Going Back to My Roots

These are the Double Red Sweetcorn seeds from RealSeeds - this year's attempt at growing funky sweetcorn - they're proper edible sweetcorn, not just for popping, so I'm going to try to look after the plants a bit better than I did with the Glass Gem last year (though we're on holiday in August, which may cause a problem..)

We had a very wet visit to the plot this afternoon. We managed to spend 3 hours clearing the greenhouse and doing various other little jobs - starting with clearing some of the debris from last week's awful gales. Lucky our Plot3 is such a mess there was nothing to damage!

These are just a couple of our Boltardy beetroot! Even boltardy may be a bit woody at that size, so...

I chopped them up and added them to the compost bin with some other plot waste. Such a great colour.

The greenhouse looked better by the time we left - notice the carefully placed watering cans to catch some of the rainwater that leaks through the roof. We need to do a bit of taping up when the weather cheers up.

I couldn't resist buying another bag of pre-cooked chestnuts as the soup was so tasty last week. So now I'm making vegetable soup with chestnuts - with carrot, parsnip, swede and leeks. For dinner I was going to have a stew but then I saw a lovely looking recipe here so decided to have roasted vegetables (and chestnuts) instead.

Today's song is provided by Odyssey.

 

The Plot and the Ending (la trama y el desenlace)

It's probably our last chance to do anything on the plot before we return to our other favourite place - Tenerife (yay!). So, today I had to clear a space a plant the garlic.

I bought that bulb at the Food Festival last week - French garlic, from Brittany. I usually buy bulbs from the garden centre, but at least 3 people told me that this is what they do, so we'll give it a whirl. There were only 13 cloves so that's not as much as we usually grow, but if they're all that big it should be plenty to use throughout next year.

I cleared the end of the raised salad bed and that's where the garlic are now - I added a little 6x to the compost before mixing in, planting and then gave it a water. Garlic needs a frost to divide the bulb into cloves so I hope this warm weather doesn't stay too long - though it was a lovely afternoon in the sunshine.

The sunshine is helping the weeds grow - those violas are welcome, but the grass and thistles - ugh!!

We didn't get time to clear everywhere but most of the large thistles have been dug up and while Jamie did that I cleared the tomatoes in the greenhouse...

From that... to this...

It's nice to be able to get in the door again, but I still need to clear the remaining redcurrant tomato at the end. They're dropping all over the floor.

A nice little harvest for beet/carrot/sweetcorn salads during the week and a meal with squash and a tomato sauce tonight.

That's the first time for a few years that we've picked sensible-sized beets at this time of year! These are from the seeds we sowed in July.

And the tomato sauce has a lovely smokey flavour because of the Rapeseed oil I bought at the Food Festival last week. The squash was relatively easy to cut and I was going to stuff it whole..

But, because of the way the flesh had grown, I decided to chop it like this, drizzle with oil and roast - I'll just pour the sauce on once it's cooked and I'll add a vegetarian pepperoni for a bit of protein.

And I'm currently obsessed with this song that has provided the title - it's so beautiful, please listen to the rather lovely Jorge Drexler.

Song for a Friend

I had such a lovely day with my friends yesterday - a day in Oxford and in particular the Botanic Garden.

The oldest botanic garden in Britain - founded in 1621!

It has 7 glass houses with different climates from the fernery to the arid cacti house. I particularly liked the insectovores house.

The laid out gardens and these amazing meadows are so beautiful!

And the walled border, which was planted up 10 years ago - wow!

The sun shone for much of the day, after a grey wet start which would have upset our open-top bus ride!

My lovely buddies - good luck in Switzerland Sarah!

 Thank goodness for the sunshine as it makes for much more colourful photos!

So, we had a great day with lunch at The Vaults and later a cream tea in the oldest coffee house in Britain, The Grand Hotel. 

Such a beautiful city

It was a fab send-off for Sarah who's moving to Switzerland. Today's title song is for her by her favourite, Roddy Frame.

What's Up?

What's up with my asters? They really don't look happy. Are they diseased? Will they recover? Nearly every plant has these horrible screwed up leaves :-(

Also, what's up with this annoying windy weather? It's causing irritation all round. Here's our attempt at keeping our Valerian upright - certainly not pretty but it's better than crushed flat like it was during the week.

We've been doing a lot of planting up over the last week. All the sweetcorn (the Lark and the Glass Gem) are planted, with protective bottle cloches. Not sure why this one Glass Gem seedling appears to be albino - I wonder what difference it will make to the cobs...

Jamie sowed two rows each of Speedy dwarf beans and Purple TeePee. He also sowed two more rows of Eskimo carrot as the original rows didn't germinate. On the plus side, my florence fennel seems quite happy in the recycle bins, but they've grown tall quickly so I've had to remove their protective netting - I hope they are ok and not too tempting for slugs.

We've planted up our tomatoes - 3 x Aviditas down one side of the greenhouse; 1 x Tigerella on the other side of the greenhouse and 1 x Redcurrant tomato at the end - this is a "sprawling" variety apparently, so I'm hoping we can use the shelving skeleton as a method of control...

Our greenhouse looking tidier than our flat!

I gave my sister one of the redcurrant tomato plants and the other is braving it outside - albeit with some protection from the wind at the moment... That should be enough sprawling space!

I'm pleased to see that the beetroot is looking healthy - a few nibbles, but not too many.

And I'm also pleased that I'm eating salad lunches from the allotment although I wish I had a few more lettuces growing.. I've added a bit of herb fennel and pak choi.

So, '"what's up" is an appropriate title, with the song provided by 4 Non Blondes.

Gunpowder, Poison and Soup

Sorry about the title. It's the best I could come up with based on "gunpowder, treason and plot" ;-}
There's the gunpowder. A fabulous fireworks display at Newbury Racecourse last night. I know lots of animals hate fireworks - our cat, Jaffa, used to go into hiding if there was even a distant bang - but I have to admit we love to see and hear them.

And, here's the poison. Spindle berries. They're growing in the hedgerow around the allotment and are so pretty, but extremely toxic. The pink shell explodes to reveal the orange berry and those colours together are fabulous!

And, of course, here's the soup. Yes pumpkin again, but this time with carrot, onion and garlic and plenty of pepper. I left the skin on again.

The Jack-Be-Little pumpkins are quite hard to cut up but once cooked the skin is thin enough to get a spoon through, so fine for the blender to deal with and there weren't any scratchy-throat bits when I ate the last lot I made.

We visited the plot to pull the carrots and collect the other ingredients from their storage in the greenhouse. The loofahs are in there too but have a lot more drying out to do. I might bring them indoors.
The part of the plot with the sprouts, chard, kohl rabi and carrots doesn't look too awful.

But the rest of the plots look very sad and we should be clearing and tidying, but the inclination isn't here at the moment. All that dead growth collapsed after a couple of frosts we had last week followed by a lot of rain.

A Word in your Ear

Another very windy and wet Saturday, so just another quick visit to the plot. Really not very much going on on the site, but I found these Jew's Ear fungi on an elder tree branch which had blown down.

The name Jelly Ear or Wood Ear is perhaps more politically correct, but the Latin name is a bit more specific Auricularia auricula-judae. It is edible, but I didn't pick it. We have eaten it in the past. I've got a vague memory of its chewy texture, but not the taste.

Most of our visit was spent in the greenhouse looking out for wildlife. Something with four feet had walked on our raised bed and one garlic clove had been pulled up, but no other clues and no sign of mammals or even many birds today.

We walked home through the wind and rain, with a few of last years garlic harvest to have with dinner tomorrow. I hope they haven't grown when I cut into them.

Our seeds arrived in the week - look at that little lot! It'll be good to get started, but there are a few weeks and lots of preparation to do yet...

Nice Weather for...

...Ducks!

It wasn't raining when we walked up to the allotment today. We knew it would be soggy after so much rain over the last week though. We did have one night of frost, but it's mostly been about rain.

At the Town Council meeting on Monday we heard that the housing developer is granting us a one year extension on the site lease - with the 'possibility' of a permanent lease if planning is granted on an entirely separate piece of land in the town. We have the HAHA General Meeting this Monday so it'll be good to hear how the other plotholders feel. 

So, it's great that we can start preparing for April now, but will likely have to look forward to this again in a year's time. 

Newbury Weekly News

Some things are still growing (not just the grass). This is one of the beetroots which Jamie sowed in late July (or possibly later than that)! Wonder if it'll actually ever bulb up?

We have started ordering. Jamie's ordered some tomato plants and I've ordered some stuff, including loofah seeds! We also have plans for spuds but more on all this when things actually get delivered!

I bet mine won't look as perfect as these ones!

We hadn't been on site long when it started pouring and the wind blew up. This year's robin hid rather than eating the food we took up for him and I hid too, thank goodness for the greenhouse! (It's the sound that's better than the video on this...)

 

I hope it's not like this for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch at the end of the month!