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!
Monday 23 January 2023
Chim Chim Cher-ee
Sunday 20 November 2022
Cousins
This was the lovely clear view of a very skinny moon early this morning. And the next photo shows the sky looking towards the sunrise, beautiful (my camera made the sky look a bit darker than it really was but the stripes really were that bright). The clear night on Friday slipped the temperature down to 0.4° but there’s not much left growing to be affected by low temperatures now.
In the week Jamie cleared all the remaining tomatoes and the peppers, which still refused to go red. So there is a lot of green pepper added to meals at the moment and these two yellow ones were delicious stuffed with shop-bought veggie fritters for a quick and easy meal. I added cheese for the final 15minutes in the oven, I should have taken a photo as they browned really well and tasted so good.
We had a lovely sunny day on the plot on Saturday. The temperature only reached 6°, but you wouldn’t have known it while in the sunshine. Jamie weeded the potato plot and I did some weeding around the chard and pulled all the remaining beets which all had slug damage.
I wore my hearing aids and was amazed by all the birdsong. Not unusual apparently but I’ve not been using my aids, just turning the sound up on my work laptop and TV - I forgot what I’d been missing! It was mostly robins and great tits but the gulls over the canal were very vocal too. And this huge crow was cawing in the big tree.Monday 9 May 2022
Month of May - Arcade Fire
What a beautiful May weekend we’ve had, after a rather grey start to the month.
We've had some of the rain that all us gardeners were waiting for, but there’s little sign of it on the site apart from the weeds growing taller! We spotted a couple of these (below) on the wildlife plot. Often mistaken for fungi, it's the spore-bearing 'flower' of horsetail (aka Mares Tail).
You can see the green shoots of the more familiar ferny plant just appearing. It's an interesting perennial with very deep roots and is a reason why some areas of our site aren't used as plots - though it's only a problem if left to run rampant. We’ve finally confirmed that we have teasels growing on the wildlife plot when we noticed the little 'ponds' in their leaves. So, I never realised that teasels are carnivorous but they gain extra sustenance from insects falling into these rain traps. Here's an interesting read about it.
Our own little pond on our plot has two frogs in it now. The tadpoles, if they haven’t been eaten, are lying low. They're about 6-weeks old now so may be moving on to a meatier diet and legs could start appearing, especially on the ones in the wildlife pond which have always been bigger than others on site.We’ve been planting and sowing over the last two weekends: Blue Lake climbing French bean, Yin Yang dwarf French bean, Gigantes and Borlotti beans are all sown into pots in the polytunnel. The Zinnia are in modules on a window sill at home and Jack of All Trades pumpkin, All Green bush courgette, Sunburst patty pan and Mangomel melon are in pots under the grow-light. And today I sowed some Florence fennel directly into the ground.
The Shiraz mangetout, grown in the guttering, have been planted out and I added a few more seeds in attempt to get some successive harvests. The frame has a protective net otherwise the pigeons will decimate them as they’ve done previous years.
On the last day of April we planted our potatoes. I’m looking forward to the Salad Blue; I hope they’re as blue/purple as the Congo that we grew a few years ago - I just checked, that was 11 years ago! Wow, how time flies. And yesterday Jamie planted 4 Nicola into bags.
On Saturday we weeded on plot3. It was hard work, as the ground is so dry, but it looks a bit better. Some of the grass was too difficult so I’ll deal with that after giving the ground a bit of a water. I hope you can tell which is the After photo - thought there's still a lot of work to be done before I can get my squashes in (well, they're not sown yet so I have time).Whilst working on Plot3 Jamie opened our storage chest and found a wasp nest - it was only at embryonic stage but we couldn't leave it where it was. We felt guilty, but flicked it over the hedge and ran away as the wasp queen zoomed round trying to locate her babies. I live in hope that she found them and continues the nest in the hedge, but that's probably unlikely. More photos/info on my Wildlife blog.
Arcade Fire provide the title song.
Monday 11 April 2022
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.
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.
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 😏
Monday 28 March 2022
Making a Fire
The clocks have moved forward an hour, so now we’re in British Summer Time. The blackthorn thinks it’s May already. So beautiful against the blue sky.
It felt really summery on Saturday, I even wore cropped trousers while we had several hours on the plot, with a trip home for lunch. It was nice again Sunday afternoon when the Sun emerged through the mist. We had a bonfire so that kept us toasty for a while. We used the new HAHA incinerator; it's not so shiny now.
And that bonfire spelt the end of the sage plant. I finished clearing the area Saturday so we flattened and levelled it down and Jamie edged it with a plank.
And now our seating area is in its new place; we're going to get some decking or something to put over the weed fabric. So now we can sit watching our own plot growing. I’ve moved the bulb tubs next to the seat, they're mostly grape hyacinth at the moment, but tulips and iris are on their way. Eventually that area will be a flowerbed and I think the area in front, next to the pond, will be for herbs (in pots, so they don't take over the world again!)
I had the rest of the What-the-Cluck and peppers with rice and a leek from the allotment - just a bit of garlic salt and pepper was added as flavouring for this meal. Both really tasty and quick meals. I hope we manage to have more home-grown peppers this year.
So that's nearly the end of March and I need to logon to work on this foggy morning - I'm glad I don't have to drive in that. The title song is provided by The Foo Fighters, sorry to have seen that the drummer died at the weekend, but at least he seemed to enjoy his life.