You Need Hands

Look at all that fresh new growth. That was last weekend, a nice sunny day but a freezing wind and there’s fleece protecting our strawberry plants because there was frost in the week. I weeded the flowerbed by hand. Perennials are emerging and I’ve bought lots of flower seeds, mostly annuals, for sowing quite soon. I pulled quite a lot of the Nigella which does rather take over, but they are pretty flowers and seedheads.

What you may not have noticed in the photo is this broomrape (Orobanche) just emerging, there’s another one popping up too. They’re parasitic plants which get their nutrients from the roots of their host plants. If it’s Common Broomrape, which is likely, it has multiple rather than one preferred host plant - it should be more obvious when it grows more.

And here are a few of the tadpoles in our tiny pond. They stay low when the weather is cold but you can see movement when they’re eating the duckweed and they’re enjoying the algae growing on the sides of the pond. They’ll move on to eating meat quite soon so they can eat snails and flies that fall in the water. I really hope they get a taste for snails, there are so many everywhere!

At last there’s a bit of sowing and planting underway. These are shop-bought; a Blight Buster tomato, Money Maker tomato and a Summer Ball yellow courgette which we’ll grow in the polytunnel until (if) Summer arrives. Jamie has sown some Claret purple sprouting broccoli and Brechin Brussels sprouts seeds on another windowsill and we planted the potatoes yesterday! Yay!

Four Desiree into the ground on Plot7, two Wilja and four Rocket into bags on Plot8. 

I do like a close-up of potato chits! Such interesting features.

It was actually quite a pleasant day yesterday. Though rain threatened it didn’t arrive till later so we had a nice few hours on the plot and I got a bit more weeding done where I want to sow my mangetout. Last weekend I weeded ‘The Orchard’ - ok, so just 3 tiny twigs at the moment, but look!

Our first blossom! One day that may be a cherry 😄

Aah, look at that gorgeous blue sky and fresh leaves on the trees. This was last week, so beautiful and the birds are really active. On the advice of plotholder Linda we’ve downloaded the Merlin app and it’s great for recognising bird song, perhaps we’ll even learn from it. There are plenty of robins, blue tits, goldfinches and wrens around as well as gathering numbers of swallows. Also, lots of magpies, crows, jackdaws and 11 red kites circling overhead!

I’ve been watching this jackdaw and its mate from our window. See the two sticks poking up from the chimney pot - he’s been having a lot of trouble with them! I bored Jamie for hours with updates the other day 🤭 The jackdaw had selected a stick that was far too long to manoeuvre and he kept dropping it, I think he gave up in the end. And that’s why I decided on the song title - Malcolm McLaren’s version from the Great Rock & Roll Swindle rather than Max Bygraves.

New Life

I was amazed to see how quickly the frogspawn have developed. The frilly bits aren’t legs yet though, they’re external gills. The tadpoles look much more black in real life and are very small. I recorded their arrival on the Pondnet Spawn Survey.

Most of the hatched tadpoles were huddled together eating the remaining spawn jelly. I retrieved some more tadpoles from a puddle before it dried out in the hot March sunshine and put it in the newly- created pond in the bog garden on the HAHA Wildlife plot. It'll look better once there's a bit of growth round the outside and I'll probably buy a plant for in the pond.

When I pointed out the ‘pond’ to a new plotholder he said “I drink my morning cocoa from a mug bigger than that”. Haha, you’ve got to laugh! It may be tiny, but it’s a life saver to some residents at the moment. I’ve put a flat stone in it so the birds may like it too, but I hope they don’t eat the froglets!

We've had a beautiful few days and I was on leave so enjoyed a sunny 4-day weekend. On Friday we visited the Inkpen Crocus Field again - we visited 3 years ago in February and there were more crocuses then, perhaps due to our recent wet and windy weather - the ground was soggy, even at the top of the hill. 

It's so pretty and natural with the crocuses tending to grow individually rather than in clumps, it's quite fascinating and the origin is unknown; I prefer to think of them as from 12th Century crusaders rather than garden escapees.

We walked more than 6km that day; my working-from-home legs aren't used to it! And then for the rest of the weekend we were working on the allotment - quite exhausting, but so lovely to be out in the sunshine.

I showed a couple of new plotholders around and there were lots of people gardening on site. Along with many butterflies (comma, brimstone, tortoiseshell and whites) and bees enjoying the grape hyacinths and the few other flowers that are showing.

Let's hope they do their work on our broad bean flowers which have started to appear. Our bean plants are a really sickly bunch, so small after all the battering by the wind and frost, but we should get a few handfuls of beans eventually.

I spent most of the time working on the area by our pond where the mammoth sage had taken over with a tree-like root. Eventually managed to pull the remaining roots along with the couch grass, raspberry and various other roots - in fact I still have a tiny strip to do. The soil looks quite good, but I'm mostly clearing it for our new seating area.

We've actually sown a few seeds, including mangetout. They're in the polytunnel at the moment. On a couple of the sunny mornings this week I've popped up to the allotment first thing to open up the door. The temperature in the polytunnel has fluctuated between 30° and -3° over the last week! Jamie's been closing up at the end of the day. The mornings are so beautiful up there, it's hard to pull myself away to sit back at my desk, but it is a lovely benefit of home-working.

Seems like I'll be working from home for a while yet, as covid cases are increasing again - not suprising as people don't need to isolate. It seems that a 5th vaccination will be on the cards for immuno-suppressed people... ho hum.. Anway, less of that depressing news... the song title is provided by an extremely young Depeche Mode. Feel free to bop 😉

Radioactive

This photo sums up yesterday’s time on the allotment; lovely warm sunshine interrupted by hefty showers which sent plotholders scattering across site to the toolshed, cars or polytunnels.

We were working on Plot3, attaching the netting to the old polytunnel frame.

This is my long-talked-about squash tunnel. Hopefully the netting is secured tight enough for the weight of the squashes (I have high hopes - dangerous, I know!)

So it’s ready and waiting for the squashes, which have nearly all germinated in a week - just 2 of the Boston seeds haven’t broken through so far. I’m planning on growing two of each type, so ten plants (Boston, Crown Prince, Festival, Honey Boat and Tromboncino). Some of them have large heavy fruits so may need additional security, but that can be sorted as and when required. 

I’m excited, hope it works!

I’ve been talking to a friend about his lovely alpine garden so thought I’d take a close-up look at the succulents and houseleeks by our little pond.

They’re so pretty. I thought they were stunning enough to be considered ‘treasurer’ in the BlackBerry Garden Chelsea Fringe - what a fun idea!

The pond is nice and full but the frogs are a bit shy at the moment. It looks nice overgrown, but the bindweed needs pulling and some of the nigella otherwise that’ll cover everything else.

Here are the potatoes. We covered them on Saturday night as there was a frost risk. It seems we got away with it, though the thermometer showed 2.3° in the polytunnel.

And a few Spring onions, meals for the future come to mind.

But for the timebeing we’re still living on rhubarb 😆 

Mmm, rhubarb pancakes for breakfast and the presentation gave me a song title. I like this song by Imagine Dragons, I didn’t realise this was the title. Enjoy

Purple Haze

 It’s been a hot weekend and we’ve had two busy afternoons on the plot.

We managed to do a lot of clearing and some proper digging - I do like digging, though my body’s aching after more activity than it’s used to these days! The ground is so dry, I don’t know when we last had any rain. Here’s the before...

And here’s the after, and Jamie dealt with the edges. That area has been limed for broad beans to be sown in a few weeks time.

We still have lots to do. The enormous, spiteful bramble got me a few times, but we’re getting it too! Slowly, but surely.

I retrieved and potted up some strawberry runners as the strawberry bed has grown wild this year.

We hoed and dug up some enormous weeds around the Raised bed, where the garlic will be planted as soon as it’s delivered. And I cleared around the pond and planted some iris into the ground; it’s been pot-bound for over a year so I hope it will appreciate the freedom.

We actually saw a big dragonfly today, but it didn’t fancy visiting our pond which is in need of some more water. The frog doesn’t mind though and we may get some rain this week. At least we have the polytunnel for shelter when the rain does finally arrive. And we’ve got the fleece tunnel ready to protect a couple of the Speedy french beans which are just about to produce some beans for us and may coincide with our first frost - doh!

The courgette plants are still providing for us and Neal gave me some beetroot today (thanks Neal) Also my sister is supplying tomatoes still (thanks Joanne) so I made these nice spicy tomato noodles for lunch this weekend. And we’ve got a big bag of potatoes to use. We had a dish made with mash, cheese, ‘This is not bacon’ (which, to me, tastes like kippers) and peas - mmmmmm, so delicious! (But I forgot a photo, shame because it looked nice too).

Please forgive another globe artichoke photo, but that colour! And the bees are loving it and really did appear to be in a purple haze at times! One of those bees was in there most of the afternoon.

Did you see what I did there? Thanks to Jimi Hendrix (obviously) for the title. (And the crowd at the end of this video is great 😀)

Infinite Sun

That's the only frog who's visited our pond this year - he's from Jamie's dad, so nice to have him on our plot.

What an amazing Easter weekend - yesterday we saw some of the canoeists in the Devizes to Westminster race and Hungerford was nicely crowded. But today was a plot day. We were on a mission to clear Plot46A...

Eurgh, what a mess of chickweed, deadnettle, fumitory and various leftover veg from last year.

With a lot of this...

We managed to convert it to this...

Aah, that's better. And now it's covered in weed suppressant fabric, so we're good neighbours again!

Meanwhile, our poor marigolds in the polytunnel couldn't survive the 39.9° temperature - I really hope they recover!

When we arrived at the site someone had left some seedlings in the polytunnel for us. Thinking they were Antirrhinum (Snap dragon) from Ivan I dutifully plotted them on into individual pots. Only later did I discover that they were in fact a mix of Rocket and Pak Choi from Malcolm - duh, I'm blaming the heat!

We were pleased to see that the weather has encouraged the grassed communal area to grow. Hopefully the grass will overcome the weeds which are also very happy.

Kula Shaker provide the great song and we're expecting another amazing sunny day tomorrow - hooray!