Let the Sunshine In (Aquarius)

Back in May, you may recall that a few of us allotment holders started improvements to one of the town’s roundabouts. At that stage we didn’t realise that we were going to suffer heatwave after heatwave so some hardy people have been doing a lot of watering to keep it alive and to help the seeds germinate.

I think it looks pretty good, considering. I can see we missed quite a few borage seedlings and the plants haven’t grown as bushy as we’d expect if we’d had rain but at least it looks much better than it has for the last few years and will hopefully be even better next year… Britain in Bloom results are due in September.

I took that photo early this morning. I was hoping it would be a glorious sunny morning so walked along to the River Kennet at about 6:30am. It was lovely with lots of birds and I saw a water vole swimming across but it was rather cloudy so the photos weren’t as glorious as I’d hoped and no otters.

The weather has remained warm/hot, and dry, over the last week. Although on the one day that the temperature was back to average it felt decidedly chilly(!) and I missed the sunshine. And look - the overnight temperature fell to 3.5°! That thermometer is in the shade behind the polytunnel.

I’ve been to the allotment watering every day - apart from one, which is why we ended up with two very large courgettes in the trug! As well as our first cucumber of the year.

Those potatoes were from a rogue plant which grew in our onion bed. It got frosted 3 times but kept coming back. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many decent tubers when I first put the fork in. Not sure what variety it is.

A couple of hot days it was really windy, threatening our sweetcorn which now have cobs forming. The magpies have taken a liking to these on site so we’re planning some kind of cob protection.

The aubergine plant is producing lovely fruits - look at this beauty!

I used that along with courgettes, onion, tomatoes, garlic and passata to make a large batch of “ratatouille” and froze 4 portions. We had one with fried gnocchi the other night and it was delicious.

We went to a ‘Summer Evening’ event at the Newtown Road Cemetery in Newbury at the beginning of the month. The recorder recital was a bit awkward but it was a nice evening so we sat outside and then wandered around the graves which date back to 1850.

The Bat Talk was what we went for and it was very interesting. The expert, Linda Clark, brought her two tiny pipistrelle bats along for us to have a close-up look. They’re so sweet. These can’t fly so she has them at her home and feeds them mealworms. They can live for 12 years, I’m not sure how old these are. It seems we’re doing all the right things to encourage bats on the allotment, which is good news.

I’ve been decorating the hall all week, still a work in progress… It’s a cheery bright yellow as you can see. I still need to paint the cupboard doors, put up shelves and lay a laminate floor 😮‍💨 All because we bought a pretty lamp on holiday 😄 Thank goodness Jamie can advise, I’m not very practical with DIY-ing. 

The song title is in honour of the new paint job, provided by The Fifth Dimension. It’s a sing-along for a Sunday morning. Look at that groovy bunch 🤗 It can also recognise that the solar panels were being fitted at the allotments for our water pump - much better than needing petrol for the generator all the time - a bit more work till they’re in use, but nearly there. And we have a partial solar eclipse to look forward to next week - hope the clouds stay away for that bit of excitement.

Emergency!

Don’t panic - there’s no emergency! The title is because this is blog post number 999 - my (mostly) allotment diary since 2011. We’ve had Plot7 since 2009 and my records were originally in a notebook but an electronic record is so much better for re-capping, comparing and especially for the photos. 🙂

This is the hottest, driest year we've experienced and the plot isn't looking its best. Even the weeds (except bindweed) are struggling to grow this year.

The bunting is only providing colour, rather than support, now that England were sadly beaten by Argentina in Wednesday night's semi-final. It's been such a great World Cup such a shame for our lovely team.

A happy squad after winning the quarter final

The flags aren’t the only bit of colour but, with barely any rain for over a month now, it’s certainly not the happiest looking plot. Watering the individual plants is so much less effective than the whole area getting a good drenching.

But, if you look closer, there are spots of joy amongst the dry soil and grass. You can see all the self-seeded snapdragons around the edge of that front bed.

And these crinkly daisy flowers in a pot of lobelia - this is one of the perennials I grew on.

The sweetpeas, nicotiana and verbena boriansis are still attempting a show.

The hollyhocks are standing tall, surviving the strong winds that we’ve had this week. New buds are still opening and the bees love them.

The Maximilian sunflowers have begun to flower - smallish flowers on tall stems. They should be pretty, drought tolerant and long-lasting but I have just read that they can grow 8ft tall and come back each year - hmmm, I think I sowed them in the wrong place at the front of that bed 🙄

Under them are the tagetes that were resurrected after the frost appeared to have killed them. The six plants are full of flowers.

We’re enjoying lots of potatoes at the moment. I pulled the remaining Orla plant so we used the largest ones, which were still quite small, to make these tasty double-baked potatoes stuffed with cheese, shallots and chives. So tasty. We have two Baby Lou potato plants to pull and then I’ll be able to plant the leeks in that spot.

This was a nice trug with ingredients for a puff pastry tart, but the puff pastry looked dodgy so we ended up cheering up a boring margarita pizza instead. That’s the last of the broad beans though - too much effort to find so many beans have weevil damage. I really need to get round to Autumn/Winter sowing again this year.

And there are more vegetables waiting in the wings - the beans for drying are on their way, though I don’t know which beans they are at the moment as the germination was so sporadic so my neat rows got a bit confused.

And we have mixed pickings of runner beans and French beans this evening.

We’ve already picked the occasional tomato but they’re ripening in numbers now. They’re so sweet, I think these are all Rubylicious except for the one Crimson Plum and there may be a Honeycomb in there but we were expecting them to be more orange.

The weather continues to be very hot, in the mid-twenties so pleasant especially sitting under a sun umbrella. Morning and afternoon watering continue and no rain forecast for the foreseeable.

999 provide the title track (see what I did there?) and what a great blast from the past.

Jammin

I've been jam-making this morning! It doesn’t happen often.

It’s made with one of our Fig Leaf gourds (aka Shark’s Fin melon, aka Black Seed squash, aka Alcayota), a spaghetti squash. Funny to put a whole big squash in the oven, but that’s the start of the process and makes breaking through the skin slightly easier.

 I mostly followed this recipe but didn’t add walnuts and zested a whole orange as well as adding a slice. It seems to be extremely sweet with half as much sugar as pulp (I got ~500g from this squash).

It’s meant to be good with cheese which I need to put to the test… And a fig leaf gourd isn’t just for jam - this one was a good substitute for our lack of pumpkins!

I like the glowing reptile-type skin. I had a bad throat so Halloween was a bit of a subdued celebration plus we had to eat all the treats because no-one came to call 😊

We went to Newbury Racecourse the next day for the fireworks - it was fabulous! Though the 9km of walking was more than we would have liked, especially Jamie.

The fireworks will continue for at least another week. We enjoyed watching some from our doorstep last night and have a bonfire event later this week which we’re looking forward to.

We’ve even had a little visit to the plot to pick some leeks - the hedge, full of sloes and hawthorn berries in that low sunshine was so beautiful. The nasturtiums have re-flowered and the cosmos, verbena and nicotiana are all still in flower.

That was the plan for the leeks - a delicious cheesy leek pasta with veggie lardons. Unfortunately the leeks came from Tescos - this is how our leeks look….

That is the damage caused by the allium leaf miner. And this is its pupa. This pest has only been in the country since 2002 but it seems to be particularly busy this year from what I’ve read.

All those leeks need to be pulled (not composted on site) and the onions and garlic planted next to them may succumb too - though leeks tend to be the prime target apparently. I shall have to keep a close eye on this patch. So annoying - leeks are such a useful veg to grow.

Oh well, just another pest to be aware of…

We joined a HAHA versus Hungerford Twinning Association skittles evening on Friday which was a lot of fun. It was the first re-match since Covid and HAHA retained the cup. Yay!

The title song is of course provided by the late great Bob Marley - ah, what a song - singalong now 😊

Beautiful Things

Before our weekend away I had to do a final water in the polytunnel - outside could look after itself for a few days, especially if this was the weather September was going to bring! Between torrential downpours I picked more tomatoes and left them on the Spares shelf, we'd already given some away to neighbours. I was tempted to take some away with us, but I think they have tomatoes in Bath 🤭 

The two redcurrant tomato plants are producing masses of tiny tomatoes - they’re a bit of a pain to pick, it would be considerably easier if whole trusses ripened at once, but they are so tasty and photogenic I’m glad I grew them.

I made the confit “con-fee” (apparently) with some of the redcurrant tomatoes as planned. I've mostly been having them as toppings for sandwiches and cheese biscuits. There are some left which we may have with halloumi tonight - they only keep for a fortnight in the fridge. They produce a delicious pop while eating them. The oil can be used for pasta, salads or cooking. I used some for frying aubergine this week.

Confit - redcurrant tomatoes and garlic

The aubergines have done well in the polytunnel this year - these were from the Graffiti plant.

They were used, along with tomatoes (obviously) for this tasty chilli.

And the radish pods were used in this concoction with non-chicken and an onion sauce - delicious. The pods didn’t last long, they’ve gone past their best now and rather stringy so the plants will be next in-line for the compost bin.

This is our latest trug which includes some Meatball aubergines. There are still quite a few small fruits on the plant, but that’s the last Graffiti for the year.

And this trug has more dried beans and our first melon, which I think is ripe. Plus a few tiny, tasty carrots -  not sure they appreciated being container-grown.

The flowers are really enjoying the sunshine and showers weather at the moment, even though the nights are getting a bit chilly for me.

We went early with making some sloe gin using sloes from the allotment hedge - they’re so abundant this year. The sloes were frozen before adding to the gin and the jars are shaken regularly so the colour is deepening for (hopefully) a tasty liqueur around Christmas.

And just to show how autumnal it is out there …. This large fungi emerged in the woodchip pile. Not sure of the variety so it didn’t get eaten!

And because this post contains some beautiful things, Benson Boone provides the title track - enjoy!

Don’t Give Up

Tomato season has arrived on our plots. I’ve been looking up ways to use the tomatoes and passata was the easiest solution so I have some bags frozen now - they should last 3 months.

We used some of it fresh for this tasty pasta dish - it used up the last of last year’s yin-yang beans which I’d pre-cooked in the slow cooker for 8 hours, avoiding the overnight soak.

The British Tomato Association have some nice recipes so I may use the redcurrant tomatoes for a confit, otherwise they’re mostly good for salads or garnish. I was surprised to see that ‘Tomato Fortnight’ is in June which the Tomato Association consider ‘peak tomato season’ - shows the difference between commercial and home-grown! This was another trug from last week.

The radishes, carrots and aubergine were roasted with potatoes and halloumi and the giant courgette was cut into rings and stuffed with a chestnut stuffing.

Jacob’s Cattle, Greek Gigantes and Borlotti

You can see that I’ve managed to dry some beans, just in time as we’ve had some significant rain over the last few days and have measured 20mm on the plot. I may dry the runner beans too as the meagre amount that we’ve picked have already gone stringy - what a dead loss! 

We were lucky that the rain stayed away for the Bank Holiday weekend. Hungerford’s Beer and Music Festival was on for three days. We had two lovely afternoons sitting in the Sun, listening to live music and drinking real ale plus the barbecue had veggie burgers - woohoo!

Cheers!

On Plot3 the squashes are trying to fruit - the Shark’s Fin melon (squash) has a couple of good-sized fruits but I’m not sure that the Festival or Taheri Melon squash are going to achieve anything edible but I do hope so! 

Shark’s Fin melon squash

So today’s the last day of August, it’s seemed a quick, but beautiful Summer and I hope it’ll continue for a few more weeks giving the rest of our sunflowers time to bloom 🙄 Poor little plant desperately needed a drink that day!

Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush provide the positive song title as we move into meteorological Autumn and see what September brings us….