Many Rivers to Cross

This is the tightly packed leek flower head which is protected by the pointy hat until it dries and pops off - or I release it. Most are white but some are tinted pink. I do love these pom-poms! So pleasing to pat as you walk by, but watch out for wildlife! The pollinators arrive en masse: flies, bees, hoverflies, beetles - they can’t resist a leek flower.

The weather has been hot, hot, hot again but the wind is annoying - really howling at times. I’m glad the towering hollyhocks (seed from my Cousin Jen’s plants) are still upright, but I’m not sure how they’re managing it!

The wind has been so strong that we can hear the army practising on Salisbury Plain (about 30 miles away). I guess the noise is tanks firing, it sounds like thunder. And yesterday we could hear live music from a Summer Event about 3 miles away, that was fun. 

You can see that heat doesn’t necessarily mean blue skies, but, although we’ve had a few torrential downpours, the weather has been mostly dry and the wind and Sun evaporate the rainfall quickly.

Everything needs watering and it’s hard work in the heat. Actually, not everything needs watering - the bindweed is doing just brilliantly finding its own water 😖 Wrapping itself around all the flower stems, it’s so annoying! I pull armfuls out every visit and try to get the root but it soon recovers - infuriating!

I harvested our garlic in the week - all from two bulbs, amazing! We’ve starting cooking with one although it’s still a bit green. The rest are drying in the polytunnel now.

Apart from that we are eating mangetout, broad beans and shallots. I’m expecting asparagus peas to be included in my meals next week. I don’t usually grow a long row as Jamie doesn’t eat the pods, but they’re such a pretty little flower. I’m hoping the plants will grow a bit more upright like they did last year, but may need to provide some support. The radishes have gone a bit woody now. I’ll try planting a few more but I want the original plants to go to seed as they are pretty with white flowers and I like eating the pods. I’ve netted the beetroot again as the pigeons/pheasants are really enjoying the leaves this year.

The tomatoes, cucumber and aubergine plants have started to spread; both outside and polytunnel plants and all the beans - climbers and dwarf- are looking pretty healthy; they’re loving the sunshine as much as us. A couple of the Tahiti Melon squash I sowed direct last week have germinated on the old polytunnel frame on Plot3 and the Sharks fin melon plants have grown more leaves - I’m expecting a jungle from them. Both are varieties of squash, not melons. The Alvaro melons on Plot7 are sitting quietly forming roots before the top growth takes off (I hope!).

On these really hot days Jamie and I have started walking down to the river after dinner, only a few minutes away, to sit and watch the wildlife.

It is a beautiful section of river - the River Kennet - with trout and other large fish as well as plenty of bird life. The other side of the stone road bridge is a private fishery. I got told off for reading my book there about 30 years ago - it still smarts! Otters have been seen here, but not by us - yet… We’re still waiting for news of the Kennet Valley Wetland Reserve which will be across from that wooden walkway, if the plan is approved 🤞 

The River Dun sprouts from the Kennet and runs through Hungerford. This section, with the swan gliding by, is at the War memorial and is one of our stopping places when walking into town. There are plenty of benches for just sitting, it’s just a shame the road is so busy.

Anyway, back at the allotment we had a Sunday picnic last weekend - nice to get back to them. We lit the chimnea because the temperature dipped and we were competing with wind and rain, but we stuck with it, with umbrellas and a windbreak! So British 😀

It’s meant to be hotter today, with an amber heat alert. It was just about 30° in the shade yesterday - phew. Look how dry the earth is and the yellowing grass.

The potatoes have flowered, we don’t have many planted so it’ll be good to get a decent haul from each plant. They look like Nicola flowers, but I think that is where the Kestrels were meant to be planted - or perhaps they’re the Duke of York… oh dear, we really must work on our labelling!

The song title is provided by Jimmy Cliff - what a voice. Singalong, but don’t scare the neighbours!

Daylight

We’re mid-heatwave at the moment - it’s extremely hot (high 20s) but I must say I’m loving it, especially working my part-time hours. We go to the allotment for lunch and stay until we’re flaking out.

There’s so much to water now that we’ve pretty much planted all that’s going in … well, there may be some additions if the mood takes me. My row of Jacob’s Cattle drying beans have all germinated and we’ve potted up the polytunnel. Jamie can help with a lot, but needs to sit down even more than me these days, but the allotment is definitely his happy place 😊

In the polytunnel we have:
Aubergine - Graffiti
Aubergine - Meatball
Melon - Alvaro
Tomato - Redcurrant
Tomato - Black Moon

I’ve grown one of the Redcurrant tomatoes and three of the Alvaro melons outside too - just with holes dug through this weed suppressant - hopefully the melon growth will cover that entirely. It was only after I’d planted them that Jamie piped up “why didn’t you plant them in the middle?”. Hmm, good point, of course  I’m wanting them to grow towards the centre of our plot but they’re bound to head the other way 🙄

We’ve planted a Cocktail Crush tomato and a Baby cucumber plant on Plot3. We’re expecting that just one cucumber plant will suffice, rather than swamp us with cucumbers this year! I’ve sown some celtuce, a Chinese salad veg into the raised bed. The radish, mangetout and salad leaves are providing me with some small lunch additions. I’ve used the garlic scapes in various meals and have used a couple of bunches of shallots (picked before fully mature) as I’ve given up with salad onions.

I have pulled one garlic but it needs more drying. I’ll probably wait another week before pulling the rest. And that is our first courgette of the year - we based our whole fajita meal round that tiny specimen 🤭

I’m pleased to see the verbena bonariensis has started to put on its show amongst the feverfew flowers, just as the valerian oficinalis is going over. Zinnia and pot marigolds are on their way too and I hope to have some hollyhocks photos very soon…

I’m also happy to see more ladybirds arrive with the heat. I’ve been collecting them from our stinging nettle pot (it started out as a raspberry pot) and placing them on my Gigantes beans which are climbing well, but the blackfly have found them.

So, today is the longest day and it’s meant to be the hottest. I expect we’ll be doing a lot of watering, a lot of bindweed pulling and a lot of sitting for much of the 16hours and 37minutes of daylight. Enjoy the song by David Kushner.

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!

Start!

It’s been a very, very hot week. And dry; showers have passed us by and we’ve literally been able to count the raindrops! That’s not very helpful rain at this time of year so we’ve been watering and watering - backwards and forwards from the troughs. So much walking in fact that I've already exceeded the 68,000 steps for Kidney patients so I need to think about a new target...

This potted rudbeckia fulgida was looking how we felt, but (like us) perked up after a long refreshing drink. Over the weekend we planted up most of the remaining seedlings - I've added a row of rainbow chard and french marigolds to that plot - each plant getting a good splosh of water, but they really want some decent rainfall.

We've planted the two aubergines from the HAHA Plant Swap into the polytunnel - I'm not really keen on aubergine but will eat them if they're home-grown and they are such a lovely looking fruit (yes, like tomatoes they're a fruit not a vegetable - I had to look it up).

I've planted up two flower troughs for HAHA - I'm rather ambitiously hoping that they fill out a bit ahead of next weekend's Open Day, but I think that's rather unlikely!! Oh well, they should look cheerful in July and August.

I'm pleased to say that the mangetout are finally being harvested - a few being chomped on the allotment and others being added to various meals. Even if they don't make it into a meal I pick them to keep them producing so they don't run to seed. On the other hand, I'm pleased to see that these have run to seed. These are the Radish Rats Tails, which should produce long pods for adding to salads, stir fries or for pickling. I'm looking forward to seeing them form.

In the background of that photo you can see the sunflowers and the two mini cucumbers which have been planted up into pots. The mangomel melon is on Plot3 too and is planted into the ground with weed suppressant surrounding it. You can, just about, see it in the background of this sunflowers photo - all 3 plants are surrounded by netting at the moment to give them a fighting chance against everything that may try to stop them growing (which includes the weather).

I'm pleased to see that the Paris Silverskin onions that I sowed about a week ago have germinated. I like onion seedlings with their little bent stems. It makes them easy to spot amongst the weeds. These are sown into the raised bed but in recent years have been purely slug food - would be nice to have a few to ourselves this year....

I was looking at our garlic on Saturday as I was expecting it to be time for them to be pulled however they are still one bulb rather than broken into cloves. The Winter frost is meant to aid the cloves forming. Ivan advised that I should just leave them and in a few more weeks they may well separate into cloves. If they don't it seems that they can still be eaten as 'wet garlic' - they just don't store well.

They look ready, but the bulbs are showing that they're not.

The broad beans are providing us with regular harvests, they are so delicious. We've had several meals including a broad bean curry, broad beans in parsley sauce with souflettes, broad beans in a tomato sauce and in this stir fry with tofu knots (really tasty!) and radish (a nice colourful addition). The tofu knots are dried so I soaked them overnight prior to frying - we had 6 each and there are lots left over so that's a handy stash to keep in the cupboard.

Ivan gave us a plant (I thought it was a weed) that had appeared amongst his irises. It's now flowered and what a beauty! It's a Siberian Larkspur (Delphinium Grandiflorum) and is such a beautiful colour on its tall flower spikes. It's an annual delphinium apparently but will hopefully self-seed in the flower patch. Look at at that colour - it's like ultraviolet in the sunshine.

And Ivan gets another mention as he let me pick some gooseberries - payback was a bit of weeding. I used the nice simple recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

The song title provided by The Jam  is in reference to our first courgette of the year - I'm sure there will be many more to follow.

The flower was huge; the courgette tiny 😊 And, I've taken so long writing this that we've had rain - a perfect overnight drenching and some drizzle this morning before the Sun came back out - perfect. Will see this evening what difference it's made to the plots - perhaps the HAHA flower troughs will be full of flowers 😒

Changes

During the week we had our first Pak Choi harvest, I thought it was quite tasty, we had it steamed with dauphinois potatoes and a Quorn fillet. And we harvested our first EVER melon! 

We knew the mangomel was ripe because the skin had turned yellow. And, as you can see, a bird (probably) had also decided it was ripe enough to sample. So the remaining growing fruit now has a protective cage round it.

It weighed over 1.6kg and served us for two breakfasts. It was so deliciously sweet, well worth growing. I wonder if it grew particularly well because of the heatwave and perhaps that’s also why we only got two fruits - apparently it can produce up to five.

Looking back at my blog from last year I was reminded of the carrot and beetroot fritters. So I picked the main ingredients in the morning and cooked them up in the evening. Unfortunately they’re shop-bought shallots.

It’s such a straightforward recipe. Saying that, I probably added a little too much water so it was more sticky than intended but the fritters are so tasty and served me for two dinners. I used the thinnings of Chinese cabbage in the salad.

Last week I commented on it being Autumn and it’s most obvious in the mornings, with mist/fog and condensation in windows. 

The hedgerow is full of berries.

The Love Lies Bleeding is getting redder. This is the biggest of the plants; it’s certainly taken advantage of the space on that patch!

The cucurbits are starting to succumb to mildew, so we’ve nearly (but not quite) reached the end of courgette season.

Temperatures have remained warm and we’ve had some significant rainfall, mostly at night. Early morning plot visits are more relaxed as we only need to water in the polytunnel, but (every silver lining) the rain is really bringing the weeds on well 😣

Talking of the polytunnel, we cleared most of the excess growth and new shoots from the tomato plants. We hope that will provide more light for a few more of those lovely looking Crimson Plum tomatoes to ripen and keep mildew at bay…

The Cleor pepper has lots of long peppers which we also need to turn red… waiting, waiting…

Allotment-time this weekend has mostly been about weeding, clearing and dead-heading but I did plant up some Crocosmia bulbs which fellow plotholder, Martine, put on the freebies shelf. I’ve put some in our flower plot and some on the wildlife plot. We sowed some radish in the potato bag that we emptied today - they’ll go into the polytunnel once the tomatoes are cleared. 

And here’s a photo of the ‘allotment cat’. He’s such a friendly chap, we all like it when he turns up - well, everyone I speak to does ☺️

The song title is provided by Will Young (I’ve used David Bowie before) and what a lot of changes; not just the season and the weather, but with the death of the Queen - I wonder how long before it sounds normal saying ‘King’ - not a personal impact on my life but certainly the loss of a constant. Boris Johnson is no longer our Prime Minister - thank goodness - but time will tell how much of a change Liz Truss offers. Changes are afoot…