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’ve had a delivery from Apsley Farms. It’s basically a by-product of the organic process to produce bio-gas from arable crops. The history is an interesting read. It’s quite expensive but hopefully worthwhile, especially on some of our not-so-good soil.
I’m using it as a weed suppressant around the tiny fruit trees. There’s an area left clear around each tree. I’m not expecting it to kill the bindweed but my regular hoeing of the area does appear to have helped suppress it already to some extent… well, we’ll see…
We’ve also covered the area where our broad beans will be planted next month. The area has already been dug and conditioned with lime. It’s spread about 10cm deep. And there’s some left over which we’ll use in Spring. It smells quite
strong of ammonia initially, like Guinea pig bedding, but not any more.
I took one of the Festival squashes home and had it roasted with tofu, tomatoes, garlic and chard. It's tastier than the butternut I had the other day - can't eat the skin on this squash though.
The song title is provided by Royal Deluxe and is to commemorate getting some time back as I've stepped down from the HAHA Committee. It's kind of a shame, I've enjoyed it for the last 10+ years but it's taken a bit of a turn so I'll take the opportunity to have more time on our plots rather than thinking about or doing HAHA admin and site management.
I need to pull the courgette from that plot. We’ve had probably our last fruit from it - looks great, but unfortunately it had a hollow heart so no good for eating sadly. But we’re pleased that the Lark sweetcorn are providing us with some delicious cobs, they’re such a sweet variety.
We’ve had some proper stormy weather over the last two days. The early morning lightning was great yesterday (Saturday) as it was still dark when it was lighting up the sky. The rain was torrential and measured 22mm on the allotment. I planted the garlic on Friday - 22 cloves of Carcassonne Wight - so I hope that appreciated the drenching.
We were on site for another torrential downpour but stayed in the polytunnel - it was so loud but no thunder or lightning. Within an hour we were soaking up the warm rays of dazzling sunshine!
This dandelion looked so pretty drying out in the sunshine and there’s Jamie doing the same on the bench by the extremely overgrown wildlife plot. 😎
I did a bit of baking last weekend - another ‘floral focaccia’ with a garlic flour mix. Pretty and tasty!
And the plot flowers are still looking pretty - these zinnia were mostly not touched by the frost. Such lovely colours, but the flowers were a bit slow to arrive this year so we haven’t got the flowerbed display I was hoping for. This post is sounding a bit depressed - it’s not meant to be! It’s been a pretty good year, all things considered! And I have a few days off work next week.
Last Sunday we didn’t picnic because we went to see an art event ‘Ablaze’ in Newbury, with fire and music along the canal and in Victoria Park. It was good with lots of people enjoying the metalwork and flaming sculptures.
Which provides the opportunity to use this great track by Kasabian.
At last we have more variety in our harvests. That was our second potato bag with a better haul of (Rocket?) spuds. The Cavolo Nero was used as crispy seaweed in a Chinese meal. The warm and showery weather over the last couple of weeks has made the plot and this plotholder a lot happier as our beds are finally filling up a bit.
The climbing beans tunnel looks quite sparse but is producing a surprising amount of beans and lots more flowers too.
They were part of this early morning, pre-work harvest along with our first courgette (the plant has been sitting in a pot for months with the weather refusing to let its fruits mature!) and our first cucumber. Mmm, home-grown mini-cucumbers are so delicious.
The larger turnips were past their best so went to the compost, but the little ones were tasty roasted with potatoes.
And this trug has our first harvest of tomatoes (well, the first that have gone home), radishes, stripey courgette and some leggy carrots (purple and orange).
We had a tasty salad with 7 home-grown ingredients. The imperfect carrots in mayo made an excellent tasty coleslaw.
These ipomoea were from seeds from my Cousin Jen. Such beautiful colours and they’re beginning to climb the frame now. Related to the dreaded bindweed, which I’m still fighting on our plot. We had a HAHA workday this weekend where we cleared a plot which has been given up. It was completely covered in white-flowering bindweed. We’re not fooling ourselves into thinking the problem is gone but now it’s covered in a plastic sheet for a while it’s at least contained. It’s been a particularly good year for bindweed 😖
The female pheasant, with her remaining two chicks likes the un-loved plots, but they’re less popular with the neighbours! The pheasant herself also has her fans and her haters!
It was breezy and unexpectedly misty and perfect for a bit of digging, so I cleared the area on our plot where the broad beans were and the leeks will soon be planted.
You can see that the soil is actually bone dry as soon as the Sun appeared.
My brother gave me these bees for my birthday, thanks Tim, they look great on the toilet which we can see from our plot and the communal area.
At our Sunday picnic last week we made use of the donated Chiminea when the Sun had gone. It was lovely and we enjoyed seeing bats zipping about around us, such fun.
Which gives me the opportunity to use Paul Simon’s great song title - dance-along now!
Summer arrived - just for a day, but it was tremendously hot and sunny. So I started my holiday early by taking Friday afternoon off and we enjoyed a lovely barbecue on the plot. It was a good start to my 10-day break where hopefully more of the days are like this…
Not a leaf left so now they’ve moved onto the flowers. A few things are getting away with less damage and we managed a tasty salad with a tasty peppery turnip.
And we had our first new potatoes Swift with it. They look good and tasted good but that was from a bag where two seed potatoes were planted so it’s a pathetic harvest - lucky there’s only two of us!!
I ventured beneath the netting on the root vegetable plot last weekend and, once I’d cleared the weeds, I found one (yes one!) parsnip, five salsify and a rather weak couple of rows of carrots - ugh, what a year! The garlic harvest was more successful and dried out in the sunshine. Some bulbs have little additional bulblets, I’m blaming the wet Spring for that.
Now, I must stop moaning! A few bees and butterflies arrived with the sunshine.
And the verbena bonariensis is looking stunning alongside the red of the crocosmia.
On Saturday a group of us plotholders were given a tour of the site for the Kennet Valley Wetland Reservewhich is 40acres of ancient water meadow which we really hope will get planning permission in the next few weeks - it’s literally 5minutes walk from our front door and will be great for us, nature and the town. Exciting!
It’s been a great start to my holiday and yesterday we had a picnic, which included a birthday cake, too much wine and a lot of laughter.
Thanks to the Dropkick Murphys for the fabulous song, though I clearly don’t agree with the sentiment 🥳 it does make me laugh. Enjoy.
Aah, I do love that dewy daisy - it's one of the Ox-Eye daisies on the HAHA Wildlife plot, which is full of growth at the moment with honeysuckle, dog roses and campion all flowering. These flag irises in the bog garden are so pretty.
And that's where this little gathering of snails ended up - there are a few creatures on the Wildlife Plot which would have enjoyed those little snails. Note to us: we really must tidy up the piles of pots on our plots - we're really not helping our situation!!
Our harvests are just broad beans and strawberries at the moment, but that is definitely not a complaint.
They are so delicious and, dare I say, we don’t seem to be sharing quite so many beans with slugs now. The broad beans are making an appearance in most of our evening meals.
That was a tasty tofu with teryaki sauce meal and last night we had beans with bangers and mash - yum yum 😋 The strawberries are sweet and delicious - no wonder our little vole is enjoying them so much, but there are plenty to share.
Ivan's been working on his old fruit bushes, which are now the HAHA Community Plot - he and Linda have pruned and picked masses of gooseberries. Lots have gone to the primary school where they have cookery sessions. We made a tasty gooseberry and strawberry sauce with our supply - the strawberries mean that not much additional sugar is needed.
Mmm, fresh strawberries for breakfast, it must be June (even if the weather isn't playing ball!). The early
morning visits to the allotment for watering have been rather chilly
recently. The min/max thermometer has been as low as 2.3° and the wind
has been horribly cold this week. The fleece and an emergency blanket were called upon for this weekend's
picnic! And the brollies were windbreaks rather than rain protection.
Not a scene we expect to see in June really, is it?!
We've planted out our Festival squash, Piccolo courgette and Zuccini courgette but they are sulking at the moment because they preferred it in the warm polytunnel. They are protected by slug pellets and surrounded by netting to keep the birds away from the pellets. And these little cloches are protecting morning glory seedlings - can't risk anything these days! These are planted where my mangetout disappeared...
The beetroot and carrots have germinated but no sign of the parsnips or salsify which I sowed yet. Well, there's plenty of time really - it is only June after all...
We've enjoyed seeing 'our' robins feeding their young and now there are four or five more little speckled robins enjoying the mealworms and gathering around the water supply. And we've been seeing/hearing the bullfinches so we think they will be bringing their young out soon - all good and maybe I'll manage to get some photos for next time!
In the meantime, the allotment then work beckons - enjoy this excellent song by The Goo Goo Dolls. I can't believe I didn't use this all the while Ivan's irises were putting on a fantastic show - remember these beautiful scenes from last year.
It's been a very blustery couple of weeks - with another named storm (Kathleen) passing by but the strong winds helped to dry off the land a bit to make weeding a bit more feasible. There's still a lot to do though!
Other plots are looking a lot more ready than ours but we'll get there - in fact, the site was looking rather lovely as the Sun was slipping away yesterday. We have just one empty plot left at the moment - a bit different from this time 8years ago where I recorded that we have 50poles empty! We're celebrating 15years of the site this month.
Other celebrations have been going on in Hungerford over the last two weeks too. Hocktide celebrations included decorated trees with flags and ribbons in the town. Here's our HAHA tree (a pollarded tree is quite hard to decorate!); the man who lives nearby came out while we were decorating it and said he was looking forward to having a stew 😀 But the veg was still there last time I looked!
And this weekend the 'Constable's Parade' was held. HAHA opted for a less-traditional participation which caused much amusement. Drawing attention to the allotment in an unusual way but also interest was gathered for the Horticultural Show planned for later in the year.
We had a celebration of our own when Ivan brought some wine and we had a little picnic though it did get rather cold so we made good use of the fleece before wrapping up the strawberries 😆
And while we were sitting there we saw the first two swallows of the year on the site! So we decided that two swallows must make it Summer, but it really didn't feel like it. Hoping the fleece will save these little flowers from the frost risk this week - it would be nice if they could survive to become our first strawberry treat of the year!
Last weekend we thoroughly weeded the strawberry bed but the bindweed has started re-appearing already.
Saturday was warmer than Sunday, especially when I was clearing out the polytunnel so we now have our inner greenhouse up for the seeds to start off. There were so many bees, flies and ladybirds in there but also snails on nearly everything I moved and so many ants nests! It was a good weekend for insect spotting with several orange tip, brimstones and peacock butterflies flitting by and I added an Ashy Mining Bee update to my Wildlife blog. Also the little froggie in our pond even stayed above water for long enough to be photographed. He's definitely sharing the space with a few tadpoles.
Oh, and exciting news! Our new tiny cherry tree has it's first blossom and the pear and apple have leaves appearing. Talking of trees, here's our hazel sapling which I planted up after a squirrel had left a
hazelnut in the ground at least 3 years ago.
All-in-all the weather has been decidedly April-y and we've had a fun start. And this morning Jamie has sowed our first seed - a Zucchini courgette to grow in a pot, initially in the polytunnel and then to be moved outside. Simply Red provide the song for getting started - yay! Go on, have a little dance, it's Springtime.
