The Right Direction

I had a lovely break from work and now it’s August - wow, time flies! The weather over the last couple of weeks has been warm and mostly dry so we visit the plot every day. We’ve been watching the juvenile robins who have been well tutored by their parents to know where they get fed.

The blue tits and great tits are also very active in the hedgerow but don’t seem to have a taste for monkey nuts - unless the celebratory England flags are putting them off.

I’ve been holding off doing the Big Butterfly Count waiting for a warm sunny day without a strong breeze, there have been lots of butterflies around so I probably should just get on and do it really!

Our harvests are getting more varied with Lark sweetcorn making a welcome appearance along with the essential courgette and cucumber most days. As tomatoes show a blush we take them home to complete their ripening. The Black Moon variety are prolific (from the polytunnel) and really tasty.

We’ve picked our first aubergine - Graffiti I think. I roasted it separately from the other veg and it was a nice addition to the meal which included some super-sweet carrot thinnings too - waste not, want not 🙂

This vegetable passata bake was all home-grown (apart from the passata) so delicious with potatoes, courgette, garlic, shallot, chard and sweetcorn. 

We’ve pulled another couple of potatoes too - Kestrel it seems.. They’re delicious roasted.

The remaining salad leaf has been pulled from the raised bed and I bought some additional herb plants - Greek basil, oregano and creeping thyme. I split the basil plant so have a couple of pots in the polytunnel. I was going to pull the chard, which hasn’t grown very well, but as I only eat a few leaves occasionally I decided to leave it. And it is so colourful! The sage needs a trim - I’ll do that when I take the heads off the lavender.

The shallots dried off so we made two jars of pickled onions. Jamie’s jar in pickling vinegar with mustard seeds and mine with balsamic vinegar using a slight adaptation of this recipe.

We received some free All Year Round cauliflower seeds from DT Browns so we’ve sown them in modules and they’ve germinated. I guess that means I should be weeding the brassica cage which hasn’t been looked after this year. It just has some Brussels sprout and PSB growing along with a lot of weeds at the moment. 

Oh! Plus a blueberry in a pot which Jamie bought from the RHS as a birthday present from my sister. I hope next year is as good for fruit as this year seems to have been. We’ve never seen so many sloes in the hedge by our plot - does it mean it’s going to be a hard Winter??

Well, I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t come too soon. My squash plants are growing quite well now and beginning to climb but need a good few weeks to produce some decent fruit. The recent rain-Sun-rain has been great growing weather.

We can only see one tiny melon on the polytunnel plant and none on the outdoor plants yet - as Jim (plotholder) said ‘they’d better get a wriggle on’. I quite agree!

The runner beans are finally beginning to form and the borlotti are beginning to colour. A few more weeks till they dry off and I’ll be storing them. Last year it was so wet that I couldn’t save any beans - I hope that doesn’t happen again! This is a bean’s eye view of their world 🙂

On the health front, I have started EPO injections which kidney patients often need to help the kidney produce red blood cells so I should feel like I have a new burst of energy quite soon. Thank goodness Jamie is able to do my injection as I can’t. I’ve had so much needling all my life but I never look (and you really need to when injecting yourself!). What a wimp I am!

It’s 6 months now since Jamie had his stroke. What a terrible time, but he’s made such great progress, though he doesn’t always feel it and it is still early days. He’s easily tired and rather painful but that’s not unexpected although unwelcome. Overall we’re going in the right direction - thanks to Goo Goo Dolls for the song title 😌

This is the Day

Look at that! A month has passed. It’s been a busy month with lots of sowing, a bit of digging and some planting. The weather has been extremely dry and mostly sunny but a northerly wind has consistently caused irritation. Jamie has been walking a lot with regular allotment and shopping trips

We planted our potatoes in April - Kestrel and Duke of York in the ground, with a couple of Nicola in bags. They’ve been earthed up now, managed to avoid a couple of frosts earlier this month. They’re in front of these salsify plants - the flowers open in the morning, but close by lunchtime.

The hedgerow is full of life and we’re peppered with confetti whenever we sit on the bench as the May blossom is just going over, it’s been a good year for blossom, even with the wind.

We sowed our climbing beans (Scarlet Empire runners, borlotti and Gigantes) on 2nd May but only the Gigantes successfully germinated, so they’ve now been planted in a wigwam. We’ll re-sow the others.

The sweetcorn finally got planted out, I meant to do a block, but planted in two rows instead for ease of protection from frost. Lots of the parsnips germinated and I thinned them out this week. It’s so dry the watering is quite a chore, but essential at this time. We’re expecting some broad beans to be ready for harvesting soon, so keep them well-watered. We’ve sown carrots into a green crate and beets, lettuce and radish are sown. Chard and nasturtium are in the raised bed along with parsley, which was a supermarket-bought plant and divided into four.

The plots aren’t looking very tidy but things are growing and that’s the best we can achieve during this difficult year. The weeds are going to love that bare earth when the rain does arrive 😒 I’m fighting the bindweed in the orchard; the mulched ground makes it easy to spot the bindweed, but it just keeps coming back and our little apple and cherry trees got aphid attacked this year.

As long as we harvest a few crops, grow some pretty flowers and get time to sit in the sunshine amongst it I’ll be happy. Sadly, Jamie’s not really enjoying it at the moment, understandably, as he’s still so worn out and not feeling sociable but I hope that will improve along with his health.

The song title, provided by The The, is to mark my change to part-time working. Hopefully more free-time will help with everything!

Time

Well, I really don’t know how it’s September already, but it is certainly feeling autumnal and now look! 30 leeks planted for next year…I think this is why the months are flying by, too much thinking/planning ahead but needs must.

The swallows are gathering for their migration later in the month. All chitter-chattering on the wires and then a great spectacle when they swoop off en masse. A flock of swallows is generally called ‘a flight’ and also ‘a gulp’! 😀 A ‘gulp of swallows’ sounds rather 20th century to me!

Our sunflowers are finally flowering. The bees do love them and the birds will enjoy the seeds in a couple of weeks. These are quite tall multi-headed ones and the flowers are at different levels of maturity - fascinating to look closely at the different stages.

And we’ve had a few more Purple Dragon carrots and these were reasonably carrot-shaped, though certainly wouldn’t win any prizes. I like the colour of but they’re orange just below the skin. These and the Desiree potatoes were part of a tasty roasted veg meal with our garlic which is hanging in the polytunnel.

Jamie pulled another Desiree yesterday and there are some real monsters in there! That’s the large trug.

Other harvests have been fairly consistent over the last couple of weeks. Just varying the type of bean!

The cucumbers have begun to grow in this shape, probably because of cool nights - our thermometer even measured 6° the other night 😖

We also managed to grow some heart and star-shaped cucumbers again but I’ll need to buy new moulds for next year. 

Apart from masses of cucumber sandwiches we’ve enjoyed this Asian smashed cucumber salad, with soy and sesame. It’s tasty, with less salt than the recipe suggests!

The brassicas (sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli) are looking a bit weak on Plot3 but there’s plenty more growing time for that. If these critters don’t take over - these are large white caterpillars and they’ve just started to appear. We’re keeping a close eye and removing any we find at each visit.

So, on that note I’ll just share this meal we had last night - another use of runner beans; with fake bacon pieces in red pepper tapenade with garlicky gnocchi - yum yum!

The title is provided by The Alan Parsons Project - haven’t heard this for decades! Enjoy.

Late in the Evening

At last we have more variety in our harvests. That was our second potato bag with a better haul of (Rocket?) spuds. The Cavolo Nero was used as crispy seaweed in a Chinese meal.  The warm and showery weather over the last couple of weeks has made the plot and this plotholder a lot happier as our beds are finally filling up a bit.

The climbing beans tunnel looks quite sparse but is producing a surprising amount of beans and lots more flowers too.

They were part of this early morning, pre-work harvest along with our first courgette (the plant has been sitting in a pot for months with the weather refusing to let its fruits mature!) and our first cucumber. Mmm, home-grown mini-cucumbers are so delicious.

The larger turnips were past their best so went to the compost, but the little ones were tasty roasted with potatoes.

And this trug has our first harvest of tomatoes (well, the first that have gone home), radishes, stripey courgette and some leggy carrots (purple and orange).

We had a tasty salad with 7 home-grown ingredients. The imperfect carrots in mayo made an excellent tasty coleslaw.

These ipomoea were from seeds from my Cousin Jen. Such beautiful colours and they’re beginning to climb the frame now. Related to the dreaded bindweed, which I’m still fighting on our plot. We had a HAHA workday this weekend where we cleared a plot which has been given up. It was completely covered in white-flowering bindweed. We’re not fooling ourselves into thinking the problem is gone but now it’s covered in a plastic sheet for a while it’s at least contained. It’s been a particularly good year for bindweed 😖

The female pheasant, with her remaining two chicks likes the un-loved plots, but they’re less popular with the neighbours! The pheasant herself also has her fans and her haters!

It was breezy and unexpectedly misty and perfect for a bit of digging, so I cleared the area on our plot where the broad beans were and the leeks will soon be planted.

You can see that the soil is actually bone dry as soon as the Sun appeared.

My brother gave me these bees for my birthday, thanks Tim, they look great on the toilet which we can see from our plot and the communal area.

At our Sunday picnic last week we made use of the donated Chiminea when the Sun had gone. It was lovely and we enjoyed seeing bats zipping about around us, such fun.

Which gives me the opportunity to use Paul Simon’s great song title - dance-along now!

Love is in the Air

I had a lovely week off and Sunday was a perfect Summer’s day ending with wine and snacks as the Sun disappeared over the hedge.

Those neat poles are plot-neighbour, Neal’s, in the evening sunshine. House martins were swooping low over them but they were too quick for me and my camera. I'm pleased to say that our plots are looking a bit tidier and active now that seeds have been sown under various protective covers. This area has carrots (Purple Dragon and Autumn King), coriander, Gladiator parsnips and Mammoth salsify.

Jamie’s earthed-up the potatoes (everyone thinks he’s buried someone under there!) and I’ve sown another row of beetroot as the first row didn’t appear or the seedlings were chomped by slugs as soon as they emerged. Yin Yang and Borlotti beans are sown at home and the Scarlet Empire runner beans and Blue Lake french beans will be planted out next weekend.

I wish slugs and snails would concentrate on weeds rather than preferring our plants of choice! This mullein caterpillar is more welcome - looking amazing and choosing to eat a figwort, as no mullein is available. The square stem of the figwort is pretty amazing too isn't it?

The raised bed is weed-free at last and yesterday I sowed rows of lettuce, spicey salad leaves, asparagus pea and nasturtiums - I think they may end up as snail-food, but thought I’d risk it - otherwise we’ll definitely not have anything growing. I've also planted some thyme at the herb end - just need to get a parsley plant to grow in there again as last year's went to seed.

It’s all rather brown at the moment so here’s a spot of colour - beautiful self-seeded snap dragons which have formed a large clump. Bumble bees love going in through the trap door.

And the bees and hoverflies are loving the Nigella and valerian flowers.

These two hoverflies were loving each other(!) in Linda’s shoe(!!) while we were picnicking - the male was flapping his wings as if in flight and there was very loud buzzing. I discovered later that they are Narcissus Bulb hoverflies and the female will go on to lay her eggs in soil so the larva can destroy a flower bulb 🙄 Tut, oh well it was interesting to see..

The hedgerow is full of robins feeding their young at the moment. It’s the first year that we’ve seen males actually sharing rather than fighting for territory/food. We’ve had to add an additional piece of netting after a sparrow hawk (probably) dive-bombed the feeding post in a lightning attack just a couple of metres from where Jamie was sitting. We think the robin managed to avoid being taken - phew!

The whole packet of Musselborough leeks have been sown into 3 short rows on Plot3. We'll transplant them where the broad beans are currently - that'll be in another couple of months.

We've had some broad beans already and are including them in a few meals this week. The beans closer to the ground are falling foul of slugs and I think the pheasants are enjoying a few pecks too... And we've so far only eaten one strawberry as everytime they go red something eats the delicious fruit before we get there... it is most likely the fat little vole we saw bouncing away from that area yesterday 😕 Hmm, it's been a trying year so far!

But, I'll try not to complain too much. We've had a lovely week with some warm sunny weather and earlier in the week we attended the wedding of the new Mr & Mrs Smith (our niece). A lovely and entertaining wedding with this beautiful young family. Such fun. And we're looking forward to another wedding in a couple of weeks too!

So, now I need to start work, rather a lot of emails to catch up on I'm sure! Enjoy the song by John Paul Young (which I was sad to see has been used in a MacDonalds advert).