Start!

It’s been a very, very hot week. And dry; showers have passed us by and we’ve literally been able to count the raindrops! That’s not very helpful rain at this time of year so we’ve been watering and watering - backwards and forwards from the troughs. So much walking in fact that I've already exceeded the 68,000 steps for Kidney patients so I need to think about a new target...

This potted rudbeckia fulgida was looking how we felt, but (like us) perked up after a long refreshing drink. Over the weekend we planted up most of the remaining seedlings - I've added a row of rainbow chard and french marigolds to that plot - each plant getting a good splosh of water, but they really want some decent rainfall.

We've planted the two aubergines from the HAHA Plant Swap into the polytunnel - I'm not really keen on aubergine but will eat them if they're home-grown and they are such a lovely looking fruit (yes, like tomatoes they're a fruit not a vegetable - I had to look it up).

I've planted up two flower troughs for HAHA - I'm rather ambitiously hoping that they fill out a bit ahead of next weekend's Open Day, but I think that's rather unlikely!! Oh well, they should look cheerful in July and August.

I'm pleased to say that the mangetout are finally being harvested - a few being chomped on the allotment and others being added to various meals. Even if they don't make it into a meal I pick them to keep them producing so they don't run to seed. On the other hand, I'm pleased to see that these have run to seed. These are the Radish Rats Tails, which should produce long pods for adding to salads, stir fries or for pickling. I'm looking forward to seeing them form.

In the background of that photo you can see the sunflowers and the two mini cucumbers which have been planted up into pots. The mangomel melon is on Plot3 too and is planted into the ground with weed suppressant surrounding it. You can, just about, see it in the background of this sunflowers photo - all 3 plants are surrounded by netting at the moment to give them a fighting chance against everything that may try to stop them growing (which includes the weather).

I'm pleased to see that the Paris Silverskin onions that I sowed about a week ago have germinated. I like onion seedlings with their little bent stems. It makes them easy to spot amongst the weeds. These are sown into the raised bed but in recent years have been purely slug food - would be nice to have a few to ourselves this year....

I was looking at our garlic on Saturday as I was expecting it to be time for them to be pulled however they are still one bulb rather than broken into cloves. The Winter frost is meant to aid the cloves forming. Ivan advised that I should just leave them and in a few more weeks they may well separate into cloves. If they don't it seems that they can still be eaten as 'wet garlic' - they just don't store well.

They look ready, but the bulbs are showing that they're not.

The broad beans are providing us with regular harvests, they are so delicious. We've had several meals including a broad bean curry, broad beans in parsley sauce with souflettes, broad beans in a tomato sauce and in this stir fry with tofu knots (really tasty!) and radish (a nice colourful addition). The tofu knots are dried so I soaked them overnight prior to frying - we had 6 each and there are lots left over so that's a handy stash to keep in the cupboard.

Ivan gave us a plant (I thought it was a weed) that had appeared amongst his irises. It's now flowered and what a beauty! It's a Siberian Larkspur (Delphinium Grandiflorum) and is such a beautiful colour on its tall flower spikes. It's an annual delphinium apparently but will hopefully self-seed in the flower patch. Look at at that colour - it's like ultraviolet in the sunshine.

And Ivan gets another mention as he let me pick some gooseberries - payback was a bit of weeding. I used the nice simple recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

The song title provided by The Jam  is in reference to our first courgette of the year - I'm sure there will be many more to follow.

The flower was huge; the courgette tiny 😊 And, I've taken so long writing this that we've had rain - a perfect overnight drenching and some drizzle this morning before the Sun came back out - perfect. Will see this evening what difference it's made to the plots - perhaps the HAHA flower troughs will be full of flowers 😒

Step On

I’ve been on leave for a week and have a few more days off. I must say that I feel like I’ve been off for a fortnight already - the sunny weather has helped. Although the easterly wind is rather unwelcome, it’s not so noticeable on the allotment site and has even been a relief from the heat at times.

We’ve spent most of the time on the allotment, obviously. It’s been fabulous. We enjoyed a barbecue one day and plenty of allotment lunches and chats with fellow plotholders.

As you can see, the Nigella has flowered and the valerian is filling the air with its lovely vanilla fragrance.

Wildlife reports are showing a distinct reduction in numbers of bees and hoverflies which is apparent on site, though we’re beginning to see a few more this month. We have seen a lot more dragon flies and damsel flies this year - including the impressive broad-bodied chaser in the first photo.

The robins and blackbirds are enjoying the mealworms we take with us each visit, but we have to stand guard otherwise the magpies sneak in and take the lot in one go. They attempted to break into the pot to help themselves yesterday - they’re always watching!

More excitingly, we have been hearing the bullfinches recently but actually spotted the male yesterday. We’re hoping they’ll bring their young out soon as we’re beginning to hear baby bird sounds from the hedge.

We were disappointed that only 5 of our Lark sweetcorn germinated so I put a message on the allotment’s WhatsApp group and fellow plotholder, Nia, came to the rescue with 20 Incredible plants! THANKYOU NIA! So now our plot is looking less bare. There are two Jack-be-Little small pumpkins in the corners which we hope will scramble between the tall sweetcorn plants (although I’ve planted the corn a bit close together - the blurb says this variety can reach 8ft!).

I’ve been planting nasturtium in various patches around our plots - the hot weather has kept the slugs away (so far). My other flower seedlings are still too small to plant out but I’ve sown seeds in the flower bed by the bench. This poppy is self-seeded by the polytunnel.

And these irises have been in pots for a few years but I’m not sure I’ve seen the flower before - interesting colour.

My iris display isn’t as stunning as Ivan’s which all visitors to the site can’t help but stop and look at - so beautiful.

I’ve now planted out the Florence fennel, Yin-Yang dwarf beans (our seeds from last year) and a globe artichoke, also from Nia. They’re in the plot with the oh-so-slow-growing mangetout, asparagus pea and beetroot (which I’ve had to net again because birds were snipping the leaves). There’s a lot of watering required, but so pleased that the plants are now in the ground and will hopefully start bushing out/growing upward quite soon

The (blue lake) French beans and Borlotti beans are planted in the old polytunnel frame and we’ve direct-sown Scarlet Empire runner beans as the ones in modules didn’t germinate. And Jamie’s planted out our sunflowers Tall Timbers for the Sunflower Competition 😊

Broad beans are imminent, if the wind doesn’t damage the tall plants and we’ve eaten two 🤭 strawberries so far… They’re netted to protect from blackbirds - there’s a lot of protection needed these days!

The potatoes have been earthed up; garlic has been fed with epson salts and soil loosened to assist the bulbs swelling before being pulled later this month. 

So that’s most of what we’ve been up to. I’m doing for the National Kidney Federation - 68,000 steps in June to represent the 68,000 kidney patients in the UK. That target won’t be difficult while I’m off work and if nature doesn’t join in with the watering!

The song title links to this and is provided by the excellent Happy Mondays. You’re twisting my melon man 😊

Different World

On Saturday we decided the time had come to deal with our dalek compost bins on Plot3. Three of them have been composting away for at least two years with new material being added on top but no stirring - it’s quite awkward to get in to mix the contents.

I will try to stir it a bit more in future, there were definite layers of wet and dry which could have broken down more with a bit of human intervention.

The worms, woodlice, slugs and centipedes had done a pretty good job though. Compost worms always look so lovely and clean.

The un-composted contents were moved on to a spare compost, along with the worms, as starters for the next lot of compost. We managed to extract the lovely newly created soil through the little door at the bottom for a bit of sorting - how did all that plastic get in there?!

So as the sun was going down on Saturday (5:15) we left the plot with 3 compost bins ready and waiting for re-filling and 10 bags of humus-rich soil to go in the bottom of the bean trenches. Aah, home-produced compost is very satisfying.

That meant that Sunday was trench-digging day. The squash tunnel is becoming a bean tunnel this year. Digging trenches is such hard work, especially after a few lazy Winter months of barely moving - we took it in turns to dig! The Sun didn't show, which was probably a good thing, but the birds were full of song around us.

We only managed one trench, the other side can wait till next weekend. Does it look like it's getting thinner at the other end..? Hmm, must be something to do with perspective *ahem*

On the breaks between digging we weeded the garlic and leek plot - the leeks are very poor; there are only a few there which are any good unfortunately.

The garlic looks ok so far, but they've got a good few months more to grow so I won't count my chickens!

Talking of chicken, well, definitely not chicken actually "What the cluck" - I prefer to call it 'Cluck' - a plant-based alternative to chicken. I enjoyed two meals at the weekend using Cluck and chestnuts.

Cluck is too chicken-y for Jamie so he has plant-based burgers, which I find too beef-y! I added teriyaki sauce along with our home-grown cavalo nero in the top meal - delicious.

And this second one includes onions and a parsley sauce - Jamie didn't know what he was missing out on 😏 This is served with Sticky Rice which is so white you can hardly see it. I love it - 1 minute in the microwave, perfect.

A final close-up of a potato chit - they're so alien aren't they? They do amuse me 😊 and a segway to this song by Iron Maiden.

The New Year

Two weeks in and Christmas feels long forgotten, what a shame. We had such a lovely break. Here's a post-Christmas snack I made, very tasty along with the home-made carrot and patty pan chutney.

"Sprout Surprise"! The sprouts were from our plot and these little puff pastry cheesy parcels were a very tasty snack.

This beanfeast was flavoured with Rose Harissa and smoked paprika - it covered a couple of easy meals. The leftover celery and olives were added to a can of shop-bought mixed beans (not as good as my home-dried, but did include green beans and sweetcorn) and a carton of passata.

Now it's back to work. Luckily the weather has been so foul - since November it seems! - that there is nothing tempting me out of doors. I have been out a few times this year and we did visit the plot a couple of times but it's just soggy and not very interesting. The rain has been incessant. All the tubs, ponds and rain gauges have been filled to over-flowing. We found a dead frog by our pond 😔

Jamie removed the bottle cloches from the broad beans but a week later the little plants had been blown sideways so we've put netted cloches over them now - normally we'd add them to protect from snow but any snow forecast for us seems to have moved on for the timebeing.

Eurgh, look how soggy it is. And it's been windy so the bench is blown over every time we've visited. The garlic and leeks need weeding but that's not possible until it dries out a bit. The leeks look rather sorry for themselves and the garlic is difficult to spot amongst the grass, but there is actually quite a lot there.

The tunnel is going to be a bean tunnel, rather than a squash tunnel, this year. We figure maybe the ground would appreciate a different type of crop. The squashes didn't survive the freezing December temperature drop and sadly I had to discard most of them. I'll try to eat them quicker this year. Planning and seed buying has begun. There are a couple of new things I've ordered which I'm looking forward to growing - more on them in later posts, I hope.

We just picked some veg this weekend on a quick visit. I was pleased to see that the parsnips don't have canker and the carrots may be small but most aren't slug/fly damaged. The cavolo nero is good, but still covered in whitefly that come back to life when they warm up.

And then we went home and I turned it into a chunky soup with added tomato paste, rosemary, thyme and smoked paprika. Delish!

As I tuck into the last of that soup it's a cold and frosty day which highlights some good things about working from home: no windscreen scraping required, no icy drive on the A34 and no need to go outside (unless I want to).
The song is provided by Death Cab for Cutie. Enjoy and Happy New Year!