Coming Around Again

We had a very busy weekend! Saturday was the Hungerford Horticultural Show - hosted by HAHA and the Royal British Legion.

Last Friday Jamie and I ventured to the plot to pick vegetables.
We were hampered by two things:
Not enough veg and torrential rain!

We had to pick masses of runner beans, french beans and carrots to find the necessary matching ones - how can every bean be unique?! Our runner beans have gone to seed rather quickly so most weren't suitable because the beans could be seen through the pods, but we managed to find 5 similar small ones... And one gnarly looo-oonnng one :-) So, we actually won the Longest Runner Bean category - the first time ever :-)

We also won a few other placings with potatoes, tomatoes (one had been eaten by the time we took the photo),

Carrots, onions, courgettes,

And quite a few photos, including these.

My favourite category is the 5 Different veg because it's easy to use up spares. So I made up two entries with leftovers!

In the evening we found that we came third in the Vegetables section and third in the Photography section - well, there's no prize for third place but no problem with that. I had the pleasure of awarding the RHS Banksian medal on behalf of HAHA (due to our RHS affiliation) to our chairman. I was happy to do it so I'm not sure why my face looks like that :-D

On Sunday we had our Plotholders Gathering which as always was a lot of fun. It poured in the morning but the sky cleared and we had a mostly sunny afternoon for our eating and drinking session.

The song is very appropriate as this post is very similar to this time last year. And probably this time next year - with a few more exhibitors we hope, though there were 250+ exhibits!

Sunflower

Last weekend I decided to pull up all the broad bean stalks and put them in the compost bin but I couldn't be so hasty to throw the remaining beans away and I actually made the broad bean hummus that I've been talking about for a while..

It was very straightforward:
Pod the beans, boil for 10mins, plunge into cold water and take the bean-skins off.
Blitz along with crushed garlic, pepper, lemon juice and a small amount of water. Add a little chilli powder. Voila - very tasty with crudites for lunch,  including a cucumber from Ivan and carrot-thinnings from our plot.

We pulled our first potato Foremost from one of the bags - a lovely supply of spuds; some big but lots of little ones for salads too, they're so delicious.

And, of course, we've had plenty of courgettes. The green ones Sure Thing are very tasty; much more so than the yellow ones.

The patty pan went to work as we wouldn't have time to eat it this week.

Liz has harvested a spaghetti squash and given it to us - ours are not ready to harvest yet but let's hope we like them! We have another plant on Plot3..

The flowers are growing nicely - such beautiful colours. And we have some tomatoes just beginning to go red in the polytunnel. Last weekend I joined fellow plotholders to pick up our prizes for the Hungerford in Bloom competition - £20 garden vouchers, nice!

We've had a lot of rain this week, interspersed with sunshine. Hopefully we'll get some time on the plot this weekend to do a bit of weeding... And then we need to start preparing for the Horticultural Show next weekend followed by a plotholder's get-together.

The song choice by Lenny Kravitz.... well, those sunflowers are our efforts for the HAHA Tallest Sunflower competition - we're not going to win, but they look nice, nodding their heads in that photo!

The Show Must Go On

The Royal British Legion Horticultural Show, co-hosted by HAHA, was yesterday. It's a small-ish show, but still a busy time. We were pleased to hear that there were 23 exhibitors showing over 70 exhibits.

Last week Jamie had selected our best potatoes, we didn't want to pull all the plants up, though we have cut the haulms down now. Orla were selected for the whites and Kestrel for the coloured categories.

On Saturday morning we were trying to find five matching shallots from the good harvest of Longor that we got this year. We are very pleased at how they grew especially considering their early start which included getting frozen into the ground by the Beast from the East! Once found we tied them off with raffia - it's not too tricky to do and makes them look professional.

Then we met several other plotholders on site desperately trying to find items to include in the show. The trouble is the word 'matching'. This year much of our veg has grown in odd shapes, so to find two the same is a miracle 😃

That's not one of ours, but you can see the type of problems we plotholders had!

I basically picked twice as much as we needed in the hope that we could cover most categories. It did feel good walking away from the plot with a stacked trugful of veggies and a load more that wouldn't fit in the trug.

That's the first of our peppers that actually coloured all over

So after cleaning, snipping, trimming and selecting we had what we could enter and I took them up to the Legion Hall. Ted and Kerry were already there from Marsh Lane setting up their veg, flowers, baking and photo displays and lots of exhibits were already out on the tables. I put ours out and then went into Newbury to collect our judge for the horticultural sections.

Most of the time I sat outside while Jean was judging, but when the sun went in I sat at the back of the hall. I prefer not to hear the actual scoring but it's interesting watching her examining items and some of her little comments. After a couple of hours I took Jean home and I went home for a bit of grub and a rest before the evening's entertainment.

Auctioning of the exhibits is fun with Jim as the perfect host

We were pleased to see that we came 3rd in the Horticultural section - just 3 points of winning the RHS Banksian medal - well, there's always next year! Here are most of our entries which were placed.

And here's me as HAHA rep waiting to present the medal to this year's winner.

So pleased that our plot-neighbour came first, but he couldn't win the medal as he won last year and our friend Kerry won the most points across the whole show - her baking, crochet and photography were champions!

Overall it was a fun, but tiring day. Then today we had our plotholder bbq at Marsh Lane - a much more casual affair than the Open Day but I had to be the veggie-burger chef so couldn't join in the fun as much as I wanted to - well, at least until we ran out of veggie food. We had a great crowd on the hot sunny afternoon.

Such a lovely bunch!

And the tallest sunflower prize went to Roger {over 2m}- who wasn't there! He will get his prize though, £30 donated by our local Wyevale Garden Centre :-)

So the song, as suggested by Jacquie is, of course, by Queen.

You Showed Me

It was our Horticultural and Handicraft Show yesterday. The Royal British Legion do most of the work, but HAHA are joint hosts and are responsible for the horticulture and floral sections.

Our 5 veg selection - I liked the unusual colours of each item, but it seems the judge didn't :-)
Burgundy potato, white radish, purple carrot, yellow stripey courgette, purple bean

It was a good show again with 310 exhibits from the 23 contributors. Not as many entrants as last year as some familiar faces were absent, but it was great to see some of our newest plotholders came along.

Along with some of us who come back each year now we know it's such fun.

On Friday afternoon Jamie and I retrieved our (reasonably) dry onions from the greenhouse and managed to find 3 that almost looked similar - it's amazing how 50 onions can all look so different! We didn't win a prize for them (they're the little ones next to the lovely red ones in the photo below), but got 3rd prize for our largest onion which was 35cm circumference.

Early Saturday morning was when we picked the rest of our exhibits. So many beans and carrots to find a few matching ones! We had an hour to do all the cleaning up and trimming before we went to the British Legion and set up and then I had to dash off and pick up our judge from Newbury.

I sat outside in the sunshine while the judging was going on and Jamie came to join me with a cake to relieve the boredom.

We didn't enter any pickles but did bag a couple of jars in the auction afterwards

I intended to enter some flowers, but my asters have been slow to bloom
and sweetpeas have pretty much gone over

Here are some of our produce that got first place.

And we got some 3rd places too:

I think a couple of the photos got placed but we were completely out-stripped by fellow-plotholder Kerry's amazing shots.

These are the photos we selected to show - one for each category

Still we managed to win second place in the Horticultural & Floral Section, so we were pleased with that! And we left with a lovely prize-winning cottage loaf to go with the pickle plus a prize from the raffle.

Loved this insect in the needlecraft section!

Such a fun, social event, with a spurious link to The Lightning Seeds song..

Take Five....

.... seed potatoes and this is what you get! We've got potatoes coming out of our ears!

We emptied five of our potato bags - not a bad return, is it?

That beauty is Burgundy Red. We only pulled one of them. You can see in the photo below that they have red flesh as well as red skin! When steamed they kept some of their colour, so we had pink mash last night.

Next was an Orla, a white potato - we emptied two bags. It's interesting to see how different varieties grow in different parts of the bag. And some roll out of the bag while others remain attached to the roots. (well, I think it's interesting!)

And Kestrel, a coloured potato with pink eyes. This is from one bag, but we emptied two.

We've pulled all these potatoes as it's the HAHA/RBL Horticultural & Handicraft Show next Saturday. Trying to find 3 matching potatoes that aren't too scabby is hard work! The bags have helped protect against slug damage - or perhaps it was the nematodes or perhaps there are less slugs about...

The tomatoes are changing colour a bit more quickly now - a couple of days of sunshine and warmth have helped. I've cleared lots of leaves away from all the plants to let more light in. The Tigerella are still all green though...

We have onions drying on a frame in the greenhouse and the mini-munch cucumbers are growing steadily now. I'm not sure whether this Jaune de Verte squash will be included in the show. The photo doesn't show that the squash is about the size of a dinner plate! Not sure how it's going to be eaten yet!

Potatoes are well and truly on the menu now and we're having dwarf french beans with them tonight. Our first taste of purple beans - even steaming didn't protect the colour; they ended up as a darker green than the Speedies (and to be honest, not quite so tasty).

Dessert is just one strawberry and a handful of raspberries - really need to work on that :-)

Oh, and here's today's lunchbox with pink potato salad, cucumber, radish, chard and parsley.

Title track by The Dave Brubeck Quartet - I had to re-write part of this post when I finally found a title for it! This is my 60th song title post.