Something got me Started

It's been a very blustery couple of weeks - with another named storm (Kathleen) passing by but the strong winds helped to dry off the land a bit to make weeding a bit more feasible. There's still a lot to do though!

Other plots are looking a lot more ready than ours but we'll get there - in fact, the site was looking rather lovely as the Sun was slipping away yesterday. We have just one empty plot left at the moment - a bit different from this time 8years ago where I recorded that we have 50poles empty! We're celebrating 15years of the site this month.

Other celebrations have been going on in Hungerford over the last two weeks too. Hocktide celebrations included decorated trees with flags and ribbons in the town. Here's our HAHA tree (a pollarded tree is quite hard to decorate!); the man who lives nearby came out while we were decorating it and said he was looking forward to having a stew 😀 But the veg was still there last time I looked!

And this weekend the 'Constable's Parade' was held. HAHA opted for a less-traditional participation which caused much amusement. Drawing attention to the allotment in an unusual way but also interest was gathered for the Horticultural Show planned for later in the year.

We had a celebration of our own when Ivan brought some wine and we had a little picnic though it did get rather cold so we made good use of the fleece before wrapping up the strawberries 😆

And while we were sitting there we saw the first two swallows of the year on the site! So we decided that two swallows must make it Summer, but it really didn't feel like it. Hoping the fleece will save these little flowers from the frost risk this week - it would be nice if they could survive to become our first strawberry treat of the year!

Last weekend we thoroughly weeded the strawberry bed but the bindweed has started re-appearing already.

Saturday was warmer than Sunday, especially when I was clearing out the polytunnel so we now have our inner greenhouse up for the seeds to start off. There were so many bees, flies and ladybirds in there but also snails on nearly everything I moved and so many ants nests! It was a good weekend for insect spotting with several orange tip, brimstones and peacock butterflies flitting by and I added an Ashy Mining Bee update to my Wildlife blog. Also the little froggie in our pond even stayed above water for long enough to be photographed. He's definitely sharing the space with a few tadpoles.

Oh, and exciting news! Our new tiny cherry tree has it's first blossom and the pear and apple have leaves appearing. Talking of trees, here's our hazel sapling which I planted up after a squirrel had left a hazelnut in the ground at least 3 years ago.

All-in-all the weather has been decidedly April-y and we've had a fun start. And this morning Jamie has sowed our first seed - a Zucchini courgette to grow in a pot, initially in the polytunnel and then to be moved outside. Simply Red provide the song for getting started - yay! Go on, have a little dance, it's Springtime.

Before you Leave

I received a 'help - urgent' message on my phone at the weekend, from a plotholder. It was because her partner and a fellow plotholder had to hide in a polytunnel while this lot decended on the site - the plotholders felt like they were being dive-bombed as the sky turned black and the buzzing built to a crescendo!

By the time I got there the excitement was over so I just took a few photos. I think they're honey bees. The swarm had selected a blackcurrant bush to rest on while the bee scouts went to find a suitable location to re-home.

They had moved on when we looked a couple of hours later so I was a bit disappointed to have missed them leaving. 

I'm suprised they didn't decide to stay on site with Ivan's amazing bearded iris plots providing a colourful centrepiece to our site. They really are stunning and a real talking point as people walk to their plots.

I'm pleased that we can sit on our bench on Plot7 and see the lovely colours. The whole site is looking beautiful at the moment, especially at the sunny weekend with lots of plotholders working and bringing various plants down to plant up - it's a fab time of year, isn't it?

The recent sun-rain-sun weather has been perfect for growing (weeds) and has made digging easier, so we managed to clear and dig the final quarter of plot 7. There are two deep holes filled with manure for the courgette and pattypan to be planted into in a week or two. The rest of that quarter will be for sweetcorn and maybe a few flowers and other bits and bobs.

The potatoes have all emerged, with plenty of space for earthing up when the time comes. And the beetroot and radish will be providing me with a bit of salad quite soon. The florence fennel mostly germinated but is always at risk from slug damage - I'm hoping that sown into the middle of a plot it may be less susceptible... 

The carrots and parsnips have been less successful.... germination has been very poor even though we've done two sowings of carrots (already). It looks like I may get 8 parsnips(!) from the thickly sown row. I may have to try another sowing of them as I do love parsnip soup.

At the moment we're only harvesting rhubarb but the broad beans are on their way, plumping up nicely. The aphids have found them, of course, so whenever we find a ladybird we put them onto the beans to have a good feed and hopefully stop the beans getting spoilt. I thought this one was a Pine Ladybird, because of the rim round its wing-cases, but it seems it is just a Harlequin.

We have various seeds germinating in the polytunnel - still no giant sunflowers though 😞. A few of all the beans need re-sowing but we expect to have at least five plants of each type which will be plenty for us. We've dug the area on plot 8 for 3 wigwams - over holes filled with manure.

I have a few days off soon and hope to get the holes, or trench, dug for this year's squash tunnel. Plot3 is looking a bit abandoned at the moment, but shouldn't be too tricky to get that ready for squashes. I haven't been doing much cooking but have prepared this year's chive flower vinegar.

And, I've been doing a bit of this.... but more on that another time..

The song title is provided by Pepe Deluxe - and is referring to the bees. I'm suprised to see that I haven't used this song before, it's so great! Dance along now 😄

A Forest

So that's the last of this year's squash tunnel photos - I hope I didn’t hear a little cheer - the area is cleared and waiting for the trenches to be re-dug in time for the manure delivery so that I can prepare the bed for next year.

The watering funnels for the squashes do help ensure the water aims for the roots once the foliage makes it hard to tell where the plant starts, but the snails do rather take advantage!

This was last weekend. We found lots of ladybirds enjoying the last heat of the year and a lot of wasps were about too.

It was nice to have another warm weekend, but the weeds will love it if the weather doesn't cool down. We planted the Mersey White garlic bulbs and the Jermor shallots into the raised bed and they got well rained in during the past week.

I removed the remainder of the runner beans, Gigantes and Borlotti from the polytunnel roof drying area and took them home in their pods to dry out a bit more. I podded them today and was interested to find a few pods contained these plain black runner beans. They look lovely; so smooth and shiny. It seems they’re just an aberration of the parent plants, which were Scarlet Empire so I didn’t bother keeping for sowing next year - the pods didn’t look any different.

I’m keeping the beans in a paper bag in the warm for a while to completely dry out. I’ve decided not to bother drying the Gaia soya beans; they’re just too tiny to bother with.

A couple of the Festival squash seemed too small to bother with too, but today I’ve made soup using them. I roasted them first with a bit of oil and cayenne pepper.

There was more flesh than I expected when I scraped them out.

And it’s made a lovely creamy soup. I’ve added some cardamom seed which I hope will give an interesting flavour.

I’m making a pumpkin pie for the first time for Halloween next weekend. I hope it’s easy/tasty so I can use up more of our amassed New England Pie pumpkins. I definitely want the Crown Princes roasted, as they’re such a tasty variety. Not sure what I’ll do with the final green tromboncino - soup probably!

I had an afternoon off in the week. Work has been so busy and I’ve been revising for an exam on Tuesday (I know! An exam at my time of life 🙀) so it was nice to have a bit of time away from the screen. Our planned little walk around Savernake Forest, just down the road in Wiltshire, turned into a 10km walk! 

Our unused-to-walking legs were protesting by the time we reached the car and we never did find the ‘Giant Beech’ but we found the 700 year old ‘Cathedral Oak’ and other very impressive trees and fungi. I was surprised to see that most of the trees are still green.

It’s the time of year for sitting enjoying the last rays of sunshine, with a hot drink - although I was watching Jamie weeding and cutting the edges at the time 😄

The song title is provided by The Cure, there aren’t enough songs by The Cure featured in this blog!

Epic

 Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine at the weekend.

The ladybirds were sunning themselves, out from their Winter shelters. We saw Brimstone and Peacock butterflies and I even uncovered a little frog. So, I had to stop digging that last part of the plot. I knew toads hibernated underground but I didn’t realise that frogs do too. There was another rhubarb plant in that spot, but it had rotted away under a mass of nigella. We'll get another one to put in there later in the year.

The robins and wrens were in full song and the kites and buzzards were out in number overhead. It really has been a beautiful 3 days, with sunshine pretty much all the way through - what luck that I’d taken Friday off work.

We got lots of clearing done - the potato patch is ready and waiting, including removal of the mammoth bramble. It had taken over our path, and beyond, a couple of years ago and intertwined with rolls of chicken wire and other netting - ugh. As you can see Jamie took the saw to it, but not until it totally spiked and scratched us. Horrible thing! I don’t think we’ve seen the last of it!!

Jamie dug a runner bean trench and filled it with soil from pre-used tomato and potato bags. Exhausting work in the heat of the February sun!

We stayed until the Sun started to dip on Friday and the temperature soon started to drop. The temperature showed as -3° overnight.

My seeds haven't popped up yet, but the marigolds that Jamie had covered with a plastic bag in the polytunnel have started to germinate. The anemone is continuing to flower in the pots, such a pretty flower but it's fighting with weeds which I can't clear because there are a few bulbs still waiting to emerge.

So for the end of February our plot is looking better than it has done for a few years, but still lots more to do and I think I need more seeds :-) Maybe I'll wait to see what offerings fellow plotholders have to share a bit later in the season...

Talking of which, Ivan gave us a lovely crop of purple sprouting broccoli which we added to a Quorn curry on Friday evening.

What a great weekend - some would say 'epic' or maybe it's just an excuse to use this song title by Faith No More after I saw the video on a Top of the Pops from 1990 last week :-) Hooray! Now it's March!

Close to Me

I’m so glad I left the globe artichoke flower on the plant when I was too slow to pick it. What a beauty, especially up close - go on, zoom in on it. The petals remind me of sea anemone tentacles. And this bee was enjoying them too - look at all that pollen!

I was getting up close and personal a lot today (no, I’m not mad, I’m still social distancing and not intending to return to pre-COVID-19 life for a few months yet). But I remembered to have the macro camera with me.

As usual, the camera focuses on anything but the intended subject for four out of five shots! And never when this harlequin ladybird was in the best position! But the Gigantes bean flower buds are quite photogenic too.

I gave up trying to get the miniature rose buds in macro focus, which is a shame as they’re so pretty. We bought this tiny plant (it's only about 30cm tall) a couple of year’s ago for £1 and it looks after itself pretty much in its small pot. The other one we bought has rooted through the pot into the ground so has grown substantially larger - we'll deal with that when we deal with the greenhouse.

This gladioli has also been left to fend for itself and is clearly satisfied with the weather we’ve had - such beautiful colours, but I’m sure I planted more than one bulb!!

We had a lovely couple of hours on the plot yesterday. Jamie put our new bench together - our old one slowly collapsed under us one lunchtime last week; must be that lockdown weight gain 😀 And we left the site with a tiny harvest of runner beans and a courgette, from our plot, plus the excellent looking Tromboncino kindly donated by Liz.

And those runner beans joined tomatoes and cucumber from my sister for a lovely fresh lunch.

The Cure provide the great song title and now it’s back to work for a full week. I think the weather’s going to be decent, so I’ll hopefully get a visit to the plot most lunchtimes - really, it’s so necessary to escape the screen when working from home full-time.