Bad Day

That is the top of the allotment site on Friday 13th September - you may not be able to see it, but there’s frost on the ground! And it’s steaming in the bright early morning sunshine. The temperature dropped to 0.8° and walking through the site it was clear that flowers and plants, particularly squashes, had been frosted. By the next day their leaves were black 😖 Too early! We were hoping for an extended growing season after the rough start! It’s the earliest frost we’ve seen since having a plot. I’m pleased I put fleece round my butternut squash, they may be small but I hope they are worth saving. 

I chopped all the excess growth and tiny fruits off the other week so the plant could concentrate its energy into these few squashes.

We may have had the last of our Summer squashes now. These have been quite tasty, but a bit too large a seed cavity so not much firm flesh for cooking. The chard is really pretty this year, great stems!

Those lovely spring onions are from fellow-plotholder David. I can never grow them but he has too many! They are really spicy too - delicious. The cucumbers succumbed to the frost and we’re not too unhappy about it - we still have some in the fridge 😀

I’ve started drying my beans in the roof of the polytunnel. I now know why my borlotti beans didn’t grow very tall or turn red - they were dwarf Yin Yang beans 🙄 It seems my labelling got a bit muddled and none of my borlotti survived the Spring slug-fest. I have more Yin Yang beans which I protected on the frosty night as the plants are still green. I’m going to dry the runner and French beans too this year, but they’re not ready to pick yet; they need to start drying on the plant first.

We’ve cleared and dug that area in front of the bean-tunnel for over-Wintering our broad beans. And this area is ready for the garlic to be planted quite soon. It looked straighter than that while I was digging and edging 🫣

September has thrown a lot of weather at us. Thunder was rumbling round for days and we’ve had some torrential rain but it’s really hot again when the Sun re-appears. Have seen some excellent clouds.

I think we left just in time before that storm broke. And this was an interesting sky. I think this was on one of the rumbling days when it was really muggy.

But the sunshine days have been glorious!

There are so many bees and butterflies around. Making the most of the buddleia…

The sunflowers…

And the Autumn Joy sedum.

Harvests continue including our first delicious sweetcorn last night which was added to this halloumi meal. Served with our Desiree potatoes with garlic, shallots and red pepper tapenade - so delicious.

And either kale or chard has been added to a variety of different bean dishes that I’ve made using the last of last year’s beans and our carrots.

This was the last harvest of runner beans for this year. They were just on the edge of going stringy, which is why I’m going to dry them - too many on the plants to waste. And that was the only lettuce I got to pick before slugs and caterpillars had a field day!

Tomatoes are providing meagre pickings but I’m glad the frost didn’t take them out…there are plenty to come if they get a chance to mature..

Song title is a blast from the past (1983) to celebrate Friday 13th - a good song though I had almost forgotten about it and the singer, Carmel.

Morning Glory

Yes, it’s filtered, I had to because it was a bit blurry and then Photoshop offered me this and how could I refuse?! It was quite a nice photo with a distant hot air balloon.

Anyway, that was Saturday as the Sun was just slipping down behind the treeline. Jamie and I enjoyed a barbecue on site and had a couple of games of pétanque in the warm weather. The Sun is setting at 6:30 now and is rising at about 7:30 - this was the lovely sunrise sky on Saturday morning (no filter required).

They may only be short days now that we’re in October but what a lovely sunny Sunday we had. The flowers are still making the most of it on the plot. Our morning glory took a long time to flower, but look how beautiful they are now.

And my one dahlia has finally developed a flower, after the amazing dahlia year everyone else seems to have had! Oh well, it’s still pretty.

And finally a melon Mangomel had matured enough for us to eat for breakfast - it was tiny, barely a mouthful but super-sweet.

The bees, hoverflies and butterflies are really making the most of the fine weather and on Saturday we were so pleased to see a Hummingbird Hawkmoth enjoying the verbena bonariensis. The antirrhinum have got to be one of the best self-seeded flowers. So many different colours; they’ve been flowering for months and the bumblebees love them.

I planted 2 garlic bulbs, which provided 20 cloves, (Caulk White) on Friday and I’ve now planted up all the flower bulbs I ordered. I’ve put some in pots and some in the ground: various alliums, daffodils and anemones. I hope they don’t get wiped out by mice like they did last year… we’ll see what appears next Spring. A few have gone into the flower bed where I’ve cleared masses of Nigella seedlings, but never fear… they’ll be back!.

And here’s a before-and-after weeding photo at the front of Plot8. I’ve put some bulbs in front of the irises and amongst the grape hyacinths. As you can see, the irises have been trimmed back to 15cm for over-Wintering.

HAHA has a seed swap container in our communal shed, so I’ve packed up a few of our collected seeds this weekend too. Lots of beans and flowers - if plotholders don’t want them we’ll find somewhere else to share them.

Yesterday I had a meal of Yin Yang beans, curly kale (thanks to Nia), tomatoes and onion flavoured with a bit of garlic, oregano, soy, tomato puree with a little finely grated cheese on top - delish and so easy to make!

 And, just one last thing - look at this potato! Is it the veggie version of ham-fisted? 😊

The song title is provided by Oasis. What a song, haven't heard that in a while but can't believe it was released 28years ago!

There Will Be Time

Look at that nice little harvest - all home-grown but mostly by Neal :-) The lettuce and french beans are from our plot... Thank goodness for other plotholders growing too much veg!

This is our black kale, one of our two tiny plants. It has grown additional leaves since it was planted but it's not going to be the huge leafy greens that everyone else has on-site... Well, mini-veg is a thing, right?!

Another addition to our mini-veg range is this - 2 plants from Min planted today (thanks Min!). It's leaf cabbage, Winter Jewel. It's a bit late in the season to be planted out but maybe the weather will stay reasonable.

After all the rain we've had it was a lovely sunny day yesterday. Jamie sowed the broad beans - 2 rows of 8 plants, that'll be 17 plants then 😃 And I hoed all the tiny weedlings that are also enjoying the weather and chopped back more of the bramble and weeds which have taken over part of plot 7.

October 2020 

In the more than 6 months of working from home the view from our window has changed to Autumn - the horse chestnut is always the first to lose all it's leaves and the other tree (sycamore?) looks lovely and bright when the morning sun hits it.

April 2020 

By the time we made it to the plot this year, ants had fully colonised our hibiscus pot so it's been struggling, but yesterday it had managed to produce it's first pretty flower of the year.

The song title is provided by Mumford and Sons with Baaba Maal - I'm sending positive thoughts to all our plants that need a bit longer to grow.

Free Falling

I’ve been working from home for 6 months now. I know lots of people don’t get on with it, but I’ve found it ok. It’s a bit intense, with too many meetings and I miss the general chit-chat and the random corridor chats but I’ve found I’m more productive with work and at home - look, I even made a blackberry & apple crumble! I haven’t done that in a few decades 😀

The blackberries were from the allotment hedge and the apples were windfalls left outside a house we walked past at the weekend (Thanks!). It’s very tasty and I had some for breakfast. I added some almonds to the crumble, but can’t really taste them, I should have added a few more.

We walked to the plot because the East-bound M4 was closed all weekend so all that traffic had to drive along the A4 and was queuing for miles, we didn’t fancy getting caught in that for the sake of a mile walk! You can just about see some of the traffic in this photo from the site’s entrance.

It was a lovely sunny weekend and we spent a good few hours on site both days. We did lots of weed clearing, trimmed the edges, dealt with the compost, hoed everywhere and enjoyed the sun and wildlife. I was given two kale seedlings (Thanks Min!) so planted them in the netted area on Plot3 - the weed seedlings are happy with all the extra space so we’re going to have to hoe it regularly. This is an extreme close-up of a tiny section of ‘bare’ earth!

Jamie spotted this great looking Herald moth on the back of our bench. I love the wing-shape.

We’re still enjoying runner beans which are very long but surprisingly not gnarly yet.

These few went into a stir-fry, made with peanut satay sauce and Naked Glory ‘roast tender strips’. I hadn’t tried them before and they were a really tasty veggie-protein fillet to use as a ‘meat replacement’ - I’m not keen on that phrase but it’s hard not to use it sometimes.

It’s sweltering today (Monday) and it was nice to have a quick lunchtime visit to the allotment - I won’t be able to do that when I eventually make it back to the lab. Talking of which, have you seen the news about life on Venus? Well, maybe not life as we know it 😊

 https://stfc.ukri.org/news/stfc-helps-scientists-find-hints-of-life-on-venus/

Tom Petty provides the title track, though I added the 'g' because I'm just not that cool to get away with it and Blogger can’t handle apostrophes in titles :-D