Time is Running Out

Wait! What? Now it's August - blimey, time is moving quickly these days!

What a great month July was though. The photo above is from 26th July and this photo below is from 5th July - such changes, with the help of a lot of sunshine and, thankfully, a final bit of torrential rain so we had a couple of days when we didn't need to water.

We've enjoyed our first meal using the Pickwick dwarf runner beans. The beans weren't as long as climbing beans, but were tasty and so many beans per plant - well worth growing to get a slightly earlier crop I would say. And Jamie thinned out the carrots - look at those beauties!

We've had a few more broad beans but there were so many weevil grubs that it put us off eating them. We've decided to stick with over-Wintered beans in future, which grew much taller and arrived before the weevil. Shame, as I was intending to make broad bean hummus with this lot. (Do you like my mini-shopping basket? Cute isn't it!)

At the end of July we finally attached the netting to our brassica cage - we've only netted half of it this year. It's a great cage, really sturdy and about 6m x 3m and just tall enough so that I can walk in it.

And then the next day we actually planted up our brassicas - Autumn cabbage, Nelson sprouts and Amazing cauliflowers. They were looking rather sad in the polytunnel - a cabbage white had discovered them - so we'll see how they do.

We have some space in there to plant some more stuff - maybe kohl rabi and some chinese vegetables for the Autumn/Winter. If we have time of course! We've lifted the shallots, which have finally bulbed up a bit more but they've been rained on so I'll pull them for storage on the next available sunny/dry day.

You can see the mole deterrent (the small green item to the left) it beeps every 30seconds or so. The mole didn't touch the shallots but burrowed through the runner beans, so not sure how useful that was!!

And here's another comparison from 26th July and 5th July - just 3 weeks, lovely!

This is a little movie of some ants dealing with a mealworm that was intended for the birds. I looked away for a moment and it was gone - I'm not sure where they moved it to, maybe down that hole!

Great song title provided by Muse - singalong, if you can hit those high notes :-)

Forever Autumn

There's no denying it now that it's October, but it's still warmish. A quick visit to the plot yesterday afternoon as it was too wet to achieve anything. So, I watered the tomatoes and picked a nice Autumnal trug of veggies.

Half the carrots and an onion have become soup for work lunches, with a bit of fresh sage and some other dried herbs. I took a couple of the onions home which had been outside in the rain, but they quickly got binned as they're rotten - phewey, what a pong! Luckily I took some properly stored onions home too.

The other carrots, beets and onion were roasted along with some shop-bought potatoes (I know. I know. But I didn't fancy scrabbling about in the mud on the plot). All served up with lovely halloumi, (God, I love halloumi) and sweetcorn. And look!

We removed the kernels from the raw cob using our new corn stripper from Lakeland. Nice to be able to include the sweetcorn in a meal rather than just straight off the cob.

Whilst on the allotment site I took this snap of the grass paths we sowed two weeks ago - the mini-plots are looking like plots now! All they need is some tenants, otherwise we'll need to cover them before the weeds take over. And that may be the last shot of the rented Portaloo - we've got a grant for a composting toilet! How cool is that?!

Aah, Justin Hayward, what a lovely song.

Food For Thought

I've been cooking! I don't cook often so whenever I do, I feel it deserves a blogpost :-)

That was a tasty quiche. I layered cooked chard on the bottom, topped with cheese and added fried courgettes and spring onions before pouring on the eggy-milky mixture. So tasty! But that only used one courgette.

Yep, it's still courgette time... I used the spiraliser to twirl up a large courgette and fried it up. Fried onions were added then boiled carrots and thinly sliced par-boiled potatoes. Topped with cheese sauce and a bit of cheese on top for browning. 30 minutes later - voila!

And when isn't it chard time? I like chard, mostly for the colours,  but Jamie doesn't eat it so I have it for lunches mainly. Beetroot and carrot salad.

I have a lovely lunchbox, but this old icecream carton is just the right size for my salads. Delicious home-made coleslaw uses up some of the excess cabbage and is so tasty with beetroot.

I love harvest time - nothing better than a dish made with home-grown veg! And there's some food for thought for you - courtesy of UB40. (Haven't heard this great song in years!)

Madam Butterfly

On the last possible day I managed to do this year's Big Butterfly Count - it wasn't so big, but the sun shone enough to encourage a few species to join me in this pretty corner of the site.

This is what I saw during my 15 minute slot:

• 2 Peacocks
• 1 Small Tortoiseshell
• 3 Small Whites
• 1 Meadow Brown

OK, so not a huge count, but at least they were quite interesting butterflies. That buddleia bush helped as the peacocks in particular were still enjoying the nectar when I left. I tried to get the evidence but only had my little Canon camera on me and it wouldn't behave much of the time.

You may be thinking 'that's not a great photo' but a lot of the photos looked like this...

Some bad ones were the butterfly's fault and not just the camera focusing on the wrong area...

Tut! Just open your wings, stay still and pose for me!

That's better!

And the last one is the Meadow Brown, which was a struggle to but still a little easier than the whites - but we've all seen plenty of whites haven't we?!

I also did a bit of seed collecting: mostly poppy, Californian poppy and nigella.

I'll probably sow them in a communal part of the allotment site next year - I'm sure our plot has self-seeded plenty of these without any help from me.
Here's today's harvest. Salads are on the menu for at least part of this week - home-made coleslaw, yum!

Of the various butterfly songs I could have chosen I opted for Malcolm McLaren's Madam Butterfly as I like it.

Tighten Up

It was a drenching day yesterday and today has been showery and windy. We only visited the plot to pick some veg and water in the greenhouse. I'm pleased to see that the sunflowers are managing to stay upright now they're attached to the frame I grew them under.

The four at the front are meant to be shorter than that though. They're Big Smile and are nearly as tall as the Russian Giant at the back - they're rather swamping the Asters and Eschscholzia which are in that bed too. It's a shame as they're very pretty - I need to sow them closer to the edge of the bed if I grow them next year.

Sadly four of the purple dwarf bean plants have now snapped off completely while in full flower due to the windy weather, such a shame! The beans are just appearing now so we've added extra ties in an attempt to keep them from moving too far from their sticks. The plants are taller than we thought they'd be and probably could have been grown up canes.

More security has also been added to the cucumbers and squashes on Plot46a. We've got various supports for the plants to grow upwards...

And then the idea is that they'll spread across the wires and partially mesh-covered roof to provide us with a ceiling of hanging squashes - won't that be fun, if it works!

A couple of tiny Tromboncini are on their way but these are close to the earth so they won't be hanging far... I could (should) remove them to encourage the plant to grow fruits higher up, but I can't bear to do it!

And talking of tiny, here's our first redcurrant tomato - full size. Sweet and tasty, but you really need more than one at a time :-)

The excellent title song is provided by the Black Keys.

Come Up and See Me (Make me Smile)

Two weeks of extreme heat and still no rainfall have meant plot visits have mostly involved watering, watering, watering! But because of next Saturday's Open Afternoon and Hungerford in Bloom (Allotment) judging in the morning we're doing a lot of weeding too.

We fed nearly everything. The green things were given a nitrogen-rich mixture and the flowers were given a coffee-based mixture, which is potassium-rich as well as providing a bit of caffeine!

After the confusion with the pumpkins in my earlier post it turned out that the four gifts were  courgettes - that took us up to 7 courgette plants! A few too many :-) So we swapped two of them for 2 Tromboncinos, a spaghetti squash and a Jumbo Pink Banana! They're all in the barrels and as they grow we'll try to encourage them across the wires over the top of Plot 46a.

And, we now have 3 pumpkins which have germinated - 1 Atlantic Giant and 2 Jack of All Trades. They're rather behind the other competition growers but hopefully we'll have something to show! And here's the first trug shot of the year - nice and colourful, huh?

I've cited poetic licence with the title song: Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me) by Cockney Rebel is to encourage you to visit the Marsh Lane Allotment site next Saturday! I wonder if there will be any lavender flavoured goodies there?!

Star-struck Cucumber

That's my starry salad lunch - we were so pleased that our cucumber mould was successful this year, for the first time! We may be lucky and find a heart-shaped cucumber waiting for us on the plot one evening this week!

The growth spreads suprisingly well into the corners of the mould and then there's a bit of a fight to get the mould off, but I think it's worth it. (Not convinced it would work too well on tomatoes, but maybe next year)

The weather is sweltering, but still the plants are beginning to look rather autumnal - that's our largest pumpkin preparing itself for October!

And the hedgerow is well-stocked with berries already. Summer seems to have been rather short-lived although we have had some lovely hot days and long evenings to enjoy this year. And recently we've had some hot Septembers and Octobers, so I hope this year follows suit.

My salad was all home-grown: delicious coleslaw, with cabbage and carrot, two tpes of tomato, purple basil, rainbow chard and Rocky cucumbers. And the salad we had for dinner last night included courgette and potato/onion cakes.
We're still waiting for the purple/black tomatoes to ripen, but they can't be too far off now...

Mostly Green

But starting with a bit of colour as the raspberries are doing pretty well on Plot7 this year, obviously leaving them to do their own thing is the answer!

We're disappointed with our 3 grafted pepper plants. We expected them to produce a whole string of peppers... At the moment they're all green but they should colour-up when they're ripe.

Milena - the orange one

Perhaps the colder weather mid-growth stopped them in their tracks.

Britney - the red one

Or maybe it was just not warm enough with the greenhouse door open - but it gets stifling in there during the day if it's shut.

Chelsea - the yellow one

Well, hopefully these five peppers will grow big and tasty, even if they don't produce the 'abundance of tasty peppers' the plants are meant to.

At the end of the greenhouse the loofah is growing tall. It's rather straggly with just one flower and no fruits yet...

The pumpkins on Plot7 are spreading as intended - we want them to grow over and around the sweetcorn as the small pumpkins then hang and stay nice and clean.

The Minicole cabbages on Plot3 are looking more like cabbages now. We weeded most of the plot today and it's looking much happier - though the spuds still look awful!

This ringlet butterfly was in the greenhouse, reminding me that I need to do the Big Butterfly Count but want a nice sunny day to do it on - today wasn't sunny, but was warm. 

And for dinner we have our first runner beans - Benchmaster. They have a red line along the edge. I'd take a photo but they're in the cooking pot right now!