Ooh! The Pain!

Ah, I needed that bath! After about 6 hours on the allotment - on the new plot. Phew, digging is hard work again! I'd like to show an 'After' shot but it's so insignificant you'd barely notice the difference! So, here's a picture of the one and only flower on the plot - a calendula left over from last year. It shines out like a beacon. Jamie transplanted it from the edge on Saturday.

Of course, when I say 6 hours on the allotment - the digging didn't quite fill that time. We had the good idea of taking wine and olives to have lunch on the little table and chairs that were left by the previous tenant. It was a great idea - but didn't make the digging any easier..!

We've just about finished digging the first 1/2 metre in from the path; so much couch grass! So much tree/hedge root! So much work! Lucky it's Jamie's plot ;-)

Nice to see the site from a different perspective

I have a panorama photo Google app on my iPad, so I took that to the site and made a 360° panorama of Plot 7/8 which you can see if you click here.

I then made another of the whole site  which captures a few of the plotholders too. 

I should have taken photos into the sky a bit so that it wouldn't have this curved letterbox look.. I still rather like them.

The garlic is growing well on Plot 8. It was looking a little yellow, so I watered it with Epsom Salts yesterday - the salts add magnesium to the soil which allows the plants to take in the nutrients they need and improves photosynthesis (so the leaves should 'green up' a bit).

These are my transplanted lettuces from yesterday. I was pleased the ones outside the wire survived the night, I thought the pigeons or other birds may find them too irresistible.

Leeks and not much else

Just a quick visit to the plot for me this afternoon. Another sunny day today compared to yesterday's rainy one. There were a few plotholders about, doing a bit of tidying, planning and, great to see, people are still harvesting.

Our leeks are looking ok but we want them to get a bit bigger before pulling any more. There should be a bit of cabbage and more sprouts too but there may be too much wildlife involved for Jamie and me to risk eating! The other vegetable that's still in the ground is my salsify. It looks like it's grown pretty well. Need to give that a try in a week or so...
 

There wasn't much to photograph. All the birds seemed to be in hiding, even though it was warm. Hope they're back for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend (25/26 Jan).
So, just another cloud photo I'm afraid! Both these pics are taken with my new camera.

Coming out for the sun, leaving with the moon

Blue sky! How lovely to see!

That's the last of the Christmas Quality Street scoffed. 
 
I love that their plastic wrappers are made of corn starch. It means they can be composted and disappear totally. Our compost is surprisingly looking rather dry - all the runner bean stems in the bin probably should have been chopped up a bit before bundling them in.

The cat was making the most of the heat from the stonepile and keeping an eye on the coal tits in the hedgerow.

It was lovely to see other plotholders around too - we emerge from hibernation as soon as the sun shines! It is still too wet to do any work. Good job! as I really just wanted to play with our new Fujifilm X-S1 camera which we got as an Amazon bargain. 

This is my first ever non-compact camera, though not a full-on SLR (apparently) so bear with me as I've no idea what I'm doing if I move away from the Auto options! I'll be keeping my trusty Olympus SZ-31R on hand for a while yet...

Meanwhile, Jamie was checking the measurements of plot 8B, as the potatoes are going there this year to give Plot 7 a rest. We've got lots of planning to do. We're thinking along the lines of nematodes to protect our spuds from slugs. One thing we've decided is that we won't grow as much of everything, which ends up wasted....

... Did I say that last year?!

Ps. We did leave with the moon, but not because we stayed out for hours; the moon was on show all day.

Royal British Legion Show 2013

Yesterday was the Royal British Legion Show. We had tried to encourage more entrants from the allotment sites and there was a small group of us from Marsh Lane so it made for a fun evening. Between us we managed to get some good placings.

Our veg cleaned up and ready to go to the show

We tried to put entries in for as many categories as possible, but our onions, shallots and french beans weren't ready. And can't believe I couldn't find four suitable courgettes to make a grouping!

Fellow plot holder, Chris, won the overall category prize for his veg - he pipped me (AGAIN!) in the Longest Runner Bean category - just a few millimetres in it..
We also missed out on funniest veg. Ours is the tomato with a nose; beaten by John's many-legged carrot.

Funny Shaped Veg

We did win a couple of Firsts though: Five pickling onions (our little Silverskins) and Pair of matching cucumbers (our little Rockies). We also got a few Second and Third placings.

Our 'four veg' highlighted came 2nd

I was pleased to win the overall prize for the photography competition. We got first placings with these two pictures - and Jamie took one of them, so it was definitely a joint win!

Autumn

Domestic Pet

 And, to end a good evening, while we were walking home we saw two Hedgehogs. The first living ones I've seen for years!

Has Spring Sprung?

It certainly felt like it today! And, luckily, the lovely weather was predicted so I'd booked the afternoon off! It was about 13° in the shade with a low of -2° overnight.
Before leaving work I went to a photography talk, so I attempted to put some of the tips ("how to turn a snap into a photograph") into practise... Bear with me :-)

Attempting to use the Rule of Thirds - missing the mark I think

We prepared the area where the tomatoes are going this year. We cleared all the weeds and stones from an area on Plot 8B that hadn't been dug very well and then tramped it down and covered it in weed suppressant. We're having 3 Lizzano tomato plants in pots - the same as we had last year, as they proved to be so blight resistant, but with plenty more space this year.
I was chatting so forgot to take an "after" photo. We made a wood chipping path between that area and the strawberry bed and it looked very tidy(!) however, we think Mrs Blackbird will have a field day flicking the wood chippings all over the place! The chippings are dropped off by a local tree surgeon and someone always finds a use for them.

Pleased to see (most of) the raspberries are budding well. Yes, this is another photo trial. This was using Portrait mode on the camera rather than using auto - not too convinced it makes a whole lot of difference on this particular photo, so need to practise that a bit more.
Now, this I was very pleased with. Zoomed in and using portrait mode of the robin did make for a lovely photo.. And they are so photogenic.

Robbie eating sunflower hearts we took to the plot for him

By 5pm the sun had disappeared behind clouds (cirrocumulus I think) and it was beginning to get a bit chilly so we headed home. Just time for one Landscape photo...

Royal British Legion Horticultural Show

Hey! This is my 200th post!
For some of the time on the plot yesterday I was trying to find a funny-shaped vegetable for the Hungerford Royal British Legion horticultural show. Unfortunately, although the carrots I pulled didn't actually look like carrots - they were the original 'Early Nantes' and had all split - they weren't actually funny, so I couldn't enter that category.

The only thing I managed to enter from the plot was a runner bean that was as long as my forearm - but I got pipped to first place by Chris' which was about 1cm longer. Never mind :-) I got some 1st, 2nd and 3rd places for some of my photos.
These are my photos that got 1st place:



"Close-up" category

"Winter" category

"Any wildlife" category

There wasn't a very good turnout for the event which we're going to try to encourage allotment-holders to join in with next year. There were a few of us there from Marsh Lane and the competition between us made it quite fun.

Another hot BBQ day

Another brilliant day for a barbecue, not quite as hot as yesterday but still way above average at about 28°!
I took this photo by attaching the camera to a 8-foot bamboo and then setting the 12 second timer before holding it high above my head - it looks really high up doesn't it? It makes for a good bird's eye view of the plots :-)

Overhead shot of our plots

We puddled our leeks in and put the Shallot cage over them as some protection against leek moth.
We had to do quite a lot of watering - although it's still damp under the surface we want our veggies, which are just fruiting, to have as much water as possible. The water poured into the leeks holes soon drained away.

Puddling in the leeks