Raining Again

This was such an amazing rainbow! It was so bright and huge, much more impressive than this photo shows but it’s the best I could get. So beautiful, I stood and stared for a while.

Sunshine and showers definitely sums up the weather over the last couple of weeks/months. I’ve got a few days off for Easter, but the hoped-for plot-days haven’t worked out yet…

We’ve had plot visits and have even done a bit of weeding but it’s hard work having to do it by hand because the ground is too wet to walk on let alone to dig.

Well, that’s the leeks patch cleared to make way for root crops. It’ll need better digging than that to grow some straight carrots!

The leeks were good this year. It’s worth planting them nice and deep to get plenty of white stalk.

The blackthorn has flowered in the hedge but the lovely flowers didn’t last long. The wind, rain, hail didn’t help, but hopefully they were pollinated.

We’ve seen bees enjoying the dandelions, dead nettle and grape hyacinths as well as the other Spring bulbs that are popping up here and there.

I was pleased to see some tadpoles in our little pond although I haven’t seen them since. I have seen a couple of frogs recently though and there’s some frogspawn appeared in the pond on the HAHA wildlife plot.

The teasels on the wildlife plot in a rainstorm yesterday (Good Friday). The sky went black but no thunder like we had on Thursday when the hail was apocalyptic.

Here’s Jamie fighting against the wind and rain while we were trying to secure a honeysuckle trellis which had collapsed on the wildlife plot.

We have achieved some tasks in the last couple of weeks. I’ve managed to weed and feed the garlic bed and Jamie’s cleared the bean tunnel.

And we’ve collected some of the manure for future use - it’s in a compost bin for now. £1.50 a barrow-load from HAHA - what a bargain 😊

Talking of HAHA. We have a fully tenanted site again - it’s great to see the newcomers joining us old-timers 👨‍🌾 And on the sunny breaks it has been a lovely busy site with lots of chat and catching up with plot-buddies. Aah, we do love our allotment and we really should get out there while the Sun is shining because it looks like today may be dry…. with just a small threat of showers… Moby provides the song title.

Scary Monsters

It’s that time of year again Halloweeeeen, ooh spooky 👻 

Our mini pumpkin was included in the meal, decorated our dinner table and Jamie even managed to carve one, but it was a bit fiddly.

The scary monster is a yellow dung fly - we’ve had another manure delivery to site. Hooray! We had a 10 tonne delivery and nearly half had been carted off to plots by the end of the weekend - we had a few barrow loads.

Behind the manure are our broad beans Aquadulce Claudia which we sowed at the weekend. As usual, they’re protected by plastic bottle cloches and netting. The netting doesn’t protect from everything though 🙄

Our little visitor is back to his friendly self and he joined us in the polytunnel during a sharp shower.

The showers were torrential at the weekend but it was reasonably warm and very pleasant when the Sun came out. We noticed that that the wasps were making the most of Ivan’s grapes, which have sadly gone to waste this year.

They were definitely drunk on them. All binging together - we’ve all been there 😀

It seems that we’re well into Autumn now - November today, unbelievable! The leaves finally changed colour. This is a Creeping cinquefoil leaf, so pretty throughout the year, but it does take over.

Even my little hazel tree looked autumnal.

The pot has some excellent moss forming the ‘forest floor’ for the little tree.

But Storm Ciaran is clearing the remaining leaves off the trees today. I have a day off work, so we’ll go up the plot and batten down the hatches later. First I’m having a toasted cheese and beetroot sandwich for lunch. I’ve always liked cheese and beetroot together, but toasted is even better - totally delicious! Talking of delicious, I made this pumpkin and bean curry the other night - mmm, coconut tastiness but unfortunately I didn’t cook the beans for long enough; even though they’d been soaked overnight they would have needed cooking for 30mins I think, not the 15mins I gave them - they were rather hard still.

I had a bit of good news recently - I wrote a poem (I know! Me!?) and WON a £50 voucher from Nomads Clothing. I love their clothes so I was very pleased 😊 Here’s the poem and the coat it’s written about.

The song is provided by David Bowie.

Someday Soon

Oh, I do love a close-up of a chitting potato at this time of year :-) Here's another for your enjoyment (or at least, for mine) 

Look at those tiny emerging leaves, so cute. Talking of er.. cute... here are some more <ahem> 'babies'.

Lots of teeny tiny snails waiting to emerge from hibernation just in time to breakfast on our seedlings. Pesky things! I hope now they've been revealed that a thrush will find them - over the hedge, where I moved them to!

 

HAHA arranged a manure delivery in the week so lots of people were working on the site at the weekend, even though it was cold. I wheel-barrowed 5 loads to Plot3 - it couldn't be further away from the manure pile, so that was a workout that my lockdown-body isn't used to!

We had a lovely few hours on the plot yesterday. By the time we got there, the sun was just strong enough to burn off the clouds and coats and jumpers were soon removed. Especially as we were digging. I dug a trench where I'm going to try again to grow celeriac.

 

The shredded bills and well-rotted manure will hopefully provide enough water retention to help these thirsty plants to bulb up. We'll see... I know they need A LOT of water. Anyway, first I need to get the seeds to germinate, which I'll do at home as they like to be warm.

 

And Jamie dug the carrot trench. He got the raw deal. There were so many roots in that part of the plot - well, there certainly aren't any roots of stones left in there when he'd finished.

Last week I was eating this really tasty Chestnut and Fennel soup - I topped it with some Seaweed (Kelp) Flavour Boost with either chives or chilli to add a bit of interest.

 

The song title is provided by KT Tunstall. Because, someday soon I'll be making soup with home-grown veg again and sitting on the plot watching things grow... And we'll be out of lockdown (my fingers are crossed).

Being Boring

I wasn’t going to write a post as very little has happened, but we’re waiting for a plumber to fix a leak so I need something to do (I’ve taken a day’s leave as we’ll have to clear up the soggy bedroom carpet later 😖).

The photo above shows some lovely shiny tomatoes going into the oven with garlic, thyme, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. And here’s the resultant dish of roasted toms. Sweet and tasty with a bit of fresh basil. They’ve also been a nice addition to cold salad lunches.

Our harvests are tiny so it’s been great to receive tomatoes and cucumbers from my sister.

We had a very pleasant couple of hours on the plot yesterday after some welcome rain. Jamie fed the plants and I collected three barrow-loads of manure - we had a HAHA delivery to site in the morning. It nearly killed me, I haven’t moved much over the last 6 months! And the weather is still humid but not over 30° like we suffered last week.

We think these snails were hiding in the leek flowers to avoid a further shower. We haven’t seen them doing this before but it looks cosy.

And this is something self-seeded, rather pretty isn’t it? We thought it was going to be a tiny sunflower, maybe it is..

So, as you can see, apart from finding my biggest ever elephant hawk moth caterpillar not much has happened over the last two weeks other than work.

So, rather like this post, the song is boring by the Pet Shop Boys. But at least the leak is fixed!

Taste it

Another visit to the plot this afternoon where we didn't achieve anything - it's just too grey to want to stay outside, although it wasn't too cold or wet.

I spoke to Roger, a fellow plotholder, and he's decided to take on another two plots - he and his family are excellent growers and are happy to take on a couple of plots which have horsetail growing on them. Our plot 3 has this stubborn, but interesting, pre-historic weed, but it can be contained with regular digging - we've found.

Not my photo

We have less empty plots than people on the waiting list now (although we're just at renewal month, so that may change). It's great for us to have a waiting list, as we sadly still live with the threat of a short lease hanging over us.

Jamie and I picked a few vegetables for a couple of meals and I'm making soup for lunches. Jamie's going to make one of our favourites: leek and quorn (chicken-style) in a cheese sauce with mashed potato topping. He's also intending to make bubble and squeak (potato and sprout) patties. We were very pleased to see how long the leeks have grown - it seems I must have puddled them in pretty deep as there is a lovely long bit of blanching on them.

My soup is celeriac and leek. Mmmm, I so love the smell of celeriac.

I've used half a stock cube, lots of pepper and some of this seaweed (Kelp) seasoning from Ebb Tides - a Christmas gift from my sister who lives in Devon. Lucky we're just about to have dinner otherwise there may not be much soup left for my lunches next week!

The allotment site had a delivery this weekend - that should be encouragement enough for us to actually do some digging next weekend... hmm, we'll see what the weather is doing at that point...

£1 per wheelbarrow-load to plotholders - what a bargain!

So to the song title...a little bit of INXS - nice. Well I couldn't resist a taste of the soup. The kale has been revitalised, from dry, and has given an extra dimension to the soup - a little bit of chew to each spoonful! Delicious!

Sunday Rain

This weekend we spent about 8 hours on the allotment. As we drove up the High Street yesterday we were following a trailer full of manure - we had a feeling we knew where that was going :-)

Look at that lot! It has apparently been standing for 2 years so it's very well rotted. HAHA buys it and plotholders can take what they want for £1 per barrowload - what a bargain.

And look what we found when we opened the greenhouse - 14 little broad bean seedlings have popped up over the week - so we may get twice as many as we thought. I dug the area on Plot3 yesterday where those broad bean plants will go in a couple of weeks. And while I dug that, Jamie dug where the potatoes will be planted.

Yesterday felt decidedly Spring-like with warmth and even a little spot of sunshine. But today it was drizzly and then rainy for the whole afternoon. Initially it was quite good weather for pulling weeds - and I had a lot to pull...

That's where the carrots and french beans are meant to be going. Most of the weeds aren't too bad to pull out but the grass (couch) is the worst. I didn't finish all of it as it got too wet but at least there are signs of bare earth ready and waiting now.

Rhubarb should be the first thing that we'll be harvesting - it's on its way... slowly but surely. Meanwhile I'm still on carrot and leek soup, but, really, that's nearly the last of them....!

 Here are the Foo Fighters for the title track. No video again, but it's a good (apt) song...