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 remembered we have cucumber moulds, so the continuous supply of Baby cucumbers are now looking different.
As long as they’re sealed in a plastic bag in the fridge they are still perfect after 3 days. I’ve seen some tasty recipes for them, but we’ve mostly been having them in sandwiches or with hummus dips. Jamie has made this soured cream salad with added tomatoes and salad onions a couple of times which we’ve enjoyed.
The big news this week is, of course, the weather. After the super extreme heat it actually rained - proper rain, with thunder and lightning two evenings in a row! The plots looked much healthier as a result.
On Tuesday morning we were greeted on site by a ‘flight’ of swallows (I prefer the collective noun ‘gulp’ actually) on the overhead cables and it was marvellous when they all swooped off together. And there was also a flock (a ‘charm’) of goldfinches. It was a beautiful morning actually, shame I only had an hour. The birds were clearly relieved that the rain had arrived and the extreme heat had past (thought it was still very warm).
Tuesday evening we had the most torrential downpour. We opened the windows to enjoy that welcome sound and smell.
The next morning the rain gauge showed it to have been a proper drenching - 25mm in one night.
Too late for the French beans (right) which seem to have gone over very quickly but the runners (left) are still producing flowers at the top and the borlotti/gigantes wigwam (centre) is looking bushy and healthy.
I needn’t have fretted last week. As Flighty pointed out, the cob tassels will soon arrive after the flowers start providing the pollen. And here they come on the Lark sweetcorn.
And look! The Lizzano outdoor tomato has given it’s first fruits - what a feast 😁 Well, it’s quality not quantity that counts! And you can see, there should soon be more…
Trugs are colourful at the moment with the chard and more of the Salad Blue potatoes.
Also a Nicola potato and I podded those French beans to have with orzo (a pasta, which rather seemed like slippery rice on eating), What the Cluck and a sun-dried tomato pasta sauce.
Last night I used chard to make a sort of colcannon with the Nicola potatoes. It was very tasty, but I think I should have made sure there was less water in the chard before mixing with the spuds. Although it wasn’t sloppy, it didn’t quite mash properly. It’s served with What the Cluck and garlicky-shallots.
Today it’s feeding day for the plot, though it’s certainly beginning to feel a bit Autumnal which is sad. It’s still a lovely temperature and no rain expected today. Even the clouds in the photo below, from yesterday, didn’t produce rain. It’s probably just because we’ve got used to blue skies and sweltering heat. But there are plenty more flowers and veg on their way, lots of deadheading to do and surely more cucumbers and courgettes to pick!
Aah, this song will pretty much sum up today I think. And what a great song by the Small Faces! Can’t believe I haven’t used it before. For the rest of today, I shall be mostly speaking in cock-nay 😆
I must remember to sow lobelia into modules next year. It’ll make it far easier to pot them on. Zinnia seem to be the flower of the moment. And ours are appearing. They’re multi-coloured so some of the orange flowers are zinnia rather than marigolds.
I’m seeing them everywhere, but look closer and they’re even more fab. No wonder the bees were enjoying them today.
I’m really happy with the Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus Caudatus). There are 4 plants around our plots. This one on Plot7 is the most advanced and this lovely long tassel has started to turn the deeper red. Such an amazing plant from the tiniest of seeds. The birds will apparently enjoy those seeds in the Autumn and I may well try some myself, as explained here by the Laidback Gardener’s blog. I hope some will set seed to re-grow next year.
The harvests are continuing and are not very varied, but a bit of creativity means that meals don’t need to be boring. That said, I am missing the kitchen at work where I used to leave all the surplus for my colleagues to take home. I must admit that we left a large patty pan and over-grown courgette on the spares shelf at the allotment and I was pleased to see that someone actually wanted them! I’m also very pleased that the chalk addition to the patty pan watering has largely resolved the blossom end rot problem.
This Rose Harissa dish with sticky rice was tasty though a bit too spicy for my taste (I got carried away with adding the harissa paste!)
The only flavouring in this stuffing, with added pine nuts, was the garlic, shallots and garlic oil. We had this in stuffed courgettes, with some left over for lunch the next day.
This weekend has been so sweltering that cold salads have been best for lunches.
The temperature has reached 33° in the shade but it's been lovely sitting under the sun umbrella with a deskfan run on a Jackery power station, which we’ve bought for heating the polytunnel in Winter really!
The weather is what everyone is talking about. We even had to postpone our HAHA picnic; not due to rain, but because we’re in the amber extreme heat warning area.
It’s just beginning to cloud over - watch the clouds.
It’s still sweltering and some of us aren’t convinced that the rain/thunderstorms will hit Hungerford over the next few days, but the temperatures are forecast to drop to a more average 23°. Too late for our pumpkin, which has gone into emergency mode and decided to skip a couple of months.
The other squashes don’t seem to have had the same idea, so hopefully more than one fruit per plant, though the ‘tunnel’ hasn’t quite developed this year.
My Florence fennel has sadly all gone to seed. It’s just not been possible to keep it wet enough.
At last the sweetcorn has developed tassels but no cobs are emerging yet, which seems rather slow. We’ll see…
Summing up the last week: Work, water, harvest, deadhead, work, water, eat, sleep and repeat. And, I must say how much I like it 😊 Song title provided by Riton.
It’s here! The new drone video of the site, courtesy of Colin de Fraine.
I hope you agree that the plots are looking amazing from all the different angles. How dry it is though! Still no rain, thank goodness for the borehole and generator to pump our water.
From Monday it’s National Allotment Week and we’re having a vote for the Plotholders Choice Award for the favourite plot. I hope lots of people join in and next Sunday we’re having a bring-your-own picnic for the prize-giving. We’re not quite ready for an open day with Covid cases still high, so this is the next best thing - also takes less organisation!
We haven’t had any rain all week and aren’t expecting any at least till Friday - hope it stays dry on Sunday for the picnic!
The dry earth makes digging the potatoes easy and they emerge clean, with no slug damage so far - it makes a nice change. These are Nicola potatoes. The tubers are mostly quite small. They’re tasty hot or cold. We’ve had them boiled, as roasted wedges and mashed.
I had the carrot, fennel and spring onion with mayonnaise in a roll for lunch - yum yum. Only one Florence fennel looks like it may bulb up quite big - nothing like you see in shops though. They are mostly going to seed but are still good as a flavouring.
I enjoyed the last of the pulled Salad Blue potatoes with French beans and these smoky not-chicken bites. They were a tasty snack and added a bit of extra protein to this colourful little lunch.
Green beans, whether runners or French beans, are well and truly on the menu now. The French beans are Blue Lake climbing French beans. And the cucumbers are just beginning to join most lunches.
Mmmm, cheese and cucumber sandwiches… we just bought some fancy cheddar cheeses from the monthly Hungerford Food market along with some more garlic oil. I also couldn’t resist buying a couple of pots on the plant stall, including a salvia for the flower patch by our bench. Talking of which, that’s where I’m going now.
Finally got round to filtering the chive flowers from the vinegar. It’s so pretty and the chive flavouring is a lovely addition to chips or a salad. I’m thinking I may make some lavender vinegar, though I’m not sure that would work on chips…
Lettuce is now joining the harvests. The beetroots are the perfect ‘golfball-size’ that I’ve read about. I thought I’d try microwaving them rather than using the hob or oven for an hour. I’m no cook or much of a microwave user, but I can confirm that 7 minutes for two freshly picked small beets is much too long. I took the lid off to find two deflated splodges! I’ll try again…
I did make a delicious gooseberry crumble though; gooseberries courtesy of Ivan. It served for breakfasts and desserts for much of the week. Ivan also gave me some redcurrants which are so beautiful and made into a sauce provide a perfect topping for chocolate ice cream. Yum.
We got a lot done on the allotment last weekend. I sowed another row of Salad Onions and Chinese Dragon radish - 5 days on and the radish are already up. Jamie potted up the pepper in the polytunnel and I planted the two final squashes in the tunnel - Winter Celebration. The melon and pumpkin are released and are heading off sideways.
Mangomel Melon
The cucumbers are planted in their pots, they’re very small plants at the moment but hopefully will be as prolific as they usually are quite soon.
I pulled all the garlic, but the bulbs are a bit smaller than usual. Lucky there are plenty of them, now drying in the sun on an old saucepan stand.
We did get some rain, but not enough so have been watering every morning. It’s taking us more than an hour to water everything now so need to start getting up a bit earlier, or starting work later…
Nice to see these early morning altocumulus clouds and seeing our buddleia there reminds me that I saw my first ever Hummingbird Hawkmoth on there in the week - what an amazing little moth! Not a great photo, but it was so speedy.
Anyway, that was all last week. I’m looking forward to a hot, hot, hot weekend though am rather disappointed that the blue sky has turned grey in the last hour! Song title provided by Arrow. Have a lovely weekend all.
The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.
The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.
I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.
I had some of the podded runner beans in a dish covering a couple of meals, along with the orange pepper, chard, garlic and shallots - a fully home-grown meal. Very tasty and even better eaten a couple of days later when the flavours were enhanced. It’s apparently a peculiarly British-thing to eat the pods of runner beans, with most other nationalities growing them for the beans. And, I was surprised to see that in the US they are predominantly grown as an ornamental plant (hummingbirds love them) and are not even considered for food. See this blog, The Sharing Gardens, which is an interesting read.
My chard is looking better now than it’s looked all year, so I roasted some with sesame seeds yesterday, to eat as ‘crispy seaweed’ along with roasted veg - another fully home-grown meal, which up till now have been infrequent this year.
Jamie has some sort of flu (not COVID-19) so I’ve been to the allotment on my own a couple of times recently. I always think I don’t want to go, but am so pleased when I do. It’s such a lovely spot and there’s always someone to talk to.
Yesterday I moved all the ripe squash into the polytunnel, there are still a few more to pick as they may still further ripen.
Now that the foliage has died back, it’s clear that we didn’t keep up with the Rocky cucumber production! That lot will go in our compost bins so it’s not really wasted and we did eat a LOT of cucumbers this year.
The kohl rabi are beginning to bulb up. I’m concerned for them because the purple sprouting broccoli (single plant) and Chinese cabbage are being chomped by something - it looks like caterpillar damage but I haven’t found the culprit yet…
We also didn’t see who tucked into the sunflower seeds, but they’ve nearly cleared all of them now.
I had a couple of hours on the sunny plot again this afternoon. I took down the runner bean and Borlotti bean plants and poles. All the foliage will go in a trench under the squash tunnel once the plants are cleared and we’re expecting a HAHA manure delivery in a week or two.
And the cycle starts again with the Aqua dulce broad beans sown under their bottle cloches.
We’re hoping the garlic and shallots will be delivered in the week so can get them planted into their prepared beds. The title song is provided by The Zombies because, well, it really is that time…
