Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
In May I started soaking chive flowers in white wine vinegar and now it's looking pretty in 5 small bottles with the remainder in our vinegar bottle.
It has a lovely mild onion flavour, much less over-powering than pickled onion vinegar, which makes it perfect for adding to salads. The chive flowers had faded completely in the bottle.
I strained the liquid into a jug to get rid of any loose bits of flower and dusty pollen.
And voila - looks like an apothecary! It needs to be kept out of sunlight though, otherwise the colour will fade. The Psychedelic Furs provide the title song ...
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.
I seem to have been waiting a long time for these chive flowers - they've still got a little way to go before I pluck them off and pop them in some vinegar! I think the lack of sun may be holding them back - I've made the photo look rather brighter than the real world.
We haven't got much time for the allotment this weekend, but we managed a few hours this afternoon. It's a bit cool for May but still bone dry so we need to keep watering outside as well as in the greenhouse.
A Baby Brussels Sprout
The seedlings are coming along okay, even some of the florence fennel has germinated now. I planted out the salad leaf into the raised bed as it was beginning to look a bit sad in its seedtray. I sowed an extra row in the raised bed alongside it for cut & come again - if the beasties don't get at it first. The beetroot is looking happy in the raised bed and so far the mangetout and sweetpeas haven't been spotted by anything that may want a piece of them.
The salad and silverskin onion rows seem to be getting shorter each time we visit, so I think a slug has got a taste for them again this year. I'll attempt a re-sowing next weekend. The potatoes in the ground are all up and the Orla are the first to reach the surface in the bags. We hope it doesn't go cold again so we don't have to earth up too soon.
The valerian is close to flowering. We think the flowers will be a bit more interesting than this - though it looks good in close-up, there's no fragrance yet.
And this cabbage white butterfly seems to have already taken a fancy to it! Just waiting for the flowers to open a bit more so that he (or maybe she) can get to the tasty nectar.
Rudimental's excellent track and amazing video provide the title track - I added the brackets to make it a bit more appropriate - I think we'll be waiting longer than a night for some of these things!
I know I've got a separate wildlife blog, but I love this super-macro photo so much that I have to share it on here. It's a female orange tip butterfly that was in the greenhouse.
Look at that eye!
These are the butterflies which are currently most prolific on the allotment site. Earlier in the year we've had tortoiseshells and brimstones. The females actually have black tips to their wings; the males have the orange wingtips.
Anyway, back to gardening... The title is because that's what I asked Jamie yesterday. I'd finished digging the quarter which is going to be a flower plot this year but my digging technique left the plot about 2 foot higher than it should be. With a bit of 'knocking back' by Jamie it now looks like this - much better!
Hopefully we'll soon get some of the promised rain and then I can put stepping stones across the middle and start thinking about which flowers go where... that's the plan, I wonder if it'll work this year..
Talking of flowers, I'm planning to make some chive flower vinegar again
as soon as these open up - I'm hoping that will be tomorrow otherwise I
may miss out on them. Chive flowers that come later in the year are
never as good (I find) as the first blooms.
A little bit of Google-fanciness to make this look more interesting than it is!
We've had some new plotholders join us over the last couple of months and we're very pleased that some of them are at our end of the site, so we have a nice big block of loved plots. So lovely to see new people enjoying the site as much as we do.
The temperature over the last week has been a bit up and down, but the coldest of the very frosty nights sank to -5°. It felt chillier than the reported 7° today, especially when the wind blew, but we spent a couple of hours on the plot. I wanted to get the counting done for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch and started counting for an hour from about 1:10 with the following results:
(Robson)
2 x Robins
1 x Blackbird (Mrs B)
2 x Long-tailed tits (such pretty little birds!)
6 x Terns (they were flying around from across the canal)
2 x Pigeons (surprisingly low numbers)
1 x Blue Tit
2 x Mallard Ducks (flying across from the canal)
2 x Chaffinch
2 x Magpies
3 x Crows
1 x Pheasant (just the one female showed herself today)
Of course, at about 2:30, when the sun shone for about 20 minutes a whole host of birds arrived - several long-tailed tits, a pair of blue tits, a great tit and at least one wren.
I tried to photograph a lot of the birds but didn't do too well.
So, apart from Mrs B and Robson I only managed to snap the blue tit - they are very nippy and rather shy of us at the moment, so didn't pose or let me get close enough for a good shot.
Jamie dug an area to put some broad beans in - we didn't get any last year as the pheasants took a fancy to them. This year we'll protect them with a surround of sturdy mesh. We're hoping to warm the ground a bit before the beans go in - in early February.
Apart from counting and chasing birds with my camera I put some more garlic in. The cloves I planted haven't sprouted and I only found the remains of one when I furtled around in the raised bed.
I bought a packet of 2 Germidour bulbs from Wilkos - I've seen contradictory reports of how good their veg is, but the packet only cost £2 so figure it is worth a go... I planted the cloves quite close together. It's a softneck variety.
Then Jamie found this in last year's garlic bed! A clove had grown into a bulb and now each clove on that has sprouted! I stuck that in the raised bed - as a clump, so will see what happens to that - it's meant to produce smaller bulbs quickly. We'll see...
Here come the chives! They're on their way - roll on Springtime :-)
Now we're going to have a haggis (vegetarian of course) for dinner - first time ever - with a few carrots and shop-bought tatties. We're going Scottish for Burn's Night...
The first jar I made up with white wine vinegar, using the chives which I picked last week and whose buds had opened in water at home. The colour had already started seeping into the water at this point and the flowers weren't so vibrant as the freshly picked ones.
Later, after a visit to the plot, I made another jar using some lovely fresh, and more richly coloured, chives and normal distilled white vinegar.
We also had some delicious stewed rhubarb, plucked from the plot today.
My niece's wedding was a fabulous affair - such a beautiful location in the Berkshire downs, in the sunshine with delightful company. Always lovely to catch up with the cousins and more distant family members.
Recovery on Sunday included a few hours of weeding and more tidying. Jamie chopped and manual-mowed the path (not a nice neat path) between the hedge and our plots - {nearly killed him, on the hottest day of the year so far 25°!}
This is a photo from 5th May:
Two weeks away from the plot is a long time - look at how the hedge has grown!
I was very pleasantly surprised to see my seeds had germinated and not dried out or been nibbled - lucky some things can take a bit of abuse!
And the spuds have obviously been up for a few days.
And, I picked some chive flowers for my vinegar. I picked a lot of buds and hope they'll open at home before being popped in the jar (will it ever get made?!)
Then we left as the helicopters were circling the site!
We finally managed to get some time on the plot today. We joined the many other plotholders who were taking advantage of a lovely warm (18°) Bank Holiday.
As with most
visits, it starts with a quick plot inspection. The rhubarb is
attempting to take over Plot 8 and I'm pleased to say that some of the
broad beans and onions have sprouted. The grass paths really do look
good at Marsh Lane, but certainly add to the workload; the edges had
nearly grown a foot! Look at those lovely strawberry flowers - I really hope they don't get hit by a frost this week!
Finally I got to clearing the brassicas from last year. They grew really well,
as you can see among the weeds. But we just didn't get round to picking
them - isn't that dreadful? Such a waste, but they do get composted - by
the Council, not in our compost bins; compost doesn't like too much
brassica waste added in one go.
Jamie dug over the quarter with the manure pile, which we'll use for brassicas this year.
So, we got a lot of tidying done, we took 6 bagfuls of green waste away with us!
And, we got our little greenhouse up, so I sowed a couple of seed trays - just Boltardy beets and half trays of lettuce Red Fire and Tom Thumb - at last it feels like a real start.
Oh, and +SueatGLAllotments, no flowers on my chives yet ...
But so close ...
so I haven't missed the boat with making my chive vinegar yet...
It snowed all morning and was extremely cold and wet so we went shopping for our potatoes as planned.
We went to Charlton Park Garden Centre in Wantage as the owner is a bit of a connoisseur. We were able to select individual spuds for 15p each so this is what we chose (the links go to the British Potato database):
20 (ish) x Kestrels (Second Earlies - these are our favourite for mash and all-rounder)
4 x Orla (Early Maincrop so tasty, so hopefully more successful than last year's failed crop)
We selected based on slug/disease resistance, our experience and on reviews we've seen on the internet - along with a certain amount of shallowness based on colour :-) We really would have liked a few Chopin as they were very good last year, but they were sold out.
We also bought a small bag of Golden Gourmet shallots.
In the afternoon we popped up the soggy plot to take up a replacement rain gauge - our last one melted as I forgot about it when I lit a bonfire.
As we walked home we spotted some great wood left by the industrial estate skip, so we picked it up and walked back to the plot - it'll be perfect for growing my onion squash (uchiki kuri) over, which will save ground space and might serve some protection against slugs.
I was pleased to see that our chives are growing happily through the snow and cold, so we'll have some with our new potatoes - mmm, can't wait but will leave them chitting round my mum's house for a few weeks yet!
It has a lovely mild onion flavour, much less over-powering than pickled onion vinegar, which makes it perfect for adding to salads. The chive flowers had faded completely in the bottle.
I strained the liquid into a jug to get rid of any loose bits of flower and dusty pollen.
And voila - looks like an apothecary! It needs to be kept out of sunlight though, otherwise the colour will fade.
The Psychedelic Furs provide the title song ...
The Psychedelic Furs provide the title song ...
