First of the Year

The last couple of weeks have been mostly warm, with much less rain than was threatened so we had to water every day. And there have been really windy days with sun-cloud-sun. Stupid weather doesn’t know what month it is!

I like this photo of a mallow flower on the wildlife plot, with its own little wildlife visitor. Talking of wildlife, I’ve uncovered two toads over the last few days. No wonder this one looks so fat with all the slugs that are emerging.

There’s evidence of a mole on Plot3, but it’s just circled the pumpkin for some reason. The young plant is being protected from slugs and wind damage, but we’ll have to release it to the elements soon.

The Wildlife plot has another not-so-wild visitor these days! Not very wildlife-friendly is it 🤭

Here’s Plot7 looking good after a shower, so much more effective than watering but the sun and wind soon dried the soil out. I’ve been weeding and thinning between the beetroots and the Florence fennel on that quarter. 

The thinnings make a good addition to salads and I’ve even had the first few small beets chopped up raw in a salad. I need to sow some more of the Chinese Dragon radish as the first sowing are just beginning to go a bit woody and going to seed.

The harvests are fairly meagre but it’s so nice to be eating fresh-picked again. Most of the meals involve broad beans and a handful of mangetout from every plot-visit.

I’ve really taken to the early-morning plot visits. I work from 7am for an hour then have an hour on the plot before working for the rest of the day. It feels less rushed than lunchtime visits and it’s so often sunnier than the rest of the day. Just look at that beautiful sky!

That’s our potato quarter. The salad blue have lovely flowers.

Of course, not every morning visit is sunny…but things still need watering even if we are in raincoats 🤭

We’ve finally planted up our Crimson Plum tomatoes in the polytunnel- look how pathetic they are! Hope they grow quickly before blight strikes, though they are meant to be blight resistant..

And our Lizzano tomato is planted outside on Plot3 and the two Brussels sprout seedlings are in the cage - well-protected by slug pellets. The black-covered area is where our cucumbers will go, in pots.

A couple more meals on the menu this week. First a lovely salad for lunch with lovage leaves adding a delicious celery-flavour topping and Squeaky Bean pastrami-style slices.

And for dinner, I added rice to this tasty mix including What the Cluck chicken-style pieces fried in chilli and garlic oil. It’s so easy being vegetarian these days, even Hungerford sells these meat-alternatives.

And that pan contains our first courgette of the year - it was tiny and very tasty. It’s the first one that’s actually matured rather than dropping off. Plotholder, David, gave the plant to us and it’s growing in a tub. And that is why I chose this song title by Skrillex.

Go With The Flow

I had a flexi day today, so although drizzling, it was quite pleasant in the afternoon when we popped up to the allotment. We only went to feed the birds and pick some leeks and carrots. Whilst there we saw this...

At this point we were worried for the cat

At this point we were worried for the pheasant

We needn't have worried!

So it turns out that this cat probably isn't the reason why we found part of a pheasant on our plot a couple of weeks ago... Though the mystery footprints in our raised bed are most likely solved..!

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On Sunday I made watery carrot and leek soup and it was delicious, so I've made another lot today... Just a few simple ingredients...

Sweat leeks, olive oil, garlic and spices...

Chop up carrots (not too small)...

Heat them all up together - try not to eat too many at this point

Add the stock (half a cube in half a litre of water was fine)

There! That's what watery soup should look like.

I think the cooked leeks provide a bit more buoyancy for the carrots. So, go with the flow and no need to blitz those veggies every time.
Music (and slightly dodgy video) provided by Queens of the Stone Age.

Potatoes and Beans

We had a successful afternoon on the plot today. It was reasonably warm, though if the chill wind blew while the sun wasn't shining I needed to grab my jacket. The temperature fell to zero over the last couple of nights.

One of our rhubarb plants had sent up this flower head. When the bud starts growing it looks like any other stem, but now the flower has developed it's obvious and easy to remove - to stop the whole plant going to seed.

After cutting the stem off there's a gaping hollow stem.

To avoid it filling with water and rotting I put a cover over the top. The flowers are really pretty, but I'll enjoy them on other people's plots rather than on our's :-)

We achieved today's prime objective and got our spuds in! We've only planted 20 this year: 10 x Chopin and 10 x Desiree. Spread across three rows. The Chopin are on grass clippings and manure while the Desiree also have shredded paper in their trenches. All have a bit of added 6x and of course the nematodes should be doing their thing to keep the slugs at bay.



Rain threatened, but stayed away

Here's Jamie adding Christmas tree sprinkles as a further slug deterrent! (I rather like the shadow in this photo).

Christmas Tree needles

We also sowed some broad beans: 15 x Suttons and 10 x Express - we're hoping these varieties will result in their own succession harvesting...

As usual we protect them immediately with bottle cloches. There's debate at Marsh Lane as to whether the pheasants or mice are the biggest broad beanshoot chompers; they're both unwelcome, but frequent, visitors.

The cat is enjoying all the activity, human, gnome, rodent and feathered!

Gnome Toppling Time

The strawberry flowers make it look like it could be a bumper year, if the frost stays off. I thought it funny that this photo shows flowers on the same plant with 5 and 6-petals - 6 is apparently more common, will have to pay more attention next time I'm on the site

Coming out for the sun, leaving with the moon

Blue sky! How lovely to see!

That's the last of the Christmas Quality Street scoffed. 
 
I love that their plastic wrappers are made of corn starch. It means they can be composted and disappear totally. Our compost is surprisingly looking rather dry - all the runner bean stems in the bin probably should have been chopped up a bit before bundling them in.

The cat was making the most of the heat from the stonepile and keeping an eye on the coal tits in the hedgerow.

It was lovely to see other plotholders around too - we emerge from hibernation as soon as the sun shines! It is still too wet to do any work. Good job! as I really just wanted to play with our new Fujifilm X-S1 camera which we got as an Amazon bargain. 

This is my first ever non-compact camera, though not a full-on SLR (apparently) so bear with me as I've no idea what I'm doing if I move away from the Auto options! I'll be keeping my trusty Olympus SZ-31R on hand for a while yet...

Meanwhile, Jamie was checking the measurements of plot 8B, as the potatoes are going there this year to give Plot 7 a rest. We've got lots of planning to do. We're thinking along the lines of nematodes to protect our spuds from slugs. One thing we've decided is that we won't grow as much of everything, which ends up wasted....

... Did I say that last year?!

Ps. We did leave with the moon, but not because we stayed out for hours; the moon was on show all day.

Sprouts for dinner

Time really is flying - December now and it feels like it! Brrrr, lowest temp over the last week has been -5°. All the water on the site is frozen and the ground is solid though squelchy on top because of the torrential rain we had before the last few days of frost.
We weren't the only ones on the site; the cat was stalking something and was a bit indignant at being disturbed! Not too sure where he lives but he thinks he owns the site as he's been around since day1 - there's another tabby who's been around recently though so he's got competion!

Our poor broad beans probably shouldn't have chosen last week to pop their little heads up :-(
Far too cold for them to start growing at this point, we think. They look a bit yellow at the moment...

We picked sprouts to have with dinner - Jamie picked the poorest quality ones but they tasted delish!

 

Another beautiful day!

And it really was, so we spent hours on the plot again along with many other allotment holders. I was intending to sow some salad seeds but instead we spent the time moving the carrot trench along to reduce wasted space in that quarter. It seemed like it wouldn't be too much of a chore, but phew! it was hot work. It'll be worth it though - we'll get a few more broad beans in there now. We mixed in John Innes seed compost to give it good drainage.

We had a few visitors to the plot today. There were quite a few butterflies around and we uncovered several  Angle Shades moth caterpillars, chafer grubs and lots of worms.
I also found this bumblebee, it was cleaning itself and I noticed it had mites on it - if only I'd known (and had a child's paintbrush handy!!) I could have helped her by wiping them off - see this article.

Oh and the little cat came to see us for the first time this year!

He's welcome on our plot and hasn't proved to be a problem to us - may have helped with the mouse problems in the past, but I was happier to see a bit of distance between our plot and this male pheasant!


A beautiful looking enemy!

The last of the carrots I pulled didn't look too great, so I composted them - so no more soup for a few months - I was too tired to make it when I got home anyway!

What a lovely weekend :-)