You Cross My Path

During our not-so-frequent visits to the plot these days we find the occasional offering from fellow plotholders. They are most welcome and look at the WHOPPER we found today! A giant tromboncino courgette - Thankyou to whoever left it in our polytunnel. I’m thinking of making a courgette cake with some of it.Today it was grey, but not cold or wet so we tackled the strawberry bed. It’ll need a bit more work in the Spring, hopefully the runners I planted up recently will survive the Winter in their little pots.

Left to their own devices the plants rather took over, as you can see. And we didn’t get to eat any of the strawberries, but I’m sure the birds enjoyed them.

There, that’s a bit better. That’s the path that the title refers to, we knew it was there somewhere! We need to re-cover it with weed suppressing fabric.

There’s another path which was blocked by the enormous bramble that we’ve been fighting with. Its prickles are so sharp they pierce my gloves and tear at my skin through my trousers. 

We got rid of much of it but there’s still plenty more to clear. I’d like to cut back the ever-spreading sage, but it’s a haven for over-wintering wildlife. We uncovered lots of interesting creatures today, including this 22-spot ladybird and super-shiny blue shield bug. And the frog in the pond is tiny, only about 6cm, so not our usual frog. We think we have three different-sized visitors which is great.

So after a couple of hours work we returned home feeling that we’d achieved something. Oh, and also, our garlic has sprouted which is always good to see. I had the day off work on Friday. I needed it after last week which was far too busy, I was even dreaming about spreadsheets - not good! We had a long walk in Savernake Forest. Loads of interesting fungi, here are a few pics, and we could hear the male fallow deer calling (sounds like a long belch actually!) and saw a couple of deer flit across a path ahead of us. Aah, long weekends are such a welcome break.

The song title is provided by The Charlatans.

With a Little Help From My Friends

On Saturday morning we held our annual plant sale on the Town Hall Steps (or veranda, as it says on the invoice).

Happy HAHA Helpers: Alison, Marthy, Liz and Andy

Our plotholders did us proud again, with so many quality plants...

Flowers...

Vegetables, cut flowers, grasses, succulents and hanging baskets....

The stall looked lovely along with the volunteers donning our HAHA aprons. The sun shone occasionally and it stayed dry so we had a good number of passers-by who stopped to chat and/or buy. And lots of dogs to stroke too!

And we made £280 for the HAHA coffers! Leftover plants were passed on to a plotholder who is holding a tea afternoon in aid of macular degeneration. The remainder are available for Marsh Lane plotholders for a small 'honesty box' donation and we're planting up flowers in pots to pretty-up the site for our fete next month. I couldn't resist buying a couple of plants myself: a Spaghetti squash and another Globe Artichoke - I know that I need to protect it from the wind (and slugs) this year.

Yesterday (Sunday) Jamie and I cleared the untidy side of the polytunnel and planted up the 3 Aviditas tomato plants in their bags. They look a bit straggly at the moment, but I'm sure they'll recover.

I planted out the Gigantes runner beans and I'm hoping that the Yard Long beans will be available to plant out during the week.

We picked a handful of our strawberries but they were too delicious to make the journey home! I picked salad for my lunch tomorrow but the pak choi and rocket have flowered, so I'll pull them out and sow some other salad in its place - probably another job for next weekend.

We've been baking our rhubarb recently, it's very tasty: sliced, covered in sugar and in the oven for about 30 minutes. It's nicer than how we normally cook it in the microwave.

Look at our big frog sitting on top of the little one!

They seem to be good friends :-) The song title is provided by Joe Cocker.

Two Out of Three Aint Bad

I don't always view the world through rose-tinted spectacles, but they do make the clouds look amazing.

This 3-day weekend has brought us some pretty good weather, very hot when the clouds moved aside - a bit hot for digging yesterday but today it was cooler with a strong wind. Finally another section of Plot7 is cleared, but look how dry it is. The threatened rain still isn't reaching Marsh Lane.

We've dug a trench for beans on Plot7 - I've sowed Gigantes (which seem to be like butter beans - to be eaten when the pods go brown) into pots in the polytunnel. And we'll also have Yard Long beans on that section. Jamie prepared a spot for our HAHA competition sunflowers there too - the trenches have some of our lovely home-made compost in them.

Behind the wheelbarrow in that photo is a curry plant (Helichrysum italicum) - I love the smell, we just occasionally get a whiff as we're walking by or working on the plot. It's not edible.

Jamie sowed our carrots - under the enviromesh - Eskimo and Early Nantes 5. And also a row of Albion parsnips; it would be nice to have a home-grown parsnip as we missed out last year.

The radish, spring onion and beetroot are growing quite happily in the small raised bed, now that I've covered them to stop the birds pecking at them. We have plenty more seeds in the polytunnel now too. Our Benchmaster Runners will go on Plot3 and they, along with Pickwick dwarf runners, have mostly germinated, along with kale, purple sprouting broccoli and chard.

The HAHA Plant Sale is on June 8th and after that we'll have room to set up our tomato plants and peppers in their grow bags. That empty hanging basket is going to have a tomato plant in it - a freebie from Wyvale Garden Centre.

The Wilko irises are looking lovely, especially when the sun shines on them.

And the one remaining quarter of Plot 7 is looking lovely but those poppies really do have to go! I need to plant sweetcorn there...

The Californian poppies are so beautiful though.

I've been disappointed to see that our shallots are producing flower heads - I snip them off as soon as I see them, but they'll stop the bulbs growing to their full potential. The same is true of garlic, but not so concerning - I may try eating the scapes - they're meant to be a delicacy. Apparently when they straighten out and grow upright, the garlic is ready to pick - I'll probably just rely on the leaves going brown as I normally do..

And the song title... well, there are three frogs in our pond! Two little ones and the big one, but I've not seen all three together yet.

 Meatloaf provides the video.. Oh, and today I took home my first harvest of salad leaves for my lunch - hooray, so it begins. Not only living on rhubarb :-)

Beautiful Ones

Our first poppy of the year has flowered - so intricate in close-up, but they also look good from a distance. We're expecting to have a mass of these quite soon as they are one of plants that has self-seeded rather madly.

And look who we saw in the pond at the weekend - a lovely little frog! I wonder if it's one of our tadpoles from last year.

And then, yesterday, we saw this big fella in there - the monster from the deep!!

We achieved quite a lot last weekend with two visits to the plot. We potted on all the begonias, grown from mini-plugs - thank goodness they're out of the flat at last! I planted out my mangetout, from their drainpipe - their roots had formed a thick mat so I could just slide the whole row out in one go.

We sowed some seeds... some in pots and others in the raised bed. The radish are up just 4 days later. I've had to net them because a big crow stomps round our plot and has pulled some other seedlings out.

We planted the last of our potatoes in bags - Dido, Estima, Foremost and Erika. We did a lot of weeding so Plot8 and Plot3 are looking a bit better.

The self-seeded nigella is everywhere, but so pretty that I'm leaving it to flower and will remove the plants before they spread another load of seeds.

The raspberry, which has done nothing for two years, actually has flowers on it this year. It's in a pot and the bees love it at the moment. It seems that heeding the instructions and severely cutting it back each year wasn't what it wanted after all.

Some things just seem to do better when left to their own devices. Look at this lovely Iris bud.

We have some (currently) healthy-looking broad beans - these are the over-Wintered plants which were severely snow-damaged, but it looks like we should get a couple of meals, if the blackfly steer clear for a bit longer...

I'm happy to say that last week one of my posts got a mention in the Thompson & Morgan Vegetarian Week 'Plot to Plate' post - the other recipes definitely provide some inspiration when we finally start harvesting...

We've had no rain to speak of, though it's been forecast, so we've been watering plenty and the warm days are encouraging plenty of growth - it's all looking rather beautiful, in some spots, hence the title, by Suede!

Ça plane pour moi

We had a visit to the plot yesterday, mostly to pick some tomatoes. It was such a warm day that we stayed a bit longer to chat and were glad we did as suddenly there was an air show going on overhead

It was rather fun watching the sky with fellow plotholders and seeing all those bi-planes. And then there were parachutists with red smoke and also apparently wing-walkers - amazing! It was a shame I only had my little camera with me.

And, as if that wasn't excitement enough for one weekend - a frog has moved into our pond!

I took the mesh cover off it last week as I cleared some of the duckweed (it all grew back) and obviously froggy liked the look of it.

Today Jamie and I got on with working - no aerobatics to entertain us today, but the frog's still there. We did a lot of clearing, weeding and edging.

The carrot bed and sprouts plot - look how dry the earth is!

The leeks bed - not many leeks this year but hopefully they'll grow nice and big

The strawberry bed - masses of runners were removed

I also cleared the rest of the dried beans - soya (edamame) and Borlotti. There are quite a lot.... just have to shell them all now...

Jamie is going to pickle some of our Longor shallots this week - we finally bought some pickling vinegar - so they're at home now waiting to be prepared. And we pulled a Nicola potato - they are nice looking tubers; not slug-eaten and quite large.

There are a few of the Aviditas tomatoes which I'm going to add to salad lunches. Jamie made patatas bravas last week and will be making it again this week using the lovely larger tomatoes which are still in the greenhouse - they aren't Lizzano, which they're meant to be, but they are tasty.

My salad lunch is going to be very red this week - beetroot, tomato, red chard and red sweetcorn. I may add a red onion too for good measure :-)

I really wanted the Double Red Sweetcorn for the HAHA stall at Hungerford Food Festival on 7th October, but I'm not sure it's going to last that long; The covering leaves are very dry. And the kohl rabi are only tiny seedlings at the moment so they aren't going to be much of a show in 3 weeks time - luckily there should be plenty of squashes!

Aah, Autumn is definitely upon us, even though it was lovely and warm in the sunshine today - still Everything's Cool For Me as the title translates (apparently). Oh yes, and it has the word 'plane' in the title <ahem>. Enjoy!