Hip Hop Hooray!

Another weekend of cold nights but both days the sky was mostly blue and it was pleasant weather to work in. 

Unusual wildlife spotted at Marsh Lane

I managed to finish digging another quarter of Plot7. The digging is ok, but every fork brings up a load of roots - we think they're tree/hedge roots which benefitted from last year's bean trenches. Jamie tidied up after me to remove the lumps and bumps.

That photo makes the earth look awful, but it's not that dry really. Here, this makes it look more like real life. Two quarters dug now.

And I finally planted the three irises from Ivan. They should be happy there with their rhizomes in the sun - hope the slugs steer clear of them; I should clear all that junk behind really but I want to get on with digging and sowing now.

We got up early and walked up the plot both mornings to open the polytunnel door and then sit in the sun for a while before going home and returning for a few hours working in the afternoons.
This is Jamie's photo of our little Robbie. He's feeding his mate now - she's very demanding but sometimes he's too slow and she has to retrieve her own worms. Well, they have to be quick otherwise Mr B (the blackbird, obviously) or the magpies will gobble the lot down too quickly.

 Robbie tried that method but wasn't so successful!

We were sorry to find this broken birds egg - and it seems to be a song thrush. What a great shame that is. We have seen evidence of thrushes in the form of broken snail shells, so they're a most welcome visitor.

We've picked, probably the last, of the purple sprouting brocolli as you can see it's beginning to flower now. That one plant has served us well. Hoping to get more than one plant producing for us this year.

On the way back home on Sunday morning we popped into the Food Festival being held on the Croft Field, a very pretty area in Hungerford near the church and the canal.

There were some nice stalls selling food and plants. We resisted the urge to buy any plants but Jamie wanted some Chilli oil so we came home with this little bundle (but no chilli oil!).

Jamie's planted up our strawberry planter. Three layers with 9 plants. It seems a bit too heavy to hang from the polytunnel frame this year. We really need to clear the strawberry bed where these runners were taken from.

We're expecting some rain this week but the weather is meant to cheer up for Easter's 4-day weekend - hooray! And a 4-day weekend means two 4-day working weeks - hooray! Hooray! Or as the title song by Naughty By Nature - Hip Hop Hooray 😏

Hallowe'en Feasting

So the pumpkins had their big day yesterday! We gave some to friends and family and we used three for our Halloween activities. We still have a couple left in the greenhouse which I think will be soup (I'm keen on making a thai-style one).

We carved these two during the day and I roasted some more of the seeds - not all of them we'd never get through that many. They're so tasty roasted in a little oil and seasoning, I also added a little turmeric.

I read about taking the hulls off and using the inner kernel like sunflower seeds. The idea of breaking the outer shell beforehand was entirely unsuccessful, so i just boiled them as they were. The hulls didn't slip off easily - in fact it was a real pain and took ages, so I'll stick with the roasting whole method in future!

Our Halloween meal consisted of a starter of purple carrot soup (flavoured with a bouquet garni). And accompanied by cool star-shaped toast.The main was Cornells Delicata squash roasted in rings and filled with chilli Quorn mince.

The allotment site had one Pumpkin Jack as protection against the night's ghouls.

 

Jamie and I went for a midnight meander and it seemed to be doing its job - no trouble on site apart from two slightly tipsy plotholders ;-)

Hungerford Food Festival 2015

A lovely day on the plot yesterday in the sunshine and there was a real buzz on site. I'm not sure if it was the weather or because plotholders were harvesting for the HAHA stand at the Food Festival. Everyone was so generous, providing bagfuls of produce for the display.

Jamie spent the afternoon carving the HAHA pumpkin and it looked great, as you can see.

We had a slideshow of photos and the site video, which is so pleasing a year after seeing it for the first time. As well as the displays we had a side stall with tasters of home-made savoury scones, fruit cordials and fruit - along with these pumpkin seeds.

I roasted the pumpkin seeds - mixed with olive oil, smoked rapeseed oil, paprika, salt and pepper - for about 50mins at 150C. They were delicious and so more-ish.

I'm glad we have more pumpkins for Halloween!

The food festival was a great success. So lovely to talk about growing your own with so many people and to see Hungerford bustling. It seems we may have gained a couple of new allotment recruits through the stall too.

What a lovely weekend! Thanks to all involved!

Home Again...

From our two week holiday in lovely Puerto de la Cruz in the north of Tenerife. It's such a beautiful part of the island and we feel so at home at the Casablanca Apartments.

With the fantastic El Limón vegetarian restaurant nearby in the old town and the bus stop just up the road it's the ideal location for us. The bus journeys are an adventure in themselves and you get to see great views and can peep into the lives and gardens of the locals! It was extremely hot and the hills and heat took their toll so we were quite relieved when the clouds were drawn down from the mountains - still sweltering but you didn't feel the burn quite so much!

Anyway, we're home now so we popped up to the allotment to see how it's looking. I'm pleased to say the sun was shining and though about 10 degrees down on what we've been used to it was lovely to sit for a while. The plots are not so overgrown as we'd expected - the clearing we did before we left was obviously very timely.

Some of the pumpkins are ready - a bit early but they'll keep and we need some for the Hungerford Food Festival next week. And the Cornells Bush Delicata squash are looking good.

The Lizzano and Sungold tomatoes have trusses of lovely ripe toms for us. Some of the tomatillos are huge and have burst through their lantern sheaths.  Thanks to our plot buddies (Neal & Ted) for keeping the greenhouse watered!

The gherkins haven't quite grown as intended - they were meant to be tiny cocktails gherkins...

An unexpected bonus is the radish rats tails. The plants appeared to be devastated by weevils but they had a new lease of life and they're now covered in flowers, bees and tiny radish-flavoured 'chillies'.

While we were away the local newspapers had photos from the Hungerford in Bloom awards. I don't actually call nyself 'Belinda Thompson' but it's all good publicity for the allotments!

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...

A Day out from Hungerford

A little off topic, but as this is an allotment blog, here's how our site looked from the train yesterday.

You can see our greenhouse under the tree at the back in the middle

We took the 7 minute train trip to Great Bedwyn just so that I could get that photo - we see so many trains going past while we're sitting on the bench I wanted to see it from the other perspective. It wasn't quite as successful as I'd hoped; my favourite little Olympus camera is playing up :-(

Great Bedwyn is along the Kennet and Avon canal West of Hungerford but we've never quite managed the 8km walk there. So, from the station at Great Bedwyn we walked the 3km to Crofton Beam Engines along the canal. It was reasonably warm and bright so good for walking.

We didn't go to see the beam engines as we went earlier in the year and they weren't 'in steam' yesterday so we walked on to find the Wilton Windmill which was signposted from the Crofton lock.We stopped for a little picnic at Wilton Water where we saw this cormorant (we think that's what it is).

and a heron along with masses of kites and buzzards.

We found the windmill after walking through the very pretty village of Wilton.

It was a bit further than we thought, but definitely worth the walk and the sun came out while we were sitting in the windmill field.

As it was a weekday the windmill wasn't open but it was lovely sitting looking up at it and the fabulous views beyond.

A walk back through the fields and we were on our way back along the canal to our train trip home.

A total of 15km walked was plenty and made for a lovely birthday.

It's raining today, so no allotment today either - well, maybe just a quick visit...

A Fun in the Sun Weekend

On Saturday morning we did the last bit of tidying on plots 7 and 8 for the Hungerford in Bloom judging on Sunday. We had to do it Saturday morning because in the afternoon it was the plotholders' barbecue and we knew we wouldn't want to do much after the event. I was cooking the veggie burgers - the Linda McCartney mozzarella burgers went down very well among vegetarians and meat eaters. And I fried the onions in Oak-smoked Rapeseed Oil.
Geoff's home-made piccalilli was the perfect accompaniment and Kerry's home-made elderflower cordial was delicious and refreshing in the sunshine.

It was a lovely day for a barbie and with 25 guests it made for a great afternoon. The last of these photos was taken after we polished off all the beer, wine and Kerry's home-made Green Walnut liqueur! (I only learned that walnuts grew in Britain a couple of years ago!)

So, Sunday morning was the Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging and we couldn't be on site. I entered Plot 7 and Jamie entered Plot 8. Plot 7 got a 'highly commended' I think we missed out  because the lettuce, broad beans and mangetout on Plot 7 are all looking a bit tired and seedy now. Not to worry, at least it meant our plot had some particularly good weeding sessions (mostly by Jamie) over the last week and the Marsh Lane Site gets a mention in the local news so residents remember we're here and are perhaps reminded that the lease on our land expires next April :-(

Well done to the prize winners: 1st, Chris; 2nd, Our plot neighbour, Neal equal 2nd with Liz & Ken; and 3rd, newcomers Tui & Glen, who have done a great job on their plot. This is a photo I took of their fabulous hollyhock the other day - the flash has made the middle of the flower glow beautifully.