Across the Universe

How amazing are the Yin Yang beans! The patterns are great. Unfortunately only three of my seeds germinated this year, so the beans I harvested this week are being saved to try again next year.

They’re also known as Orca beans. That is all the beans I got from the three dwarf plants; I was expecting more but either they aren’t as prolific as Speedy dwarf French beans that we usually grow or the hot weather had an impact.

The  Borlotti beans and a few Gigantes are a bit more colourful and are in the jar for eating over the next year. In fact, I still have some left from last year and will be using them in a meal this week.

These pods had all dried on the plants but there are plenty more which I’ll dry off in the polytunnel if rain threatens. I prefer to let beans and squashes ripen entirely on the vine, but last week we had a frost warning - I know! In mid-September! So, I picked most of the squashes that look ripe and stored them in the polytunnel.

That’s two Festival, two Sunshine, three Butternut, two Winter Celebration and two Spaghetti. You can see how lovely and sunny that day was and the night stayed clear too. The temperature in the zipped-up polytunnel plunged to 1.1°.  At the top of site some plants show signs of frost damage - did I mention? It's mid-September!

Talking of the top of site (actually the southern end) I mowed the central aisle yesterday and this is the view - with lines that <ahem> straight they may ask me not to do it again 🤭

Apart from that, the only jobs we’ve had are watering the polytunnel and pots, dead-heading - a never ending task, until the frost hits our plot - and harvesting. 

Lovely tasty sweetcorn is arriving and, as you can see courgettes haven’t quite stopped yet…

Those three courgettes were nice with carrot and cheese on top of Smokey beans (not home-grown). 

This orzo, marinated tofu, tomato and courgette was delicious, with chilli-oiled chard cooked like crispy seaweed. I even did some baking, well, an apple crumble with forayed cob nuts provided by Ivan and apples from Alfie.

And today, with an extra Bank Holiday Monday due to the Queen’s funeral, Jamie and I enjoyed a barbecue on the warmish-sunnyish allotment with occasional chats with Ivan and other visitors. The birds were busy, including a very noisy duck over the hedge, and the road was quiet so a very pleasant afternoon while it would appear most other people were watching the Queen’s state funeral.

The song title is a dubious association with Yin and Yang - Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. And it’s a lovely Beatles song by Fiona Apple with a pleasing video, from the film Pleasantville.

Army Dreamers

We have froglets! The tiniest you’d ever see! I’m so happy 😊

There are a least five. The weird thing is that there are still lots of tadpoles which haven’t even developed legs yet. And, weirder still, the frogs are smaller than the tadpoles! 🤔 Here you can see how small this one is compared to duckweed.

After a bit of a chilly start to the week, yesterday was lovely and, because it was a Bank Holiday, the site was really bustling. We planted out our three types of climbing beans: Scarlet Empire runners, Lingua di Fuoco borlotti beans and Blue Lake French beans.

Jamie’s planted the All Green Bush courgette and the Sunburst patty pan. We’ve put slug pellets around these small plants with netting/fleece for protection from the weather and to stop the birds eating the pellets - they are the legal ferric phosphate ones, but we’d still prefer the birds to steer clear.

I’ve sown another row of carrots… 3rd time lucky? And I’m pleased to see some of the parsnip seeds have germinated on the ‘paper towel trick’, so I’ll plant them today.

I finished digging the other trench in the squash tunnel after we’d had a bit of rain at the beginning of the week. So the ground is waiting for the plants now…. They’ve just begun to germinate, so are a bit slower than I’d hoped.

As you can see, Plot3 is still a plot-in-waiting, but at least it’s weed-free now though it won’t be if we don’t get some plants in soon!

Here’s me with fellow committee members, Liz and Richard, with our HAHA-decorated jubilee tree. All the organisations in the town were offered a High Street tree to decorate. And this is what my pompom bees were for, along with seed packet/veggie home-made bunting and decorated flower pots.

We wandered up the High Street yesterday to look at the other decorations. I think it’s a nice idea. Here are a few of the trees. I really like the Nursery School’s golden wellies 🙂

Anyway, back on the allotment. We’ve been potting on marigolds, colourful chard and amaranthus (love lies bleeding).

We’ve had our first harvest of delicious broad beans.

Before applying spray to the annoying black fly, which always breed quicker than the ladybirds 😖

And I thinned the beetroot so enjoyed those thinnings with a halloumi dinner the other night. They were rather earthy-tasting - needless to say, Jamie didn’t want any 😀

The potatoes were earthed-up and fleeced at the end of May as there was concern for a frost. It was fine, only dropping to 3.5° then on the night of June 1st the thermometer recorded 1.4°! But no frost damage.

There are more bees and beetles about and we watched this lovely mullein moth caterpillar chomp through a flower on the wildlife plot (apparently they can stay as a pupa for 5years!) but butterflies and ladybirds seem to be laying low at the moment. We need a few less blowy days I think.

Anyway, it’s time to get back onto the plot. Great song by Kate Bush dedicated to our army of tiny frogs (apparently that is the collective noun).

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.

We've been going to the allotment most days for watering. I like eating my lunch up there but it's so hard returning to work! With no rain forecast for at least the next week we'll be visiting a lot in May, but it is so perfect. We have great tits nesting somewhere on our plot and have seen the bullfinches nearby. Our visits are accompanied by the cuckoo over the marsh and a little bird, possibly some sort of warbler, singing a very repetitive song.

The purple sprouting brocolli went completely to flower and the leeks have woody centres so those remaining have been cleared. I'm still eating the dried beans from last year though and was very pleased with these bean burgers. Borlotti, gigantes and runner beans blended together with chives, tomato paste, rose harissa pesto and some oak-smoked olive oil. I did more beans than I needed so the burger was significantly larger than the bun, but was delicious.

What a lovely month May is! Such a busy site with everyone talking about what they're sowing and growing. Rhubarb will be on the menu this week and broade beans should follow quite soon. Aah... now, back to work Belinda!
Arcade Fire provide the title song.

Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

November has blurred past me along with much of this year. Too much work and not enough play! I shouldn't complain, I like my job and I'm still working from home full-time - things could be so much worse!

 

Last week I was living off a Crown Prince squash. The beetroot noodles and peppers made a very pretty meal but I have to admit that I was rather disappointed with the pan-fried squash. It didn't have much flavour and certainly wasn't as sweet as I was expecting.

I added cayenne pepper and cumin to flavour the soup which I made with half the squash, which I roasted. Subsequent meals included more additional flavourings like this layered bake.

A tasty home-grown dish of beetroot, celeriac and squash flavoured with plenty of thyme, sage, garlic and topped off with cheese. It was meant to cater for me for 2 meals but was so tasty I scoffed the lot in one meal 😏

It was pretty cold at the weekend but we were pleased to see a bit of sunshine on Sunday. We put a small greenhouse up in the polytunnel. It's hoped that this will keep a few degrees higher so that we can start seeds a little earlier next year. So far it has shown to be 1.5° warmer than outside the little greenhouse, so that's a good start.

We had to cut the pipes down slightly so that it fit but it'll be good in the spring and there's still room for us to sit in the polytunnel 😊

We were extremely pleased to see that our Purple Sprouting Brocolli has already started producing; we weren't expecting it till February. There was only enough for one but I enjoyed it steamed with a seitan schnitzel that evening. We only have the one plant - all the others didn't make it beyond seedlings - so I hope we can keep harvesting to encourage more florets. 

Here are our shallots, growing in the raised bed. Some garlic have just sprouted too.

And here are the leeks and broad beans. Both should be fine through the Winter, they can survive low temperatures and we know from last year that broad beans can be frosted down to the ground and still perk up again.

We left the plot wih a few of our small carrots, some of Neal's chard and a Honey Boat squash (definitely the most tasty squash this year). Added to the last of our shallots and pre-soaked and cooked Borlotti beans I made my staple meal - with chopped tomatoes, smoked paprika and lots of garlic. This lot did serve me for two days and it really is my favourite kind of 'cooking' - all shoved in a pot in the oven for 40minutes and eaten with bread - yum.

So there's been quite a lot of cooking for me over the last couple of weeks - Jamie refuses to eat anything that looks like this 😀 so he's on veggie burgers for the days I cook for myself. And at lunchtime this week I have some scrumptious fennel and home-grown celeriac soup - based on the basic River Cottage recipe, it's the best! I hope next year that I'll have home-grown fennel to use.

So that's what I've been up to for the last two weekends - not much and not much planned for the next few, but I have my antibody test to do later. Whatever the result, I don't think I'll be venturing out too far for a while yet - well, the weather has gone too cold for me now anyway 😉
Jamie bought me this Tweetie-Pie mug, hence the song title by Middle of the Road - I know, I know, but I was struggling to find an appropriate song 😂

 

Time of the Season

The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.

The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.

I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.

I had some of the podded runner beans in a dish covering a couple of meals, along with the orange pepper, chard, garlic and shallots - a fully home-grown meal. Very tasty and even better eaten a couple of days later when the flavours were enhanced. It’s apparently a peculiarly British-thing to eat the pods of runner beans, with most other nationalities growing them for the beans. And, I was surprised to see that in the US they are predominantly grown as an ornamental plant (hummingbirds love them) and are not even considered for food. See this blog, The Sharing Gardens, which is an interesting read.

My chard is looking better now than it’s looked all year, so I roasted some with sesame seeds yesterday, to eat as ‘crispy seaweed’ along with roasted veg - another fully home-grown meal, which up till now have been infrequent this year.

Jamie has some sort of flu (not COVID-19) so I’ve been to the allotment on my own a couple of times recently. I always think I don’t want to go, but am so pleased when I do. It’s such a lovely spot and there’s always someone to talk to.

Yesterday I moved all the ripe squash into the polytunnel, there are still a few more to pick as they may still further ripen. 

Now that the foliage has died back, it’s clear that we didn’t keep up with the Rocky cucumber production! That lot will go in our compost bins so it’s not really wasted and we did eat a LOT of cucumbers this year.

The kohl rabi are beginning to bulb up. I’m concerned for them because the purple sprouting broccoli (single plant) and Chinese cabbage are being chomped by something - it looks like caterpillar damage but I haven’t found the culprit yet…

We also didn’t see who tucked into the sunflower seeds, but they’ve nearly cleared all of them now.

I had a couple of hours on the sunny plot again this afternoon. I took down the runner bean and Borlotti bean plants and poles. All the foliage will go in a trench under the squash tunnel once the plants are cleared and we’re expecting a HAHA manure delivery in a week or two.

And the cycle starts again with the Aqua dulce broad beans sown under their bottle cloches.

We’re hoping the garlic and shallots will be delivered in the week so can get them planted into their prepared beds. The title song is provided by The Zombies because, well, it really is that time…