparently pumpkins aren't good for them.

But now it's November and The Gorrilaz provide the title song.

Good Riddance

What a fabulous few days! This post is brought to you by the colour red ♥️

Friday morning-ish celebratory breakfast consisted of a delicious red gooseberry topping on icecream and pancakes. Yum yum, it’s fun having a special day off.

We had a very late night on Thursday, enjoying watching the General Election results come in and the demise of the hopeless party with Labour making a welcome return to Government after 14 painful years.🌹 Even our constituency isn’t blue anymore which has only happened once before in my lifetime! We haven’t gone red - can’t see that happening - but still worthy of celebration.

Unfortunately the weather hasn’t played ball and we’ve had a lot of (cold) rain - 35mm of rain over Friday/Saturday. 

We got several drenchings over the long weekend and the slugs and snails emerged from their hiding places while we were thankful to have the polytunnel to hide in!

But there were some lovely warm sunny moments between the showers.

And the soil and flowers are looking much happier after the last couple of weeks with no rainfall.

I managed to plant up some marigolds and zinnia today as well as sowing a row of Speedy dwarf French beans. The climbing French and runner beans are being very slow. This is the only flowers produced so far - not quite the flush of scarlet we like to see…

We decided to work through the rain today, mostly, and chopped back the broad beans which have provided us with so many lovely meals this year.

We cut them, rather than pulling, to let the nitrogen nodules on the roots remain in the soil - the leeks will be planted there in a few weeks. We had the judging for Hungerford in Bloom this weekend but our plots are definitely not winning any prizes!

But hopefully July and August will encourage everything to catch up, as it usually does…

We just need a little positive thinking…

And we have even more reasons to celebrate and be positive as England made it through to the Euros semi-finals yesterday! ♥️

Green Day provide the perfect song title (ok, maybe not so positive) as we move into a new era, after all surely things can only get better (😉See what I did there 🤭).

Northern Lights

Ohhh, it’s been a busy time at work so I haven’t posted since the early May and now the end of May is almost upon us! 

The good news is that I’m off work for over a week; the bad news is that the weather forecast looks like this…

We have had some lovely early morning plot visits to water seedlings. It’s a lovely start to a working day, but all the slugs and snails are still making their way to their daytime haunts and they are EVERYWHERE 😖.

Turnips have germinated in the ground under that netting, but I think most of the beetroot became slug food, so will need re-sowing. The mangetout is rather thin on the ground too, so that may just be a frame for ipomoea. We’re feeling very slow this year but areas of the plot are gradually being cleared to make way for plantings quite soon…

This plot with our over-Wintered broad beans, will have sweetcorn and a Festival squash. The Lark sweetcorn have started to germinate (several days after sowing in modules at home) and the squash is growing on in the Polytunnel along with several other squashes and courgettes.

You can see that May has provided some beautiful warm blue sky days as well as torrential rain showers. Sunny late Sunday afternoons have been spent enjoying a wine tasting and picnics with Ivan, Linda and other plot friends who have come to join us. 

The birds seem particularly abundant this year, partly because the Merlin app has made us aware of them. We have at least 4 robins vying for the mealworms we take up each visit and I’ve enjoyed hearing cuckoos and song thrushes among many other birds.

I’ve had two lovely meals with dried Borlotti and Yin Yang beans stored from last year. This one with mascarpone and orzo pasta with tomatoes and spinach.

And this one with harissa pesto mixed into the mascarpone and spaghetti with the remaining spinach - so delicious 🤤 

So, you can see it’s been a good month all-in-all! And, how about the song title? How exciting that the northern lights were visible from Hungerford!! And, of course I was aware of them because Jamie had told me and AuroraWatch was flashing red - just one problem… we were tucked up in bed fast asleep so missed the show 🙄 Luckily plot-chum, Kerry, stayed up and got these shots (Thanks Kerry!).

Jamie and I did enjoy looking at the Sunspots through Solar Eclipse glasses, but that wouldn’t photograph so here’s another of Kerry’s great shots.

I wonder when I’ll get another opportunity to use this blast from the past by Renaissance! Enjoy!

Little Red Corvette

It turned out that my Cornells Bush Delikata squash had survived being stored for nearly 4 months and have become part of this spicy parsnip, squash and leek soup.

All home-grown vegetables and plenty of spices. I have a couple of parsnips left over so I may try making parsnip crisps next time the oven is on - they sound tasty.
 

I cooked it in the slow cooker - on high, so it probably would have been cooked in 3hours. I left it in for 4hours whilst working this morning and it smelled so delicious. It doesn't look as pretty after (over-)cooking but it is very tasty - I decided to leave it chunky.

I'm trying to get used to using the slow cooker. Last week I cooked beans for 8hours on low before using them in several tomato-based meals. My borlotti and yin-yang beans didn't need soaking ahead of time because of the long slow cook.

We had a lovely day on the plot yesterday, enjoying the Winter sunshine - new word alert - APRICITY. I'd never heard that before but that's the kind of thing you learn when chatting with other plotholders.

Jamie weeded the broad bean plants, which have grown rather tall because of the mostly mild weather this Winter. We put the net cloches back over them as they look rather spindly and vulnerable outside of their little plastic cloches.

I spent some time digging out the remains of our enormous rhubarb plant - we should have moved/split it in recent year and it's has given its all. There was nothing living left in the woody hollowed out stems. Well, one thing - a little mouse (maybe a vole) that I disturbed went hopping over to the hedgerow.

So, that wasn't a lot of work but it did feel nice to be digging in the sunshine. And I spent an hour doing the RSPB bird count but started a bit late in the day so it was a very poor show: 2 great tits, 2 blue tits, 2 magpies, 1 dunnock, 1 robin and 2 woodpigeons - not very impressive! And the Sun started to sink so it got rather chilly.

The song is provided by Prince cos we've bought a new car - a lovely shiny red one but it's not a Corvette, that wouldn't be very good for allotment visits 😄