The Life of Riley

Robbie was keeping an eye on my digging technique last week as I dug the bean trench on Plot8.

It took me three separate visits to complete, as it was hard work. The soil was bone dry and like concrete at the bottom of the trench which is about 50cm deep.

There were a few weeds but it was mostly salsify roots, though I still wasn’t inclined to take any home for eating.

Phew, finished, I left the hollyhocks at the end. I added cardboard and emptied the builders bag of decomposed weeds - hoping the seed heads are rotted and deep enough to not re-emerge - along with some partially-composted vegetables before adding the sweetcorn stalks. All that organic matter should provide a good base for our climbing beans next year and helps with the plot clearance.

The trench has had a good drenching over the last couple of days so there may be room for a bit more green waste before I back-fill that soil heap.

Whilst working on that I uncovered this little field vole. It was trying to hide under dried grass where I was working so I caught it in a pot and released it in the hedge. So cute.

On the Saturday I knew when the steam train The Flying Scotsman was passing through Hungerford so I secured my spot to get a reasonable view - it’s not the best view from the allotments, but good enough.

There it goes! I took a small video but the camera lost focus at the vital point 🙄

Here’s a rather better record of it passing over Hungerford High Street, courtesy of Oxygen Aerial Images. Perfect.

On the chilly Sunday morning I joined a little group of Britain in Bloom volunteers in returning to the roundabout to plant Spring bulbs (I think there were 400) and sow some drought-tolerant wild flower seeds. The perennials that we planted in May have grown pretty well, considering the weather.

Since May other volunteers have been watering and borage-pulling, it’s always threatening to take over. Such a lot of work and dedicated volunteers involved. Hungerford won the Silver Gilt award in the Small Towns category of the 2026 RHS Britain in Bloom competition - I’m not sure that the roundabout played any part in that, but it has looked good and should look even better next year.

Yesterday I was at the hairdressers as we watched Storm Austen stripping leaves and blowing horizontal rain up the road. Jamie and I were meant to be going to see lit up trees at Welford Park’s Spectacle of Light — we aren’t sorry that the visit has been postponed for a few days, we got a drenching when we went last year. We popped over to Oxfordshire last week and saw quite a different spectacle at Millets Farm.

Dahlia Beach

Pick your own dahlias and pumpkins! It was a very grey and rainy day but both fields were very impressive. I was sneaking up a muddy side track to get a peek of Dahlia Beach before I realised it was closed so could wander about a bit more, but couldn’t get in amongst the blooms. The buckets in the foreground are for collecting bunches of the flowers and they also sell the tubers. And I’ve never see so many pumpkins! They planted/planned for 100,000 fruits 😳

Pumpkins galore

And another cool thing. Jamie’s been having one-to-one swimming sessions with Next Stroke Swim School since finding that he could no longer swim post-stroke. Well, last Sunday he swam unaided for the first time - on his back and his front. “Drowning slowly” he calls it, but I call it a breakthrough 👏 Mike (and others) have been really great. I’m so glad we spotted their advert.

Jamie’s tutor, Mike, urging him on

This morning there’s a blue sky with pink clouds as the Sun’s just rising. We’d better go to the allotment later to see what damage the wind and rain has caused - hoping our polytunnel is still in one piece.

So to the title song, by the brilliant Lightning Seeds for this mishmash of a post. Well, since I retired, 8 months ago, I determined to achieve at least one thing each day rather than lounging. Last week on a rainy day I made a cherry and almond flapjack which counted as ‘an achievement’. I really do think some people could say I’m living the life of Riley!

Picture This

This has got to be the most photographed view in Hungerford this year, so I thought I'd put my version on the blog - the new planters on the bridge, provided by a voluntary group, have been so successful.

Look at that beautiful blue sky which we enjoyed yesterday with Summertime temperatures - not quite the same today, with some welcome rain.

Jamie pulled the last of the Kestrel potatoes yesterday; quite a few with slug damage but not too bad, especially as there are some massive spuds in that trug. He's sprinkled lime over the patch that he dug over yesterday and we're going to plant our onions in there for over-wintering along with Aquadulce broad beans.

I weeded two of the raised beds - ready for garlic - and the patch where the shallots were this year. I found quite a few that are in good condition to be eaten, but it wasn't a good year for our shallots. (it was a good year for thistles though!)

We've been picking tomatoes at every visit and this has been our largest red pepper.

There are still lot of peppers on the plants; they're still green but tasty even if they don't get a chance to change colour - everyone is saying that yesterday was the last day of sunshine for the year :-(

That's the last of the cucumbers, which all arrived a bit too late and mostly at the same time so they are bound for the compost bin - this one tasted ok, but was split in the middle and the skin was a bit tough.

I've picked some of the Gigantes beans and had some in a salad - dressed with soy sauce, oak-smoked olive oil, spring onion and mustard seeds. It was so delicious, I must make it again.

I'm soaking some more overnight to cook tomorrow for a tomato & bean-based lunch. It seems that they shouldn't need overnight soaking because they aren't completely dried out, but I'm playing it safe. They look good anyway as they're soaking up the water and getting even more gigantic!

We've picked a couple more Lark sweetcorn; one for inclusion in tonight's meal (along with potato and cabbage patties) and the other for my lunch tomorrow. Something is nibbling them - not sure if it's birds or mammals but the ants are enjoying them once the kernels are open to the air.

I've planted some houseleek into the giant boot from Jamie's dad's garden - I remember his mum had it overflowing with houseleeks when I first saw it and I want it to look like that again. The pond needs a bit of work, the frogs still seem happy but the weed has rather taken over.

Meanwhile, we're slowly moving to Autumn and after the HAHA AGM next week we'll be thinking about Hungerford Food Festival where we'll have our HAHA stand as usual - do come and visit us on Sunday 6th October!

The song title is provided by Blondie.

Squashes and Compost

We had a few hours of clearing on the plot this afternoon. We haven't had any proper rain for a week and it was reasonably warm so there were quite a few other plotholders with the same idea. We started by picking all the suitable Cornells Bush Delicata squash from Plot 3 - that lot was from 2 plants.

We cleared all the remains of the squashes and pumpkins on Plot 3. The large leaf cover had done well to prevent too much weed growth so it wasn't too strenuous to dig up the remaining weeds and give the area a bit of a dig over. We've now put all that green waste, plus some rotted manure and straw in a pile along the weed-free section - we're intending to plant our runner beans there next year, so that compost can form the bean trench. We're hoping that leaving it like this will help it to rot down over winter and let the birds deal with any pests that may be harboured in there..

We left as the birds were going to roost and we'd done what we planned to do. I pulled some carrots and took some onions to make soup - I'm adding a bit of rosemary and it smells lovely as it's cooking at the moment.
Jamie pulled one of the Tenerife potatoes but they've been in the ground too long and aren't edible :-( Luckily we still have some lovely Kestrels which are serving us well. We had some baked last week and they were delicious.

Our Brussels Sprouts (Revenge) are looking ok on Plot 7 but the plants on Plot 3 are pathetic - that's what happens when you don't prepare the ground properly!

HAHA Plot - it's no joke!

Ugh! That's what happens when you neglect your allotment for most of October. Not a happy looking plot, so I left Jamie to it(!) and worked on the HAHA plot for a couple of hours.

Jamie dug some manure into the planned brassica quarter and has stored some paving slabs on the area where the sprouts will go next year.
Talking of sprouts, ours aren't looking too bad now Jamie's removed all the dead leaves - though they're all leaning in opposite directions, we should get plenty to eat from the four plants. The leaning shows that the earth was looser than it should have been. We may resort to staking the plants a bit earlier next year.

The HAHA plot also looked abandoned, but at least now it has a small corner where I can plant the  Elephant garlic and Vayo garlic which I ordered from Suttons this morning. I dug the area, pulled weeds and stones and then spread some chicken manure pellets.

It wasn't a bad day actually, though the glimpses of blue sky didn't stay for long. There were quite a few birds around including the kestrel and, unusually for Marsh Lane, some pied wagtails. No sign of our little robin though :-(
We found a couple of pupae which I need to identify before posting to the Wildlife blog.

We've still got Network Rail working on the Marsh Lane railway bridge. I was a bit disappointed to have missed them doing the work; it sounded quite interesting. They've now put the four new strengthening pins in - they go all the way from one side to the other of a two-track railway bridge! No wonder they needed to re-inforce some parts of the arch while they were drilling!

Riddling for Carrots

The clocks changed last night for British Summer Time - should have been one hour less in bed but I'm pleased to say it didn't turn out that way! Well, I'm on holiday for a week, so we're taking it easy
:-)

That wasn't the case when we eventually got to the plot though. We were riddling the earth for the carrot trench; mixing in seed compost as we riddled. It's tiring doing it and it's a relief when you reach the end but it's pleasing. The seived earth is so lovely and free-flowing.

The carrot patch is filled and ready for our little seeds once the weather improves a bit. It's about 15cm deep so that we'll get nice straight carrots - well, that's the plan! We'll probably sow 3 rows and can eat the thinnings as salad carrots - we've got a super-sweet variety for this year.





Don't worry, there's no-one buried down there!



Here's a (very) short video showing how lovely the soil is - a bit of Zen gardening going on. With the Easter church bells in the background for good measure!



 



We also prepared a row for our parsnips. The carrots and parsnips are going in the onion quarter with some marigolds this year. We'll cover the carrots with enviromesh but are hoping the parsnips will be protected from the carrot fly by the marigolds and the onion smell..

We left after 6pm, so nice that we'll have longer evenings to get on the plot now. It was still reasonably sunny but still cold - about 6°. It was -4° last night :-(

 

Preparing the sprout plot

Jamie started to prepare this year's legume quarter for the brassicas (particularly sprouts) next year. He cleared the area of the marigolds; pulled the remains of bean plants; dug it really well and then added some chicken pellet manure. We'll pile bags of manure on it to make the ground nice and hard for when the sprouts go in.

Talking of sprouts, he also staked our leaning plants. The sprouts look pretty good, but Jamie said there were a lot of slugs and snails in the cage.
I got to the plot just in time for lunch  :-) and took him a lovely meat-free pasty from the fabulous Cornish Pasty shop in Newbury.

This is the rhubarb under it's Winter protection (should stop it getting too wet) - this will also help us remember where it is, as all the leaves have died off and there's no trace of it above ground!