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!
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 😊
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.
I feel I need to write a post - February ends tomorrow and it's been such a wet, grey, windy month that even the allotment hasn't been very inspirational.
Thank goodness for the occasional morning walk to see some sunshine before the clouds gather. Sorry to be so whiney, especially after we had such a lovely Saturday - we had a HAHA Work Day.
You can see that a lot of plotholders turned up. We're all so desperate to do something out in the fresh air! We got to work on Ivan's fruit cage, which has now become a HAHA Communal Fruit Plot - look at us all in the cage 😀
Photo courtesy of Forbes Stephenson
The weedy plot in the foreground is one of Ivan's iris plots - the irises are being shared among the community. As you can see the weeds have taken over and the fruit plot looked like that at the start of the day. But a few hours later - voila!
And the grape vine is trimmed and tied back too so we hope to get a good harvest this year. A bit late for trimming really, but it needed to be done to stop it growing through the netting. We were pleased that Ivan came down to inspect and advise.
After working in that spikey fruity environment we enjoyed a gathering for snacks and chat around the bonfire. It was good to meet up with everyone again, including some newcomers and the Sun even shone for a bit.
A couple of weekends ago I did manage to finish clearing the area where our little fruit trees are going to be planted, but it's been too wet to get them in - hopefully this weekend...
At home I've been enjoying Rose harissa-flavoured everything at the moment after Jamie bought a pot of Rose Harissa pesto and it is so delicious, only a hint of heat and such lovely spicy flavour. I made a marvellous soup which included plot-parsnips and parsley along with some frozen veg. It provided me with a week of lunches and I've had two evening meals with rice and What the Cluck cooked on the hob with the remaining harissa.
I was inspired to write a poem this month, for the Hungerford Poetry Festival. If you like poetry you should go along to the Hungerford Hub to see what the actual poets have come up with - I'll share my offering on here next month.
In the meantime, sing-along to Primal Scream. What an excellent addition to the day!
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…
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. 
