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!
I got up early and left Jamie sleeping this morning. I got to the plot at about 7am and it was already warm but not sweltering.
The plants still had dew on their leaves and I noticed that one of the melons has begun to send out stems in three directions.
The plant in the polytunnel has grown faster and is beginning to climb its framework. I’ve moved the aubergine so both plants are in the sunny doorway now. They both have flowers and quite a few buds. Manoeuvring in the polytunnel is getting a little awkward!
I was hoping to prepare the bed for leeks, but the ground was too dry so I did some clearing instead. Terrible bindweed and so much Nigella which has seeded everywhere - they look lovely but are a bit of a pest and the bindweed clings on all over it. The weed pile is full of life; crickets, ladybirds and other wee beasties so I’m leaving it on the plot to dry off and the insects can move on.
Hmm, well it looks better and we can see the pond again but that bindweed will be back for me to fight another day. The little bed in front of the raised bed needs tackling too, but that can wait!
The raised bed has chard and salad leaf as well as the herbs. There are only a couple of small rows of mixed leaf, but it’s cut-and-come-again so perfect for salad and sandwiches.
The Baby cucumber is growing quickly and some tiny cucumbers are hopefully a sign of things to come. We haven’t tried Baby before as we usually grow Rocky.
The tomatoes are always a bit slower to ripen than we’d like, but there are some great looking trusses on their way on the Black moon plant in the polytunnel…
The courgettes have started regular production so the creative cooking needs to start - or perhaps they’ll just be fried up with garlic, which is good enough for me.
The broad beans are still going, but they won’t be part of many more meals; once there’s evidence of the broad bean seed larvae we stop eating them 😖 This was a tasty satay Raman noodle meal I enjoyed the other night. Very quick and easy.
I keep stroking the pollen on the sweetcorn to encourage it onto the silky tassels. Some are going brown, but they aren’t ready yet. Waiting, waiting!
Today we pulled one of the potatoes - thought it was a Duke of York, but appears to be Kestrel. A bit better than the potato bag that had one potato in it!! Potatoes really don’t like such dry weather.
So, with a final hollyhocks photo - what a beauty - I’ll say goodnight.
The song title is provided by Prince and as we’re into our third heatwave of the year it seems appropriate. Phew, stay cool all.
I need to pull the courgette from that plot. We’ve had probably our last fruit from it - looks great, but unfortunately it had a hollow heart so no good for eating sadly. But we’re pleased that the Lark sweetcorn are providing us with some delicious cobs, they’re such a sweet variety.
We’ve had some proper stormy weather over the last two days. The early morning lightning was great yesterday (Saturday) as it was still dark when it was lighting up the sky. The rain was torrential and measured 22mm on the allotment. I planted the garlic on Friday - 22 cloves of Carcassonne Wight - so I hope that appreciated the drenching.
We were on site for another torrential downpour but stayed in the polytunnel - it was so loud but no thunder or lightning. Within an hour we were soaking up the warm rays of dazzling sunshine!
This dandelion looked so pretty drying out in the sunshine and there’s Jamie doing the same on the bench by the extremely overgrown wildlife plot. 😎
I did a bit of baking last weekend - another ‘floral focaccia’ with a garlic flour mix. Pretty and tasty!
And the plot flowers are still looking pretty - these zinnia were mostly not touched by the frost. Such lovely colours, but the flowers were a bit slow to arrive this year so we haven’t got the flowerbed display I was hoping for. This post is sounding a bit depressed - it’s not meant to be! It’s been a pretty good year, all things considered! And I have a few days off work next week.
Last Sunday we didn’t picnic because we went to see an art event ‘Ablaze’ in Newbury, with fire and music along the canal and in Victoria Park. It was good with lots of people enjoying the metalwork and flaming sculptures.
Which provides the opportunity to use this great track by Kasabian.
That is the top of the allotment site on Friday 13th September - you may not be able to see it, but there’s frost on the ground! And it’s steaming in the bright early morning sunshine. The temperature dropped to 0.8° and walking through the site it was clear that flowers and plants, particularly squashes, had been frosted. By the next day their leaves were black 😖 Too early! We were hoping for an extended growing season after the rough start! It’s the earliest frost we’ve seen since having a plot. I’m pleased I put fleece round my butternut squash, they may be small but I hope they are worth saving.
I chopped all the excess growth and tiny fruits off the other week so the plant could concentrate its energy into these few squashes.
We may have had the last of our Summer squashes now. These have been quite tasty, but a bit too large a seed cavity so not much firm flesh for cooking. The chard is really pretty this year, great stems!
Those lovely spring onions are from fellow-plotholder David. I can never grow them but he has too many! They are really spicy too - delicious. The cucumbers succumbed to the frost and we’re not too unhappy about it - we still have some in the fridge 😀
I’ve started drying my beans in the roof of the polytunnel. I now know why my borlotti beans didn’t grow very tall or turn red - they were dwarf Yin Yang beans 🙄 It seems my labelling got a bit muddled and none of my borlotti survived the Spring slug-fest. I have more Yin Yang beans which I protected on the frosty night as the plants are still green. I’m going to dry the runner and French beans too this year, but they’re not ready to pick yet; they need to start drying on the plant first.
We’ve cleared and dug that area in front of the bean-tunnel for over-Wintering our broad beans. And this area is ready for the garlic to be planted quite soon. It looked straighter than that while I was digging and edging 🫣
September has thrown a lot of weather at us. Thunder was rumbling round for days and we’ve had some torrential rain but it’s really hot again when the Sun re-appears. Have seen some excellent clouds.
I think we left just in time before that storm broke. And this was an interesting sky. I think this was on one of the rumbling days when it was really muggy.
But the sunshine days have been glorious!
There are so many bees and butterflies around. Making the most of the buddleia…
The sunflowers…
And the Autumn Joy sedum.
Harvests continue including our first delicious sweetcorn last night which was added to this halloumi meal. Served with our Desiree potatoes with garlic, shallots and red pepper tapenade - so delicious.
And either kale or chard has been added to a variety of different bean dishes that I’ve made using the last of last year’s beans and our carrots.
This was the last harvest of runner beans for this year. They were just on the edge of going stringy, which is why I’m going to dry them - too many on the plants to waste. And that was the only lettuce I got to pick before slugs and caterpillars had a field day!
Tomatoes are providing meagre pickings but I’m glad the frost didn’t take them out…there are plenty to come if they get a chance to mature..
Song title is a blast from the past (1983) to celebrate Friday 13th - a good song though I had almost forgotten about it and the singer, Carmel.
The photo makes it look like a tree; it's not, but this plant in a pot is providing us with some lovely courgettes at last! And we've had some beautiful blue sky and hot days during August. We're having a bit of rain now, which is quite welcome as long as we see Sun again at the weekend.
Look at those pretty multi-coloured chard leaves. I like chard. The taste is a bit too earthy for some, but I enjoyed it steamed and served with a tofu chinese curry and it's such a colourful addition to a meal or salad.
And the plot is looking a bit more colourful too as the zinnia are finally flowering - just one at a time at the moment but they're getting there...
That trug contains one each of our two types of courgette. The yellow ones are a bit firmer than the stripey ones. Our third courgette plant is meant to be a Zucchini but no fruits on there yet. The carrots are all tiny and multi-legged but taste carroty so that's fine! And every harvest includes at least one not-so-mini cucumber.
The courgettes were stuffed with shallots & garlic, fried in oak-smoked oil, grated carrots and peanuts with a teaspoon of marmite and topped with cheese - so delicious! And the cavolo nero was chopped up small and steamed with butter and pepper added on the plate. Yum Yum!
That is our first showing of a butternut.. it's not really been a good year for them as they like a long growing season... I wonder if it will make it. I'll probably cut off all the other growth to give it a fighting chance when it reaches a stage when it looks like it could survive.. we'll see. Unfortunately I had to pull up one of the cavolo nero plants - I think it had downy mildew as the leaves were yellowing and there was definitely some sort of grey fluffy mess in the growing centre. It seems strange that the other two plants appear to be entirely unaffected - let's hope it stays that way...
These are our Halloween peppers. They are meant to go orange, but can be eaten black. We tried one, it was green inside and wasn't ripe enough so we'll let them mature a bit before trying another. They look good though and are sweet peppers, not chillis.
That not-so-wee beastie is an Elephant Hawk Moth caterpillar. Jamie spotted it walking up a pathway so I moved it to the butterfly bush on the wildlife plot where there is a lot of willowherb which it eats. Fabulous to see. And another good spot by Jamie was this Orange Swift Moth which had just emerged and was in the process of pumping its wings up. Both were worthy of updated entries on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.
The swift moth was spotted during our latest Sunday picnic, which ended as a star-gazing event as it was during the Perseid meteor shower. The moon slipped over the horizon and it was a beautiful dark sky. We saw plenty of shooting stars and were quite shocked to see how many satellites were moving about up there - not the International Space Station as they weren't bright enough. They were mostly GPS satellites. It was a beautiful evening after a glorious hot afternoon.
So, a final few trug photos and then I need to nip up the allotment for more beans (and a cucumber probably!) before work. The cucumbers in hte bottom photo should be star-shaped and heart-shaped for our next picnic I think!
I keep stroking the pollen on the sweetcorn to encourage it onto the silky tassels. Some are going brown, but they aren’t ready yet. Waiting, waiting!
