Two Vines

We had a trip to a local vineyard yesterday with plot-buddies Linda and Ivan. The Winding Wood Vineyard is a rare thing in Britain - it creates organic sparkling wine using biodynamic practices.

The tour was interesting and gave Ivan a few ideas for his grapevines at the allotment - one half of the vineyard is growing the same variety of Pinot Noir grapes as he is. Interesting that they use horsetail-tea to spray the leaves against aphids/fungus - we can help with that! They also use willow-bark and yarrow flowerheads and china-clay against mildew. They don’t do any watering - even this year - as vines have 5m roots. But they have a fancy heating system to avoid frost damage at vital stages - Ivan will need to stick with fleecing.

I wanted this photo of the ripening grapes in row 23 when Linda snapped me 😊

After the tour - it’s across 2acres, so not a lot of walking, we went into the lovely big barn for tasting of three 2020 wines. The rosé was mine and Jamie’s favourite.

The Winding Wood’s 2500 Pinot noir and Chardonnay vines are 13years old, so about twice as old as Ivan’s.

Winding Wood Vineyard - Chardonnay vines

These are Ivan’s 10 vines - I just know we’re going to find him stripping back leaves next time we see him on site!

Ivan’s are larger than the grapes at the vineyard, which I think were intentionally smaller but about the same state of ripeness. Harvesting will be likely. Be mid-September or October.

It was a very pleasant couple of hours in a beautiful quiet location, so peaceful. And very interesting to see their techniques for growing organically - I think I want to dig out my biodynamic gardening book…

Meanwhile, on the allotment I’ve cleared three areas - the over-Wintering broad beans will go where I pulled the leek flowers up. Look how dry it is! I disposed of the leek seed heads and composted the stems.

The sweetcorn patch has been cleared, apart from a few snapdragons, to get a bit more light to the Jacob’s Cattle dwarf beans which are drying on the plants - I’ll move them into the polytunnel before it’s due to rain. Last year my drying beans got such a drenching they went mouldy on the plants so couldn’t be saved. 

Harvests have mostly been tomatoes now. All three of our varieties have produced plenty of fruits - I may need to make some passata to store.

Cocktail Crush, Black Moon, Redcurrant

I had fried veg which included radishes and radish pods - the radishes were really tasty, like a peppery turnip.

It’s a bank holiday weekend and we also get Tuesday off - yay - and the Sun is shining so I should get off my butt. Have a good weekend all. The song is provided by Empire of the Sun.

Cars Hiss by My Window

Sue Garratt wrote on her November blogpost that there hadn’t been “any weather” which was certainly true for the first couple of weeks of November with really gloomy dull days - no rain, no Sun and no wind.

It was unseasonably mild though so we enjoyed a Sunday night (it feels like night at 5pm now) picnic - the cat found the crisps 😄

The next Sunday we enjoyed some sunshine at Newbury’s Vegan market - mmm, that Vegan Street Diner hot dog is so delicious!

This last week has made up for the earlier lack of weather. We had snow flurries on Tuesday, barely settling, but pretty to look out at.

Wednesday brought a severe frost which took out the last of the delicate plants. I had to take the photo through the fence as the gate was frozen shut during our morning visit!

So very cold, brrr. Down to -4° in the polytunnel. And this ice was taken out of the birdbath on Friday morning.

And today the weather is torrential rain and windy as we feel the edge of Storm Bert. It really isn’t an allotment day but we’re having our windows replaced so we thought we’d leave the fitter to get on with it.

We have a skip on-site for the, now postponed, Work Party tomorrow so we’ve been clearing junk from our rather overgrown storage <ahem> wildlife area…

That’s where the great tits nested last year, so we won’t clear it completely (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it). But we’ve cleared some crates which were completely overgrown with ivy and a snail hotel. We’ve seen mice around there too which may be helping reduce the snail population.

It’s a rather colourless world now but the spindleberry was looking beautiful; such great looking berries.

And some rather exciting news - I won a book from Real Seeds! I often buy squash and bean seeds from the company that sells seeds that are sometimes a little bit different from usual suppliers.

So the song for today is provided by The Doors. The cars are hissing more quietly now! Enjoy!

Just a Little Bit Longer

It may be meteorological spring but brrrr it’s been a cold weekend with temperatures of about 5° and no sunshine both days. Needs must though so we got a few hours of plotting done both days.

There are signs of Spring, with these pretty primula and grape hyacinths giving a little colour in the dullness. The hedgerow is full of song from the robins, tits and finches and this weekend the first signs of new growth on the hawthorn (or possibly blackthorn). I had to use the macro, they’re very tiny buds.

My tiny hazel tree is also in bud. I know the bud isn’t in focus, but the stem is rather interesting especially compared to the smooth hawthorn.

The perennial flowers are beginning to emerge. Poor little things; it’s due to go much colder with possible snow this week. This is a lovely silvery delphinium that Aimee let us take from her plot last year.

I cleared our iris bed and the stems will need a bit more trimming after the cold snap is passed. They’ll also appreciate a bit of potato fertiliser.

We’ve been pulling lots of grass from the beds and have buried it deep in the bottom of holes that we’ve dug and manured. One is for a Jack-be-Little pumpkin and the other for a green bush courgette on Plot7. We have our planting plan worked out now and just a few more seeds to buy…

Not quite as fancy as some of my plans from previous years, but it serves its purpose 🙂 Of course, I fully expect to diverge from this as other plotholder’s spare become available - it’s so hard to resist!

There’s a lot of clearing and prepping happening all over site and we’re at that point where we just want to get sowing, but we’ll wait… just a little bit longer.. Thanks to Maxi Priest for the song title. (I know what you’re thinking, but I’ve used the Jackson Browne song before)

Death of Democracy

Look at those interesting clouds as we left the allotment Sunday afternoon -  I zoomed in on my phone which is why the foreground looks a bit weird. We got home just before a storm hit, with a bit of thunder and lightning. Last week was rainy with more than 30mm being measured, but it’s remained warm and on Sunday it was 17°.

It was a clearing weekend. On Saturday I cleared the sweetcorn plot, although the already-full compost bins need to shrink a bit before that lot can be added - it shouldn't take long especially if it stays warm. On Sunday we cleared the flower bed. The zinnia, cosmos, marigolds, chrysanthemum, lobelia and plenty of weeds were taken home for the Council green bin collection. The flower bed now has several perennial plants which should spread by next year and gaps can be filled with annuals, including a million nigella seedlings! The concern with perennials is that the weeds (I'm thinking of bindweed) can take hold and are more difficult to clear, but we'll try to keep them under control in the meantime.

Fellow plotholder, Aimee, is resigning her plot at the end of the year so she was offering her flower plants to people - in case the new plotholder decided to just dump them. I accepted a dianthus Doris, which is a lovely pink and has that pretty blue-green foliage, and this delphinium which has managed to avoid the frost. It has a silver/grey tint to it which the camera hasn't quite managed to pick up. I'm not sure what variety it is, but it's very beautiful.

Talking of beautiful flowers, some of Ivan’s irises have had a new flush of blooms. I love this one, what a fabulous colour!

That damp photo was taken the same morning that the Sun popped out for two minutes and bathed the site in this golden dawn light. Obviously the photo doesn’t do it justice - they rarely do!

The trees and hedgerow are looking amazing in their Autumn colour and the spindleberry (Euonymus europaeus) is showing off its inner seed - I so love those colours together! We have several spindle trees growing along our allotment site hedge and the leaves turn a fabulous red in Autumn.

Jamie pulled the last of our Salad Blue potatoes yesterday. He has plans for our Halloween meal next week. There were plenty of tubers; they’re rather scabby but seem to have escaped slug damage- unlike half of the remaining beetroot. I’m assuming that’s what has caused this damage though the pests I found at the crime scene were wood lice - surely not…

Thank goodness some have escaped this massacre so I still have some to eat! I pulled a parsnip - luckily I wasn’t expecting a prize winner 😄 but there’s enough flesh there for my needs. The Spring onions are still good and very pungent!

And this is what the beetroot (not the ones in the photo!), parsnip and spring onions became - served with a beanburger and fried chard.

I started with clouds and I’ll finish with clouds, this time early morning clouds with a sliver of a moon. Such amazing colours - when I saw it I thought 'someone could easily paint that, not me though'. It's a shame but I know my skillset and art isn't included!

And now, on the day we welcome our third Prime Minister in 2 months ... An excuse to share one of my favourite songs by Kula Shaker. Possibly the only good thing about having a historically appalling period of Government, although it should mean there will be a general election soon to actually let the people decide who represents us.

Ugly

The weather has been rather changeable. When the sun shone it was lovely but not so good when the cloud took over and that mass brought about 5 spots of rain with it, so the earth is still really dry.

This weekend we had two days of clearing away the three bean wigwams and then we dug the area for our broad beans. We've also managed to do a lot of weeding; it still amazes me how well the weeds grow with so little rain. The nigella have spread seeds and seedlings everywhere - beautiful, but rather a nuisance!

The remaining borlotti beans are drying on netting attached in the top of the polytunnel. The smaller squashes may go up there later when we need to use the chair!

More of the tomatoes are finally ripening but the peppers are remaining obstinately green. With the temperatures dropping to about 4° most nights I wonder if they’ll ever ripen…but you know some good things do come to those who wait. This Chinese Dragon radish was sown months ago, did nothing during the heatwave and finally started to appear a few weeks ago. I thought it would be woody, but no.

It’s hot fresh flavour was a great addition to this lunchtime potato salad with raw beetroot and Chinese cabbage thinnings.

I bought a julienne peeler recently and it’s perfect for carrots and radish but the beetroot was a bit too tricky and messy, so I just sliced that really thin. We’ve been enjoying carrots and pak choi in a couple of stir fries recently too, the Blue Dragon sauces make life easy. But as I’m mentioning brands, if you see these Itsu Bao buns for sale, buy them! They’re so delicious! Talking of delicious..Here’s the bean, carrot and courgette meal I made the other day with last years beans, a can of chopped tomatoes flavoured with smoked paprika, garlic and a little rose harissa.

Someone had cut back overgrown sections of the allotment hedge, so I thought I'd pick the rosehips if the birds aren't going to get to eat them - there are still plenty in the hedge for them. This is the recipe I intend to use to make rosehip jelly which I've never made before. The author of that recipe is quite funny and she is so right - the thorns are so nasty!! I'm a bit concerned that the irritable seed hairs get mentioned quite often in recipes, I hope my draining bag is fine enough to capture them...

The zinnia flowers are still creating a buzz - sorry 🤭 - with bees and hoverflies. I think this is a Common Carder bee (David, please correct me if I’m wrong!) and the hedge is alive with buzzing insects on the ivy flowers. We've also seen a dragon fly zipping about recently - such a huge insect but it never sits still for a photo.

So, you may be wondering, why the title song by the Sugababes? Well, Jamie dug up our single Desiree potato plant and …

Oh dear they're really not pretty and though a little scab on a baked spud can add to the flavour I wouldn't want to risk one of them! That’s what a dry Summer can give you. I just hope they taste okay once they are peeled and mashed. And here are the Sugababes.