Strawberry Swing

I've had a few days off work to celebrate Jamie's birthday. We've had a little rain and some sunshine. It's been good gardening weather for the last couple of days.

The Love in the Mist (Nigella) has burst into bloom - such elaborate flowers and they're everywhere. So beautiful.

Unfortunately most of the poppies and Californian poppies have taken over a section of Plot7 where I need to grow veg, so I'm digging them up - it feels so wrong. Most of these will be going into the green bin at home, though I'm sure they'll be back as they self-seed everywhere.

I've attempted to pot on some of them, but I'm not sure they'll work - well, at least they stand some chance...

We've planted out our Benchmaster Runner Beans, it's so windy at the moment that we've protected them with a fleece wall.

The Pickwick Dwarf Runners are also planted out and protected under fleece for tonight (not because we think a frost is coming, but it's their first time out of the polytunnel). I need to put something up so that they don't get snapped by the wind too - we've never grown dwarf runners, but we know that the dwarf french beans are easily snapped.

We've sowed our courgettes into pots to germinate at home along with the Yard Long Beans. So far, 4 of the 9 Gigantes beans have germinated - I hope to get a few more than that to plant up against the canes along with the Yard Longs.

The birds have been pinching our strawberries as soon as they go vaguely pink, so Jamie has netted them up.

But in the meantime Ivan has given us a lovely punnet of strawberries today and they're going home along with our first broad beans - these are from our over-wintered ones, which survived being squashed by snow surprisingly well. Thank goodnesss - we didn't get any broad beans last year and they really are one of our favourite home-grown harvests.

Blackfly are beginning to be a problem, so Jamie has sprayed some of the plants and you can see in some of these photos that slug pellets have also made an appearance - we protect the other wildlife from these by netting any pelleted areas.We don't want any of the robins, magpies, crow, greenfinch or the frogs to eat anything dodgy.

Our shallots are still producing flowers, which get plucked off every time we spot them - annoying. I don't remember having this problem before.

Liz gave me a Lovage plant. It's a herb and apparently it grows huge (over 6-foot) and every part of the plant can be used as a celery substitute - sounds good!

So, things are progressing quite nicely. Just a bit more rain required (night-time only please!) and a couple more days off to hopefully get a bit more clearing done....

The song title by Coldplay is, obviously because of the strawberries - we hope to eat a few of our own quite soon, otherwise well, there's always rhubarb!!

Yellow

It's been an extremely hot few days and we've visited the plot each evening to water the seeds and feed the tadpoles. Even I'm struggling a bit with the lovely heat as it arrived too quickly for my body to go from chilly to sweltering - but, really, I shouldn't complain!! Especially as it's really helped the plants to come to life...

I left work a little early on Friday - it had to be a barbecue evening and we got to use our new enamel mugs for the first time too. They were on sale through Photobox and only cost £6 each with our own photos.

It was so lovely to sit on the plot as the sun disappeared and the slice of moon became more visible. We were so pleased to be joined by the first bats that we've seen this year - flitting about under the ash tree beside our plot.

Then wandering home, slightly tipsy from the wine, along warm roads - just like Summer. This blossom photo, and the daffodil, were taken at night with the flash - it's a good effect.

Yesterday (Saturday) we spent a few hours on the plot transplanting marigold seedlings and Jamie sowed some Russian Giant sunflowers. And I stared at the tadpoles quite a lot, they're so fascinating - I don't think I paid attention enough when I was little. They're not just black anymore, which again confirms that they're frogs, not toads.

I (and a few other plotholders) went to Hungerford Primary School for an hour to help with their Make a Difference Day. I planted up some grape hyacinths and took along a pot of wildflower seeds, collected last year, plus some herb plants (sage and chives). The site looked more cheerful and loved when I left and a lot of volunteers were still working - hope it stays that way for a while at least!
And here's Coldplay with the title track...

Forever Autumn

There's no denying it now that it's October, but it's still warmish. A quick visit to the plot yesterday afternoon as it was too wet to achieve anything. So, I watered the tomatoes and picked a nice Autumnal trug of veggies.

Half the carrots and an onion have become soup for work lunches, with a bit of fresh sage and some other dried herbs. I took a couple of the onions home which had been outside in the rain, but they quickly got binned as they're rotten - phewey, what a pong! Luckily I took some properly stored onions home too.

The other carrots, beets and onion were roasted along with some shop-bought potatoes (I know. I know. But I didn't fancy scrabbling about in the mud on the plot). All served up with lovely halloumi, (God, I love halloumi) and sweetcorn. And look!

We removed the kernels from the raw cob using our new corn stripper from Lakeland. Nice to be able to include the sweetcorn in a meal rather than just straight off the cob.

Whilst on the allotment site I took this snap of the grass paths we sowed two weeks ago - the mini-plots are looking like plots now! All they need is some tenants, otherwise we'll need to cover them before the weeds take over. And that may be the last shot of the rented Portaloo - we've got a grant for a composting toilet! How cool is that?!

Aah, Justin Hayward, what a lovely song.

White Rabbit

Do you say "White Rabbit! White Rabbit! White Rabbit" on the first of the month? I don't, I say "Pinch, punch 1st of the month" but maybe that's because I was the youngest of 5 children and it's more fun to pinch and punch :-) Anyway, it's May and a bank holiday for May Day is always welcome. The sun even shone for us (some of the time).

The May blossom is just beginning to open up on our hedge and the dark clouds provided us with a huge downpour in the afternoon, so the earth looks a much healthier colour now.

I was mostly washing up old pots today. We (HAHA) have a plant sale on 3rd June so I transplanted the chard seedlings to sell there; there are far too many for our plot. They should look a bit bushier and colourful than this in a month's time.

I also did some sowing: Parsley, 3 Speedy french beans (as a special early sowing) and Early purple sprouting broccoli - this seems to do so well with other plotholders and it'll be nice to have something else to harvest early in the year. Something else other than rhubarb that is...

Our giant rhubarb plant has a flower on it - it has gone to seed like this in other years but doesn't seem to upset the plant particularly. I chopped it off, at ground level, and popped a pot over the cut stem to avoid it filling with rainwater and rotting the plant. Jamie says this is a myth, but it seems reasonable to me.

While I was fiddling about with these various things Jamie was digging the area on Plot3 where the broccoli will go. We won't need many plants as it seems to get pretty huge. That should mean that there are a few spare plants of that to go to the plant sale too - I'm hoping it will have germinated and grown a bit by then.

Those plastic cloches are covering the parsnip seeds

So, I'm sure you can guess the title is courtesy of Jefferson Airplane.

Looking Up

The title refers to most of today's photographs, but we also sowed some pak choi and kohl rabi, as well as planting out our sad little Brussels Sprout plants and the leeks - so I guess things are generally looking up.

We are most grateful to fellow plotholder, David, who let us have some of his surplus leeks which are in great condition, particularly when compared to our little wisps of grass! We now have 27 leeks puddled in!

(this photo doesn't fit the theme!)

Through the sweetcorn, which is getting taller by the minute, no sign of corn yet...but I love these leaves.

And this is looking through the beetroot stalks in the raised bed. The beets are still tiny but have so far been pretty much pest free, unlike the ones planted into the ground.

This photo is from the middle of the runner bean canes on Plot3 - Scarlet Empire, our favoured variety. Plenty of beans and flowers.

This is the parsnips. They're growing well but not tall enough to get underneath! In the distance you can see one of the pumpkins. I couldn't do a photo from under the pumpkin leaves because it's just too spikey! Very painful to get near!! We've chopped back some of the trailing arms of this plant as it's got at least 5 pumpkins growing and there can't possibly be enough energy to get to all those new pumpkins!

This is one of the Rocky cucumbers. They are planted in a pot which is on top of another pot so it's growing about 1 metre off the ground; it's making its way down the side now which will hopefully keep the little cucumbers a bit cleaner (and maybe slug-damage free).

The yellow courgette is providing us with most of our courgettes, with the green one being slow but sure and the Disco summer squashes just being plain slow! Not one flower yet...

And so, back to the fennel plant - this isn't the florence fennel. It's herb fennel which has gone to seed - I don't mind, it's such a pretty plant and it's only there to look nice anyway!

Cloud Watching

A lovely sunny afternoon on the plot yesterday. It wasn't a quick visit, but this is a quick blogpost. Apart from weeding and hoeing I sowed some radish (black ones) and turnip (Atlanta) in the little raised bed on Plot3. It's next to the curry plant, which has such an amazing smell! I think we shouldn't have let it flower, but look how pretty the buds are.
I made this timelapse using Lapse-It on my phone. Just watch the clouds and get lost for a minute....

We planted out calendula and marigolds. The poor plants were all rather pot-bound, but they should recover, although they may not be as bushy as the plants that were planted a couple of weeks ago. I cleared some of the enormous fallen stems from the rhubarb - a real haven for slugs! Right beside our strawberries.

But are these the slugs that do the damage? I'm not sure. These are more interested in decomposing matter, according to the DEFRA slug site - where they mention the UK's largest slug....25cm long - Aaarrgh, lucky it's a woodland slug so we shouldn't stumble across that on the allotment!!

VegFest Bristol 2016

We stayed in Bristol for a long weekend of music and vegan food. What a beautiful and vibrant city. And look! They grow veggies in their flower beds! What a fab place.

Nice giant shiny ball!

Having been vegetarians for over 25 years it was a great experience to attend a food festival where we could just tuck into whatever food we fancied! We bought some tasty pumpkin seed oil (it makes fried onions go green - interesting!) and vegan marshmallow kits to take home. There was a great herb stall, with every type of basil you could think of and more besides - chocolate basil anyone?

The rainbow directly over the stage and the ship made everyone happy

It's been a good few years since we attended a music festival. I'd forgotten how much fun it was, bopping about in the rain wearing soaking wet clothes! It was great, but better on Sunday when the sun shone most of the time.

SS Great Britain and colourful houses

We got home this afternoon and had time to visit the plot. It was busy on such a lovely sunny afternoon. We stayed longer than we expected. Jamie trimmed the grass edges and paths. It was hard work with the little hand mower. We sowed a wildflower mix and also some night stock in a couple of areas. And we moved the florence fennel tubs outside - please let them be protected from slugs!!
I planted out some chard and also the radish rats tails - the little pods are nice to add to salads, after the plants have flowered.

Come on little poppy! That's our one and only blue one! Hang in there, not long now I hope!

And this is my favourite shrub that I planted at home about 15 years ago. I love it 'silk road'. We don't have a garden - this is outside our front window. Beautiful!

What Katie Did

That was a stormy night! Lashing rain and howling winds. We were expecting destruction on the site, but it was surprisingly unaffected. There isn't much to damage at this time of year. There are a few flowers on plots but this tiny wildflower (the flowerhead is about 5mm) is making its own way along the stone pile.

Common Field Speedwell

Not much for a bee to enjoy but we have seen a few. Today this bumblee was put amongst our grape hyacinths when we found her on the grass.

Wildlife blog has more photos

Jamie was on compost-duty; merging the two bins on Plot3 and moving them away from the potato plot. We always end up moving our bins around the plots and then finding they're still in an inconvenient place!
I was sowing some seeds! I've sown coriander, dill and parsley into biggish pots in the greenhouse. I mixed some manure with potting compost from last years potato and grow bags. It may be a bit early, but plenty more seeds if these ones fail. I also sowed some Boltardy beetroot into modules.

I sprinkled Grow-More in the raised bed and covered it with black plastic so the earth will get nice and warm for sowing in a few weeks time.

Blossom bursting in the hedge

Last job of the day - empty last night's rain from the gauge!

Quite a lot for one night