Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
We had a visit to the plot yesterday, mostly to pick some tomatoes. It was such a warm day that we stayed a bit longer to chat and were glad we did as suddenly there was an air show going on overhead
It was rather fun watching the sky with fellow plotholders and seeing all those bi-planes. And then there were parachutists with red smoke and also apparently wing-walkers - amazing! It was a shame I only had my little camera with me.
And, as if that wasn't excitement enough for one weekend - a frog has moved into our pond!
I took the mesh cover off it last week as I cleared some of the duckweed (it all grew back) and obviously froggy liked the look of it.
Today Jamie and I got on with working - no aerobatics to entertain us today, but the frog's still there. We did a lot of clearing, weeding and edging.
The carrot bed and sprouts plot - look how dry the earth is!
The leeks bed - not many leeks this year but hopefully they'll grow nice and big
The strawberry bed - masses of runners were removed
I also cleared the rest of the dried beans - soya (edamame) and Borlotti. There are quite a lot.... just have to shell them all now...
Jamie is going to pickle some of our Longor shallots this week - we finally bought some pickling vinegar - so they're at home now waiting to be prepared. And we pulled a Nicola potato - they are nice looking tubers; not slug-eaten and quite large.
There are a few of the Aviditas tomatoes which I'm going to add to salad lunches. Jamie made patatas bravas last week and will be making it again this week using the lovely larger tomatoes which are still in the greenhouse - they aren't Lizzano, which they're meant to be, but they are tasty.
My salad lunch is going to be very red this week - beetroot, tomato, red chard and red sweetcorn. I may add a red onion too for good measure :-)
I really wanted the Double Red Sweetcorn for the HAHA stall at Hungerford Food Festival on 7th October, but I'm not sure it's going to last that long; The covering leaves are very dry. And the kohl rabi are only tiny seedlings at the moment so they aren't going to be much of a show in 3 weeks time - luckily there should be plenty of squashes!
Aah, Autumn is definitely upon us, even though it was lovely and warm in the sunshine today - still Everything's Cool For Me as the title translates (apparently). Oh yes, and it has the word 'plane' in the title <ahem>. Enjoy!
Yum, yum. Most of the bloggers I follow seem to have been harvesting their first strawberries of the year, so I thought I'd share our first ones too. Mmm, they're a very sweet variety. Unfortunately we don't know what variety, but we'll be sure to take further runners for plotting on.
I have a week off work and a long sunny weekend meant we got quite a lot done and really feel we're ready for June to provide us with all that this lovely month promises! Though there's still a lot of empty space on the plots.
We've dug holes and put plenty of manure in them ready and waiting
for various plants e.g, squashes and runner beans. We've earthed up the
potatoes in the ground and in bags.
Jamie's planted and netted the Amazing cauliflower. I've planted out the Crookneck
Summer squash, Asparagus pea and Borlotti beans. We're waiting for the
other squash plants to get a bit bigger before they're planted out, but
germination hasn't been that great.
Meanwhile the pond a wildlife area (aka raspberry bed) is looking cheerful with the addition of a houseleek pot (thanks Joanne) - I'm hoping the houseleeks will spread over the edge of the pond. The lily beetles returned to the lily flowers and have nibbled quite a few of the buds, so they may not be as impressive as they were last year.
Our sunny weekend wasn't all spent on the plot so here's a photo of the Carnival of Animals we enjoyed in Newbury - lots of people enjoying the evening sunshine and giant puppets.
I love this anthem by The Farm - join in :-) And it'll very soon be World Cup time again - yippee!
And, as if that wasn't excitement enough for one weekend - a frog has moved into our pond!
I took the mesh cover off it last week as I cleared some of the duckweed (it all grew back) and obviously froggy liked the look of it.
Today Jamie and I got on with working - no aerobatics to entertain us today, but the frog's still there. We did a lot of clearing, weeding and edging.
Jamie is going to pickle some of our Longor shallots this week - we finally bought some pickling vinegar - so they're at home now waiting to be prepared. And we pulled a Nicola potato - they are nice looking tubers; not slug-eaten and quite large.
There are a few of the Aviditas tomatoes which I'm going to add to salad lunches. Jamie made patatas bravas last week and will be making it again this week using the lovely larger tomatoes which are still in the greenhouse - they aren't Lizzano, which they're meant to be, but they are tasty.
My salad lunch is going to be very red this week - beetroot, tomato, red chard and red sweetcorn. I may add a red onion too for good measure :-)
I really wanted the Double Red Sweetcorn for the HAHA stall at Hungerford Food Festival on 7th October, but I'm not sure it's going to last that long; The covering leaves are very dry. And the kohl rabi are only tiny seedlings at the moment so they aren't going to be much of a show in 3 weeks time - luckily there should be plenty of squashes!
Aah, Autumn is definitely upon us, even though it was lovely and warm in the sunshine today - still Everything's Cool For Me as the title translates (apparently). Oh yes, and it has the word 'plane' in the title <ahem>. Enjoy!
