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!
OK, I'll admit it may not be quite 33 but there was a big flock ('murder') of crows in the tree opposite our flat. They just kept flying in, a pair at a time. Then something spooked them and...off they went.
As you can see we had a nice blue-sky weekend. We should have spent longer on the allotment, but we didn't get there till late on Saturday afternoon. We did sow a packet of Bonita french marigolds, Suttons broad beans and some salad vegthough, so at least we achieved something.
The Blackthorn in the allotment hedge has flowered and it is was a proper Spring weekend.
The moss is looking rather stunning too - I need to charge the batteries on my macro camera to see these in all their miniature glory.
Our shallots have sprouted - yay! But still no frogspawn in our pond :-(
Last Wednesday I joined Ted, our Chairman, on a stall at the Hungerford Town Council meeting. The room was edged by all the volunteer groups and about 100 people turned up to find out about what we all do for the town. It was quite a good format - and we got interest from a new plotholder.
And on Friday night we had a HAHA versus the Rest of the World Skittles match - it turned out that the 'rest of the world' consisted of Steve and as there wasn't a huge turnout we decided to play as individuals rather than teams. It was a lot of fun and we made about £30 (after paying
for the room) for HAHA funds so it was worth arranging this little
off-site social gathering.
We didn't make it to the plot yesterday as we went to Newbury and then went for a walk around Bowdown Woods near Greenham Common - it was so beautiful, just a couple of weeks and the whole place will be full of bluebells.
The title is provided by Kula Shaker - great song, if a rather spurious link to this blogpost :-)
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.
That's my starry salad lunch - we were so pleased that our cucumber mould was successful this year, for the first time! We may be lucky and find a heart-shaped cucumber waiting for us on the plot one evening this week!
The growth spreads suprisingly well into the corners of the mould and then there's a bit of a fight to get the mould off, but I think it's worth it. (Not convinced it would work too well on tomatoes, but maybe next year)
The weather is sweltering, but still the plants are beginning to look rather autumnal - that's our largest pumpkin preparing itself for October!
And the hedgerow is well-stocked with berries already. Summer seems to have been rather short-lived although we have had some lovely hot days and long evenings to enjoy this year. And recently we've had some hot Septembers and Octobers, so I hope this year follows suit.
My salad was all home-grown: delicious coleslaw, with cabbage and carrot, two tpes of tomato, purple basil, rainbow chard and Rocky cucumbers. And the salad we had for dinner last night included courgette and potato/onion cakes.
We're still waiting for the purple/black tomatoes to ripen, but they can't be too far off now...
It's a shame it got so wet as I didn't manage to get a photo of all the lovely volunteers standing round chatting and eating at one of the tea breaks. We had some fabulous home-made sweet and savoury snacks and guess who took the bottle of Tenerife Honey Rum (Ron Miel) along?!
We did lots of tidying and hedge-cutting and left the site very wet, tired and dirty!
HahaWell done all, thanks for helping keep our site looking lovely!
Jamie and I have had various ailments over the last few weeks and the stormy weather often scuppered our plans when we did feel inclined to move outdoors! Anyway, excuses over (for now).
The mice have been enjoying our beetroot in the meantime. Cheeky things seem to have a nest under our raised bed. There are mouse-sized holes very close to these tell-tale toothmarks :-)
At least it wasn't completely wasted!
For a very brief visit earlier in the month we walked along the canal to see how flooded it was. Hungerford lock isn't doing its job very well - it's being repaired anyway.
Jamie spent a bit of time spreading 6x and manure around our two rhubarb plants. One is showing tiny signs of life but the other seems to still be dormant.
Raspberry Red Rhubarb
Still haven't actually achieved much on the plots, but it was lovely to be in the sunshine at the weekend's HAHA work day - though exhausting (I didn't do much, so here's a pic of other plotholders working!).
Aah, look at that Spring-like sky!
One sad bit of news - we found a dead barn owl on the site. I've put a bit more info on the wildlife blog. Shame
We got to the plot for sunrise. We intended to get there before the birds started their chorus but we were too late. They were singing beautifully all the while we were there and we could hear the cuckoo across the marsh. It was a beautiful morning; just a few clouds and when the sun rose they were a fabulous colour (the photo doesn't do them justice).
5am
The sun reaches the the western hedge well before it lights up our plot.
The hedges round the site are looking beautiful at the moment with their shiny new foliage. The hawthorn with its may blossom is particularly stunning up close. This photo isn't photo-shopped, it's the morning sunlight giving it the pinky hue.
We went back home for a couple of hours and then returned to site about lunchtime. A lovely warm day and although windy at the top of site we found it to be quite still at our plots.
Plants in waiting
I planted up the celeriac - 2 rows about 30cm apart.
Yes, I cheated. My seed-sown celeriac is too pathetic so I bought a tray at the Garden Centre. I'm sure more germinated than are in the tray but something is nibbling them and it's just too slow growing.
Jamie took the netting off the onions and weeded all round them and dug up the persistent potatoes!
The strawberry plants, which we're growing next to our seat for the birds to eat, are looking healthy and, along with the chives, are bringing bees and hoverflies in.
Robbie came to join us as usual and watches our every move. No sign of his youngsters yet; he's still taking them plenty of worms.
Various visits to the plot this week - Jamie's been digging during the day (back permitting) and then we went up each evening to shut the greenhouse down. The temperature is ranging from -2° to 20° out in the open and between 2° and 38° in the greenhouse!
The seeds have appreciated it - the marigolds have all germinated but no sign of the beetroot yet. The strawberries are flowering - this one looks a bit frost-bitten so probably won't fruit.
And the broad beans have real flowers now :-)
And look how much the hedge has grown - so pretty!
Jamie was at the plot for most of the day digging plot 8B and finding more huge chunks of concrete, which is why he's aching beside me right now. Not sure where the concrete is from. Possibly a result of the canal dredging which was apparently done in the 1970s or 80s. He found this 1886 penny coin, which although not particularly rare, is rather exciting and in good condition.
Queen Victoria
Britannia
We did find an older coin on the site a couple of years ago - it was another penny from 1797(!) with George III on it - such poor condition I couldn't get a photo of it though.
I joined Jamie in the afternoon but didn't do a lot of work, just a little digging but mostly socialising and taking pics. It's lovely to see that the hedge is now beginning to go green and these are blackthorn flowers - which will turn into sloes later in the year. Tiny little flowers.
Very pleased too to see that both our rhubarb plants are looking really healthy and have a substantial growth spurt over the last week - the April showers and sun have really done the trick!
Also, as expected the chives have all sprouted up. You can see it's separating already.
And, the garlic is looking happier with the added Growmore giving it a helping hand...
Lastly, the chives have gone a bit crazy over the last week and they've got flower buds - this is also a gratuitous picture of the grape hyacinths which keep getting a mention because they're such a pretty colour!
We had a couple of hours in sunshine. It was chilly though and the wind was blowing all the leaves about. In fact, it looks like Autumn has really hit over the last week - trees and hedgerow have changed colour and the berries really shone out in the sun because so many leaves have fallen (all over our plot).
Look at that beautiful blue sky!
The thermometer showed that the minimum over the last couple of days was 1.5° and there was ice on our tub. Washing the dirt off the beets which we're going to pickle this afternoon was hand-numbing!
We collected some wood which someone had donated to the allotment site - we're going to use it for a new cage next year. We need to work out a design for what we actually want; the plastic tubing is great but makes access a bit tricky so want to work on something to make that easier... We also collected some manure which had been in a tub by the gates for a few months - well rotted horse manure - should be good for mixing into the brassica quarter.
The chard was glowing in the sunshine, but has gone to seed so unlikely to get eaten now and this is what's left of the butternut - the wildlife is welcome to it!
