Talking in Tones

On 1st August, between rainy days, we planted 60 leeks. I think that’s the most we’ve ever planted but they’re such a handy Winter vegetable.

We planted them in the usual way; topping and tailing and dropping them in a deep hole so they hopefully grow with a substantial white bit, then fill the hole with water. They’re spaced so that a hoe can get between them.

Apart from dealing with the leeks, we’ve mostly been sitting and watching. 

The weather is dealing with most of the watering, we just do a bit for the weekly feeding and the items in the polytunnel.

Talking of the polytunnel.. it’s been a welcome shelter a few times this holiday! There are lots of peppers, tomatoes and aubergines forming but the plants aren’t as wild as they usually grow.

The sweetcorn has developed its male flowers, rather pretty pinky ones ones on these Incredible plants, though the cobs are expected to be standard yellow.

Talking of yellow, look at the lovely rudbeckia - we have several of these, all offspring from one plant my niece gave me probably 10 years ago. Beautiful.

And, talking of beautiful, here’s the female bullfinch. We hear their hooting call before we see them. Both parents are with their young at the moment. So lovely to see.

Talking of lovely… I did the Big Butterfly Count by the HAHA Wildlife plot yesterday. The numbers were rather low, less than we’re seeing on our buddleja at home:

I was pleased to see that someone else had reported a count from the site on 23rd July - interesting to see the different species.

Talking of interesting … yesterday was our Flying Ant Day. When the ants fly off to start new nests - see this link for more info. We have so many ants nests in the grass paths on site, I think they’ll have a long flight to find a new nesting site!

And, when did black ants start biting? I’m sure it used to only be the red ones.

Talking of biting … <ahem> here’s a couple of recent tasty meals.

Baked halloumi, courgette, tomato bake with potatoes and asparagus pea

Stuffed courgette with cheese, nuts and carrot with mangetout

And talking of mangetout… I pulled the remaining plants but have left the frame so the Cornell’s Delicata squash can grow up it. It’s gone a bit crazy, but that’s good as it’s the only Winter squash we’re growing.

And finally, talking of frames. We’ve picked our first French beans today which we’re growing up the old polytunnel frame. The Borlotti beans on the other side are winning at the moment.

The Charlatans provide the song title which is why I’ve been ‘talking’ a lot in this post. Enjoy!

The Importance of Being Idle

I was pleased when it was sunnier than expected yesterday morning and we had a lovely few hours on the plot. The clouds started developing while we were digging the area for the leeks. That’s where the broad beans were.

The leeks were sown en masse at the end of that patch - the whole packet. That method has worked for Neal in the past, so we followed his example and the little leeks look pretty good and ready to be planted on. There should be plenty left over for sharing once we’ve planted ours - I don’t think we’ve ever planted them so early.

Apart from that bit of digging I’ve had a relaxing few days pottering around on the plots. We’ve been watching juvenile robins and bullfinches in the hedge, it’s been lovely. The bullfinch father seems to be pointing out the various locations for food by whistling for his young ones to follow.

We pulled a Nicola potato from one of the bags; probably enough for three or four meals. We had all the tiny ones as part of a salad containing 7 other home-grown veggies.

And this is the ice cream dessert with the gooseberry and blackcurrant sauces from Ivan’s fruit. What a treat!

I should have, but didn’t, do the Big Butterfly Count; there’s still another week or so. This brimstone butterfly (I suppose it may not be the same one) has been hanging round Kate’s runner beans for two days now. Our beans are nowhere near this stage! Lots of people are already picking beans and we don’t even have flowers 😖

We do have beans on our Yin Yang dwarf beans though. I was considering eating the pods but it seems that they are best grown as shelled beans even if not dried, so they have quite a bit more growing to do. These are the fab looking black and white Orca beans that were grown from our last year’s collected seed - also known as Calypso beans. 

I mentioned in my last post that the asparagus peas are doing well this year. I let some pods grow a bit bigger and they were very tasty - I boiled them for about 10minutes then cooled them before adding to this Beetroot and Quorn roast salad lunch.

Courgettes are still part of every evening meal and were good with this fried gnocchi in a tomato and garlic sauce. Mmm, I do so enjoy this time of year and I even don’t mind doing a bit more of the cooking.

I did a bit of clearing by the pond - we really need to tackle the bindweed. This scabious is enjoying a bit more light now I’ve cleared some of the Nigella seedheads.

And, having cleared some weed from the pond, a froggy appeared! 

I am enjoying my time off work and I’m pretty sure my cold is thinking about moving on which is why I’m taking it easy 🙂 Great song and video by Oasis - enjoy!

Vote for Me

The clock is ticking on my holiday. Final day today 😩 What a shame, I have enjoyed our allotment days and some have been very warm and sunny; others have been wet - great growing weather. The dandelions have done very well and have timed their seed dispersal with wet days perfectly! The swifts have joined the swallows, sweeping low across the site and over the marsh we’ve now heard the cuckoo.

We finished weeding and digging Plot7 and tidied up the edges, where there are masses of ants nests - red and black ants. There are also loads of snails. We’ve been throwing them into the hedge whenever we find them, but they know the way back. There is evidence of something eating them - probably thrushes, magpies and mice. Also, three big snails have fallen into the pond and our tadpoles have been tucking in, so they’re carnivorous now and will soon grow their back legs.

To be honest, we don’t help ourselves where slugs and snails are concerned. We have too many cosy spots for them to hide during the day and emerge under cover of night to nibble our seedlings. These pots amongst the self-seeded Nigella are a perfect hiding place that really needs tidying up. I’ve sown some pot marigolds in that swathe in the hope of having a colourful blue and orange area. Unfortunately there’s also a lot of bindweed growing there…

Here’s another snail haven behind the polytunnel, but I’ve done some tidying there this week and removed a lot of couch grass. I’ve planted the horseradish in the corner which may take over so I’ll need to keep it under control, but surely it’s better than couch… Some of those pots have Spring bulbs in them, but others are just weeds. That’s another job for the list!

I’ve planted out the mangetout and sowed a row the other side of the wire to achieve a longer harvest period. I put the twigs as protection but decided that it was worth using netting to protect the fresh growth from pigeons who can’t resist pea shoots.

I’m hoping the plants follow the plan and attach to the wire mesh rather than the black netting, otherwise picking can be tricksy. 

We’ve got plenty more sowing done. Chinese Dragon radish in the raised bed. Autumn King and Chantenay carrots in their environmesh tunnel next to the parsnips, with coriander sowed in between.

I’ve sown Florence fennel, nasturtium and various lettuce in trays/pots in the polytunnel, where I’m pleased to see that germination is pretty good for most of the seeds we sowed last week. We’re removing their lids and opening the polytunnel each day to prevent them over-heating and keeping them moist with a mist sprayer. Night time temperatures have stayed above 5° over the last week.

The lobelia have germinated - look how ridiculously small they are! It appears that I didn’t sow them very evenly across the modules 🙄

Some seeds have been less successful, including the direct-sowed beetroot so I cheated and bought a tray of beet seedlings - cheaper than buying a new packet of seeds at this point. You never know, perhaps my seeds will emerge later. We also bought a courgette plant which we’re growing in a pot in the polytunnel initially, to hopefully get some early harvests.

Aiming to grow our own reasonable leeks this year, we’ve copied plot neighbour Neal’s method of sowing his leeks. They’re direct-sown quite thickly in two rows and we’ll just plant on what we want later in the year. Our variety this year is Blue Green Autumn Neptune.

We’ve got some of Neal’s for dinner tonight as part of this pasta and Quorn lardons meal - this is before the cheese sauce was added, yummm.

The purple sprouting broccoli has provided its last meal of the year and now provides a bunch of flowers - I didn’t take them home though 😁

It’s rainy today so we didn’t stay long on the plot. We’ve potted on the pepper plants and re-sowed a Zucchini courgette, Jack-be-Little pumpkin and patty pan squash which haven’t germinated after a couple of weeks at home. Second time lucky 🤞

We weren’t involved in any of the coronation shenanigans but did enjoy the local election results last Thursday. Sadly Hungerford didn’t vote in the Green candidate who is a plotholder, but we do have two Liberal Democrats to replace two tories so that’s good. The Specials provide the song title. Aah, so sorry to have lost Terry Hall this year.

Different World

On Saturday we decided the time had come to deal with our dalek compost bins on Plot3. Three of them have been composting away for at least two years with new material being added on top but no stirring - it’s quite awkward to get in to mix the contents.

I will try to stir it a bit more in future, there were definite layers of wet and dry which could have broken down more with a bit of human intervention.

The worms, woodlice, slugs and centipedes had done a pretty good job though. Compost worms always look so lovely and clean.

The un-composted contents were moved on to a spare compost, along with the worms, as starters for the next lot of compost. We managed to extract the lovely newly created soil through the little door at the bottom for a bit of sorting - how did all that plastic get in there?!

So as the sun was going down on Saturday (5:15) we left the plot with 3 compost bins ready and waiting for re-filling and 10 bags of humus-rich soil to go in the bottom of the bean trenches. Aah, home-produced compost is very satisfying.

That meant that Sunday was trench-digging day. The squash tunnel is becoming a bean tunnel this year. Digging trenches is such hard work, especially after a few lazy Winter months of barely moving - we took it in turns to dig! The Sun didn't show, which was probably a good thing, but the birds were full of song around us.

We only managed one trench, the other side can wait till next weekend. Does it look like it's getting thinner at the other end..? Hmm, must be something to do with perspective *ahem*

On the breaks between digging we weeded the garlic and leek plot - the leeks are very poor; there are only a few there which are any good unfortunately.

The garlic looks ok so far, but they've got a good few months more to grow so I won't count my chickens!

Talking of chicken, well, definitely not chicken actually "What the cluck" - I prefer to call it 'Cluck' - a plant-based alternative to chicken. I enjoyed two meals at the weekend using Cluck and chestnuts.

Cluck is too chicken-y for Jamie so he has plant-based burgers, which I find too beef-y! I added teriyaki sauce along with our home-grown cavalo nero in the top meal - delicious.

And this second one includes onions and a parsley sauce - Jamie didn't know what he was missing out on 😏 This is served with Sticky Rice which is so white you can hardly see it. I love it - 1 minute in the microwave, perfect.

A final close-up of a potato chit - they're so alien aren't they? They do amuse me 😊 and a segway to this song by Iron Maiden.