That was 2016

This is going to be a positive post about 2016; highlighting ten good things about another lovely year within our allotment bubble.

In no particular order:

1. Star and heart-shaped cucumbers. The moulds probably work best with small, quick growing cucumbers, like our Rocky. They're apparently suitable for tomatoes too, but we didn't try that. They didn't work on courgettes.
   
   
2. Sunny picnics and some warm late nights on the plot. Summer started really wet with slugs and snails taking out a lot of early growth but July and August were delightful with plenty of sunshine.
   
   
3. A blue poppy. A gift last Christmas and I was so pleased when it actually flowered as the slugs had rather a taste for it initially! I hope there will be a further showing this year...
   
   
4. We grew a loofah. Well, that's cool, isn't it?!
   
   
5. Ratatouille - what a colourful meal - and it tasted good, especially covered in cheese and sprinkled with chopped nuts
   
   
6. Black tomatoes - Indigo Rose look so great but not a great flavour, this year we're trying some stripey ones. But we'll also be growing that tasty little red cherry variety Aviditas.
   
7. We found a coin - a 1744 farthing! For all our searching we've only found 3 in 7 years and this was the oldest.
   
8. Growing potatoes in bags - so pleasing to harvest. We used nematodes which we think worked well to keep the slug numbers down. Our favourite bagged variety was probably Orla.
   
   
9. Seeing a pair of bullfinches in the hedge - the first time we've seen them at our end of the site. We saw them later in the year too, which I hope is a good sign they'll be back next year.
   
10. The second HAHA/RBL Horticultural Show - such a great turnout, with over 300 entries. We're already looking forward to next year.
So, it wasn't all bad in 2016.
After all, at the beginning of the year we thought we may not have an allotment and then 5 days later we were given a reprieve....(which we're currently waiting on again....anyway, stay positive!)

I wonder what 2017 has in store...

Showtime 2016!

It was the second year for HAHA to join forces with the Royal British Legion for the Horticultural and Handicraft Show. With 32 exhibitors and 406 exhibits it was even more successful than last year - See how useful allotments are to local communities!

Setting up the Show

We were picking, selecting, washing and trimming our vegetables on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning. We managed to gather together reasonable items for the following categories:

Tomatoes on a vine	5 Bush tomatoes
Matching pair of cucumbers	4 carrots with tops
Any 5 veg	Any 3 veg
3 onions (over 8oz)	3 onions (under 8oz)
Largest circumference onion	Plus a photo for each category

And now we have a flat full of slightly wonky carrots, dodgy spuds and damaged cucumbers. Also the cabbage that we were hoping to include but that is too holey - I think we're going to have lots of coleslaw over the next week! This is our trug of spuds. The Salad Blue are a great colour, but horribly scabby - they were grown in a bag. The white ones are Orla, grown in a bag, and are really good quality. The Kestrels were grown in the ground when we were searching for coloured potatoes to show.

Can't believe we couldn't find 5 runner beans that were suitable! And again our longest runner bean wasn't long enough - doh! We got 1st place for a couple of the categories but mostly 2nd, 3rd or highly commended. But all placings earn points so we got equal third prize so not bad considering the year! And we're always happy to share with Ted :-)

After a busy morning and afternoon it was good fun going along to the prize-giving in the evening. Along with the auction of exhibits and raffle and a bar to enjoy a shandy (ahem) or two or three :-)

It's such a fun event and great to mix with our fellow growers along with bakers, picklers and handicrafters!We're only sitting by the cakes - we didn't buy or make all of them!! 

Lots more photos here.

Still Time Left

I've been hoping to do my Butterfly Count for the last week but the weather just hasn't been right. It's been really windy over the last couple of days. It's stayed pretty warm and there's been no rain since the 20mm overnight earlier in the week, but I want to do the count on a bright (mostly) sunny day and we haven't really had one of those.

There are a lot of butterflies about - masses of whites and a few more interesting ones, but hopefully the weekend will prove to be the perfect day for counting...

That little tiddler is a loofah! There are 3 so far on the plant in the greenhouse... I wonder if they'll have enough time to grow big.
The black tomatoes Indigo Rose are getting blacker - very pretty and bigger fruits than I expected. We've only grown cherry-sized ones before.

And the red Aviditas tomatoes are going orange...well, one has so far and plenty of time for them to go red.

I put strings around the Speedy dwarf beans - it may support them once the beans start forming - although the pumpkin plants may swamp them and the sweetcorn before that happens.

The Radish Rats Tails (are they just normal radishes that have gone to seed?!) are very pretty and their pods are forming, so they'll be lovely in salad lunches when I'm back at work (ugh, don't mention it!) next week.

Our normal radishes were nice at the beginning of the season but, as they do every year, they went to seed ages ago. If they form pods I'll see if they taste exactly the same as the rats tails.

By the way, it's August now! And if you're reading this and are in Hungerford (or nearby) don't forget our Horticultural Show is on the 20th. We hope to see lots of exhibits and/or fellow growers in the evening for the prize-giving and the produce auction - always good fun!

The Show's Over

Aah, what a couple of busy, fun weekends! Yesterday was the Horticultural & Handicraft Show. Previously run by the Hungerford Royal British Legion, this year HAHA joined forces so there's been a bit of organising going on in the background as well as trying to encourage our vegetables to grow well enough to join in the fun of exhibiting!

Enough tomatoes went red for us to enter 2 categories and got a 2nd and 3rd placing

In the morning Jamie and I rushed about picking whatever we thought was reasonable and then went back home to clean things up - carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and fennel. I'd had some of my photos printed by PhotoBox but they didn't actually look that good; not as well coloured as they look on the PC screen; I entered a photo into each category (only got a 2nd place for one photo though), but there were a lot of entries.

I tied up the tops of the onions but hadn't dried out well enough so didn't win a placing.

We took all our vegetables up to the Royal British Legion Club (RBL) and spent about an hour chatting to other exhibitors - quite a few plotholders and some other people from Hungerford. It was all very friendly and I would have been happy to spend a bit more time there but had to go and pick up the Vegetables & Floral judge from Newbury.

Having picked up Jean we returned to the RBL and Jean did some meticulous judging for a couple of hours. I watched her in action from a distance for a bit but didn't want to hear the results so sat outside on the hottest day of August - it really was sweltering. Jean lent me her RHS Exhibiting & Judging handbook. That was an interesting read - a bit too serious for our event I think but definitely some handy hints!

A roomful of Lovely exhibits!

So, after I had taken Jean home (Thankyou so much for helping us Jean!!) Jamie and I made our way up to the RBL to see who had won what and for the really fun bit of the day.
We did win a 1st for our largest onion and quite a few 2nd, 3rd and 'Highly commended' placings so overall we won the Runners Up prize in the vegetable section :-)

'Any 3 Veg': Fennel, Crystal Lemon Cucumber & Garlic

'Any 5 veg: We got the 2nd place - that was the only 5 we could gather together!
Courgette(!), silverskin onion, chilli, tomato & Tenerife spud

The prizes were awarded and we were happy to see plenty of plotholders winning, then there was an auction of all the produce. The auctioneer got fed up with so many onion lots (it's been a good year!) so everything came with an onion - even a swiss roll :-)

Ooh, 1st prize-winning savoury scones - I had to have them!

We took home some lovely chutneys, picallili and scones (fruit and savoury) so it was a brilliant end to the day. Lots of money was raised and donated to the Poppy Appeal and more people in Hungerford are aware of the allotments.

And today we've picked our first harvest of runner beans and found some cucumbers we'd missed...

British Legion Horticultural Show and Chain Mail Article

It was show time again yesterday. It's a shame so many of our fellow plotholders don't fancy the idea of 'showing' or were away. The event sounds so much grander than it is, with sadly only 2 or 3 entries for each of the vegetable categories.

Our Hungerford show is a very local-type show with 'nice', 'normal' looking veg rather than monstrous exhibition vegetables! That's not to say I don't like seeing the monster veg, but I know we'll never go to the efforts of growing it!

So, we entered a few photos and produce for the following vegetable categories:

•  4 White spuds - we got a winner! Jamie's potato-polishing did the trick :-)

•  5 Bush tomatoes - we didn't win. Our tiny toms looked a bit sad wobbling around on a white paper plate!
•  5 Dwarf French beans - a winner. Our first French beans of the year too!
•  Longest runner bean - mine was over 30cm, but the winner was substantially longer!
•  5 Carrots - I think we won this because we left the full leafy tops on
•  Any other vegetable - I had a big yellow Patty Pan squash. Looked pretty and won!
•  Selection of any four veg - Got a 'highly commended' (loser) sticker for my beetroot, colourful chard leaf, purple mangetout and Rondo-carrot. It looked colourful, but Neal's display looked much better.
•  Funny shaped fruit/veg - our mutant Desiree potato won that one for us!

Some of my photos won, but I can't remember which - will post later if I find out.
I was going to put an entry in for chutney but didn't get my act together, so I'll save that for the Hungerford Food Festival next month. There were plenty of jars of pickles and jams though and the flowers were lovely.

We unfortunately couldn't attend the prize-giving and auction so I'm not sure who won best in show. I hope it was a plotholder!

This was our haul of Chopin potatoes from about 5 plants - many more had slug damage
(they're not the winning carrots by the way!)

Oh, and my latest Chain Mail article is here, if you want a little read. 

Royal British Legion Show 2013

Yesterday was the Royal British Legion Show. We had tried to encourage more entrants from the allotment sites and there was a small group of us from Marsh Lane so it made for a fun evening. Between us we managed to get some good placings.

Our veg cleaned up and ready to go to the show

We tried to put entries in for as many categories as possible, but our onions, shallots and french beans weren't ready. And can't believe I couldn't find four suitable courgettes to make a grouping!

Fellow plot holder, Chris, won the overall category prize for his veg - he pipped me (AGAIN!) in the Longest Runner Bean category - just a few millimetres in it..
We also missed out on funniest veg. Ours is the tomato with a nose; beaten by John's many-legged carrot.

Funny Shaped Veg

We did win a couple of Firsts though: Five pickling onions (our little Silverskins) and Pair of matching cucumbers (our little Rockies). We also got a few Second and Third placings.

Our 'four veg' highlighted came 2nd

I was pleased to win the overall prize for the photography competition. We got first placings with these two pictures - and Jamie took one of them, so it was definitely a joint win!

Autumn

Domestic Pet

 And, to end a good evening, while we were walking home we saw two Hedgehogs. The first living ones I've seen for years!

Waiting for Rain and getting some!

We went up in the afternoon yesterday in the hope that we'd get caught in a rainstorm, we watched it moving towards up, getting darker and the wind started up but we only felt a few drops. As we got home the heavens opened and we got a lot of rain overnight and this morning. 11mm in total

The plots look so happy after rain and the weeds appreciate it even more! Above is some of the Asparagus Pea which are very pretty (but don't need a trellis).
Below is one of the Uchiki Kuri squash plants - I'm going to need to cut back some off-shoots. It would happily cover 4 poles I think!

We're a bit concerned about one of our Brussel Sprouts plants - it's leaves are going rather curly. We'll keep an eye on it but may need to pull it up in an attempt to prevent any cross-infection.

I'm also unsure of what to do with my Florence (bulb) fennel. After all the panic as the slugs were munching their way through it earlier in the year, it's come on really well. However, how big are they meant to get before eating? I wanted to keep them for soup but they look like they're mature now.

This is the biggest one - as big as my palm and quite pump. Is it ok to leave it to carry on growing?

 

This is my herb fennel. It's really tall and has flowered. The flying insects really love it, so I'm leaving it to grow as it's not really something I will use much for cooking and it looks very pretty.

The runner beans are also looking beautiful with masses of flowers. There are a few beans forming but not sure whether they'll be ready to win 'longest runner bean' this year (or even come second as we did last year...)

Just as it began to rain again this afternoon, we left the plot with a lovely selection of veggies which will cover us for a few meals.

International Kidney potatoes on the left and Orla on the right. You can tell the Orla as the slugs love them :-(