Sun is Shining

The sun continues to shine, the temperatures are still fabulously high and the rain didn't amount to much, but after my grumpy post last week look what we saw today! It's very small and maybe not quite as Amazing as the variety name suggests, but still it's our first ever cauli!

This variety is meant to get large and be bright white - perhaps it has sunburn(!) so I've covered it with a leaf, which apparently should protect it and maybe it'll still grow a bit bigger and keep the florets tight.

So that was a turn-up for the books! And last week we had a nice meal with courgettes, garlic, aubergine and shallots (with some added paprika). I had to add some shop-bought tomatoes (criminal) but they added a bit of colour.

There's our first Summer Crookneck squash in there. And the spare courgettes went to work - always gratefully received.

The taste isn't that special, but there are plenty more to eat and they're getting quite big - the plant survived the gales I'm pleased to say.

The trailing squash on Plot 46 are growing well too - I keep trying to encourage the vines to grow over the frame but they really want to go the opposite way - which is rather typical. Still, there's so much growth that the ugly structure will soon be hidden!

 There are several fruits on 3 of the plants but so far I've only seen one Festival.

The Borlotti beans have filled out nicely. We may end up drying them after all.

There's one plant which appears to be Borlotti but it's a little different...

And the Edamame beans are strange. They aren't filling out very quickly and are much smaller than other beans - I need to read up on them. I'm watering and watering to encourage them to fatten up.

The Aviditas tomatoes have begun to change colour. We were hoping to keep a truss for the Horticultural Show on 18th August - but I think the red ones will need eating before then and they're too delicious to waste!

Tonight we're having potatoes with caramelised shallots and green beans - from our one and only Speedy French bean which germinated! The potatoes (Kestrel) haven't got much of a skin, but we're attempting to bake them - they smell nice while they're cooking.

These Geum flowers are lovely. All the stems have been chopped back a couple of times and they re-grow with lovely blooms - we bought this as a small plant at last year's HAHA plant sale.

And these Rudbeckia were a present from my niece a few years ago. I transplanted a tiny part last year and it's very happy in a pot in this warm spot.

A colourful post deserves some Rainbow chard - I'm going to use it like spinach in a spanish omelette during the week - Jamie still refuses to eat chard :-) I'll use a big frying pan so that I can fit lots of courgette in there too and maybe that's what the tomatoes will be added to...

So it's the beginning of August and the hedgerow is already full of red berries, blackberries and even sloes. Harvests have certainly been a bit short-lived for us this year, but we've enjoyed it and there's still more to come...

Lark and Double Red Sweetcorn

So, with a lot of  red, gold and lots of green in this post it deserves a bit of reggae, from Bob Marley - how many times I could have used this song this year?

Fade to Grey

I forgot to mention yesterday that we saw our first swallows on the site - darting in and out of the toolshed. And I saw my first brimstone butterfly of the year and more tortoiseshells. It would appear that they were sensibly hiding away from the rain today.

I was also hiding most of the time - in the greenhouse sowing while Jamie was digging and clearing weeds (and one giant potato). I sowed Amazing cauliflower, Floral Tribute Mixed sweetpeas, Shiraz and Golden Sweet mangetout, Rainbow chard and asparagus pea. And I planted out Medania spinach in a raised bed, as this worked so well for a fellow plotholder last year. And the Sutton broad beans are planted out and protected with cloches on Plot3.

These we've grown in the root trainer pots - they're a bit fiddly, but produce some nice roots for planting out. We only have 14 plants so far, but it looks like a few more will be ready in a couple of weeks.

 

I'm pleased to say that the tadpoles in the pond have survived the night and look quite happy going round and round in their bucket (sorry, I mean pond). 

Here's the reason for the title song by Visage. What a grey scene. However, it's meant to be warm again during the week...

Such A Shame

I thought I'd start with a nice photo of a branch of Redcurrant tomatoes.

And now a tasty pan of lovely fresh veg cooking.

Mmm, fried tomatoes, onions and garlic, with a dash of peri peri sauce. Add a pile of chopped chard and a Granovita veggie pepperoni and finally add fried chopped courgette. An adaptation on this recipe on YumUniverse.

So, here come the reasons for the title track...

First we found our globe artichoke had snapped off :-( We only planted up a tiny seedling earlier this year - we bought it at the HAHA plant sale.

Next, we noticed our Lark sweetcorn at an unusual angle, but the roots are still in the ground, so we should still be able to start harvesting delicious cobs this weekend.

But... our Glass Gem may not survive :-( Lots of stems have snapped. They were just too tall and spindly to survive Storm Aileen.

We briefly tried to help it back up and this weekend I'll try to secure the healthy looking ones but it looks very unhappy and as the cobs are only just forming it may not recover - such a shame!

Thank you Talk Talk for providing a suitable title...

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.

Where the Wild Roses Grow

It must be Summer, the dog roses are out in the hedge. However, after yesterday's scorching temperatures we woke to thunderstorms this morning. Always exciting but we didn't see any lightning.

When we got to the plot at lunchtime it was blowing a gale, grey skies and cold - very disappointing for the first day of my week off. It was nice and warm in the greenhouse though and the various courgettes (green = Defender, yellow = yellow(!) and Goldmine which is yellow and white stripes). There are also some Disco and Jaune de Vert squash).

This is my chive vinegar - I put the stems, flower-end first straight into the bottle of white wine vinegar and give it a shake each day. The flowers are beginning to fade now that the vinegar is pinking-up so I'll strain it out quite soon.

We've put our bean poles up - the Scarlet Empire runner beans will go in very soon; they've all germinated and are waiting in the greenhouse. Where the blue pipe is lying, we're going to plant our Glass Gem sweetcorn - I sowed all 20 seeds today. Really hope they work, they're so beautiful! We also sowed 15 Lark sweetcorn - they were the delicious ones that we grew last year and they're going on Plot 7; different varieties of sweetcorn shouldn't be grown too close together or they can cross-pollinate.

This pretty little chap is sitting on one of our tiny parsnip seedlings. I don't think he'll damage it, but something has upset my chard plants which I want to sell at the plant sale. I've chopped all the dodgy leaves off now so hopefully they'll recover by next week.

And the song title is provided by Nick Cave and Kylie - I know! Kylie?! It's got to be her best song. Enjoy.

White Rabbit

Do you say "White Rabbit! White Rabbit! White Rabbit" on the first of the month? I don't, I say "Pinch, punch 1st of the month" but maybe that's because I was the youngest of 5 children and it's more fun to pinch and punch :-) Anyway, it's May and a bank holiday for May Day is always welcome. The sun even shone for us (some of the time).

The May blossom is just beginning to open up on our hedge and the dark clouds provided us with a huge downpour in the afternoon, so the earth looks a much healthier colour now.

I was mostly washing up old pots today. We (HAHA) have a plant sale on 3rd June so I transplanted the chard seedlings to sell there; there are far too many for our plot. They should look a bit bushier and colourful than this in a month's time.

I also did some sowing: Parsley, 3 Speedy french beans (as a special early sowing) and Early purple sprouting broccoli - this seems to do so well with other plotholders and it'll be nice to have something else to harvest early in the year. Something else other than rhubarb that is...

Our giant rhubarb plant has a flower on it - it has gone to seed like this in other years but doesn't seem to upset the plant particularly. I chopped it off, at ground level, and popped a pot over the cut stem to avoid it filling with rainwater and rotting the plant. Jamie says this is a myth, but it seems reasonable to me.

While I was fiddling about with these various things Jamie was digging the area on Plot3 where the broccoli will go. We won't need many plants as it seems to get pretty huge. That should mean that there are a few spare plants of that to go to the plant sale too - I'm hoping it will have germinated and grown a bit by then.

Those plastic cloches are covering the parsnip seeds

So, I'm sure you can guess the title is courtesy of Jefferson Airplane.