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!
The weekend wasn't as sunny as we'd hoped and we only visited the allotment on Sunday. We needed to pick some purple sprouting brocolli.
As you can see we also picked some rhubarb. The stems are rather thin from our plant on Plot3 but we thought it was worth a taster before the large plant on Plot8 provides us with more substantial stems. The psb was delish though.
The mangetout is growing pretty well, I'll leave it in the polytunnel for a bit longer before moving outside a week or two prior to planting out. We've put up our inner-polytunnel for added protection for our seeds which we intend to start sowing next weekend. No sign of the beetroot germinating outside yet.
Our grafted pepper plants have arrived: Sweet Eternity, Sweet Solario and Sweet Campor. They're enjoying the kitchen window for a few weeks but we have to move them if the Sun shines too brightly.
So, as that was a rather short, dull post (like the weekend 😏) I spent time writing a blogpost about frogs on my Wildlife on The Allotment blog - why not hop over and take a look <snigger>
The song title is provided by House of Pain (don't judge me, like my work colleagues did when I shared my screen and the video was shared with them all 😁 Well, they shouldn't have called me when I was having my lunch 😂)
After a busy working week it was great to have two days entirely laptop-free and to be out in the fresh air. I'm looking forward to early morning pre-work plot visits, but not quite at that stage yet!
Saturday was very windy with Storm Otto passing by to the north of us. It was grey and damp but it wasn’t cold or maybe that was because we were trench-digging. We managed to finish off the bean tunnel preparation which we started last weekend.
I did some clearing on the HAHA wildlife plot including cutting back the buddleja and mallow. I didn't want to clear all of the dead groundcover as we're due a coldspell so the wildlife needs some protection, but there are some unwanted weeds on there that need clearing otherwise they'll take over.
Now that I've cut back the old flag iris leaves I can see new growth in the bog garden. A few bulbs are emerging and perhaps with a bit more light there will be some flowers next weekend. Meanwhile, Jamie weeded the brassica cage on Plot3. I had the last of the Cavolo Nero with a gnocchi meal at the weekend, but we're still waiting for Purple Sprouting Broccoli harvests - we were tucking into it in January last year.
You can see by my shadow that that photo was taken on Sunday which was a marvellous sunny day. Such a contrast to the day before - Otto must have blown all the clouds away!
The hedgerow was full of birds with 3 robins competing for our mealworms along with the obligatory magpies, dunnocks, long-tailed tits, a male bullfinch. Kites, gulls and buzzards were overhead.
Such a beautiful blue sky and lots of plotholders turned out to make the most of it. We were all pleased and amazed at how warm it was for a February day and so welcome on a weekend! It's good to see areas of plots looking loved and ready for a new year of growing.
That's the flower garden in front of our bench. It has a few perennials just beginning to show fresh growth and the ever-present nigella seedlings. There are bulbs growing in most of those pots but only one tiny iris flower on show at present. The Christmas rose Hellebore that my sister gave me is still full of flower at home though and there are plenty of snowdrops around, just not on our plots!
I’m very happy to see that my Egyptian onions have sprouted in the polytunnel. I hope a slug doesn't discover them, they're only tiny at the moment.
The last bit of clearing and digging that I did was round our rhubarb - we should have split it before now. I hope that's my last year of saying that and we actually do it! It's not budding yet but we'll give it some manure and that may get it started. At least it's free of nigella and weeds for a while.
After a few more chats with plotholders we took our aching bodies home. What a lovely weekend. Not exactly relaxing, but very welcome work - ooh my legs! Hence the song provided by Turin Brakes - enjoy.
What a month June has been. In the last week we’ve had beautiful blue skies and high temperatures (~30° on Friday) but night-time temperatures still fell to 3.4°! And now we’ve finally had some welcome rain. What a great growing-month.
So happy to have teasels on the wildlife plot
We had a couple of early morning visits to the plot in the week, to water and enjoy the sights and sounds of the waking allotment. So beautiful, but I only had an hour before returning home to start work 😔. A benefit of a morning visits is picking fresh veg to have for lunch. That scrummy salad included broad beans, radish and mangetout.
Other days we’ve had lunchtime plot visits. Aah, working from home definitely has benefits, but I have my fifth(!) COVID vaccination at the end of month so maybe things will change… we’ll see.
Those are some of the flower seedlings that I potted on a couple of weeks ago including lobelia, zinnia and love lies bleeding. In fact I planted some of them out yesterday and their roots had grown well in 2 weeks. I’m concerned for the zinnia as slugs apparently love the seedlings 😖 Will discover later whether they survived their first rainy night in the wild…
Okay, I agree, it doesn’t look much at the moment but I’m hoping that will be a riot of colour in front of our bench quite soon.. If you want colour you have to visit the wildlife plot which is looking lovely.
I’m pleased to say that the squash tunnel is now mostly planted: 2 x Honeyboat, 2 x Festival, 2 x Sunshine and, thanks to plot-neighbour Kate, 1 x Butternut and 1 x Spaghetti.
I’ve left positions for the 2 x Winter Celebration squashes which have only just germinated, about 10 days after the other varieties. It seems that they may prefer the warmer temperatures.
The climbing beans (French, borlotti, runners and one Gigantes) are, well, climbing and yesterday I planted out the three Yin Yang dwarf French beans that managed to germinate. The mangetout have been providing small harvests for me, if they make it home, and I’ve been enjoying the Chinese Dragon radish. They’re peppery and crisp and, as you can see, much better than ‘normal’ radish.
The ‘normal’ radish have all been resigned to the compost bin as they’ve gone to seed - like they inevitably do. I don’t think I’ll bother in future; I’ll stick with the Chinese varieties.
Yesterday was a HAHA workday. We cleared the site of rubbish and surplus ‘junk’ followed by cake and a cuppa.
Which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the HAHA stall at the jubilee picnic. I wasn’t interested in the party, but when I went along to help set-up I couldn’t resist staying to help with the stall. We made over £60 and gained three new members on the waiting list, so it was very worthwhile. Our site is currently full again, which is great.
And our plots are almost full too! We’ve planted 15 Lark sweetcorn, chard, a love lies bleeding and 2 sunflowers on the last quarter of Plot7.
So it’s been a busy month so far. I hope we get outside in some sunshine today so I’d better get off my butt!
We’ve been watching TOTP from the 1990s on BBC4, which is why the song is provided by Beloved and it refers to the DELICIOUS pairing of rhubarb and strawberries - mmmmm, that smell ❤️
Look at those feathers! Interesting aren’t they? I never realised that greater (probably) spotted woodpeckers literally have polka dot feathers! Unfortunately there was a pile of them. We have a sparrow hawk which leaves piles of feathers around the site every few days.
Photo courtesy of Ted
Our HAHA chair, Ted, was lucky enough to get this photo of the sparrowhawk with some prey. It was busy protecting its dinner from a red kite overhead so Ted was able to get pretty close. Amazing. We wish it would take out rats rather than our bird life though.
We’ve been enjoying broad beans over the last couple of weeks. They’re so delicious; hot or cold. We’ve had them in these dishes: broad bean & tofu sweet chilli noodles, broad bean & ‘Vivera bacon’ gnocchi, with seitan fillets & mash, covered in parsley sauce and in allotment salads for lunch.
I actually made a cake too - I know, twice in two years - unbelievable! This one was just as a topping on strawberry & rhubarb, instead of doing a crumble. I used this recipe and it was really delicious. We don’t have any vanilla essence so I used a splosh of honey rum instead.
We had a lovely day on the allotment last Saturday. It’s our Hungerford in Bloom judging this weekend so we were doing a lot of weeding. We’re only entering Plot7 and Plot3; Plot8 is still a bit out of control 🙄
Plot3
I made another bottle waterer for the patty pan on Plot7, all the squashes and courgettes have one now, so watering is directed straight to the roots. We chop the base off the bottle, Leave the lid on and burn holes in the lid and in the cone part of the bottle so the water doesn’t pour through too quickly once it’s pushed into the ground. With trailing squash it also helps you remember where the plant’s roots are!
And can you guess what’s going to be appearing on our meal lists quite soon..?
I’m unusually writing this on a Thursday as I have 2 days off work - yay and the sky is blue-ish! We’ve been enjoying the year-late Euros, especially when England beat Germany so we’re on to the quarter finals this weekend.
So, a happy song for you to enjoy, provided by…Paul McCartney. Sing along now 🥳
The squashes for the tunnel are released to the elements now, and have been joined by an eleventh member, a spaghetti squash from Plot neighbour, Kate. I also took a patty pan plant off her hands and that’s planted on Plot7. Kate had the last spare Boston squash and all the others were re-homed too.
The Rocky cucumbers are planted out in their pots with a bit of enviromesh protection until they’ve settled in. The brassica cage is a nursery for the bean seedlings now that the polytunnel is home for the Aviditas tomatoes and peppers.
We didn’t get the torrential rain, but persistent drizzle has helped everything grow and the plots (and weeds) look happier as a result.
The pumpkins have started to spread, naturally in the opposite direction than we wanted so we’ll try to encourage a detour..
Yesterday Kerry called us over to see this beautiful Scarlet Tiger moth - it’s lower wings are scarlet. It’s on a nettle which is the preferred food of its caterpillar.
Talking of wildlife…The wildlife plot is well on its way with a few flowers appearing. This is the bog patch, no flowers yet, but plenty of growth.
I’ll do a separate post when there are a few more flowers, but here’s a taster - needed the macro camera for these mini-blooms.
I’ve been pulling some of the over-zealous red shank (Persicaria maculosa) and a lot of the thistles but today we were watching a male and female bullfinch eating thistles on another plot on-site, so it pays to keep some growing there. Mares-tail is one that we’ll pull whenever we can access it, but this stem does look pretty with the raindrop decorations, don’t you think?
Today Jamie direct-sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans and I planted out the Gigantes runner beans. I planted all eight seedlings, even the one that was growing upside-down in its pot 🙄
Jamie earthed-up the potatoes during the week and added sulphur (brimstone) today to avoid scab which seems to offer an easy route in for slugs. The Nicola variety have just started producing their first flowers.
It’s been a dull weekend, weather wise, and not very warm but ok when we were busy and I made a rhubarb and strawberry crumble this morning so I’ve almost forgotten about the nil-nil match between England and Scotland on Friday evening…
Another bonus for home-working. We visited the allotment for an early lunch and, although it was mostly cloudy, we saw the partial solar eclipse. In fact, the cloud helped with the photo.
I do enjoy an astronomical phenomenon!
It’s been a warm, moving on to hot, week and the weekend has been positively sweltering. We’ve spent lots of hours on the allotment and our runner beansare finally in the ground.
Those are Borlotti. Jamie has added wind protection round the Scarlet Empire as they’re a bit susceptible at the front of the plot, at least until they’ve got a hold on the poles.
The courgettes are freed from their mesh protection and seem to be happy. And, so far, all my squashes are intact. The plots are needing a lot of water at the moment, with no rain for a while.
It’s too hot for some of the seeds we sowed last week. The purple sprouting broccoli germinated, but succumbed to the heat yesterday and had collapsed. We’ll re-sow at home. Our peppers have been growing on at home for a while but they’re in the (tidy) polytunnel now in growing bags: Chelsea, Milena and Denver grafted plants.
Harvests are just starting - pretty meagre helpings but for lunch I had a nice salad with cold blanched broad beans, mangetout, salad leaf and chives and we’ve had a few strawberries. We’re hoping for more broad beans later this week. There they are… nearly ready.
The rhubarb has rather collapsed, not sure whether it’s the heat or because it’s so huge. We’re looking forward to this rhubarb and strawberry mixture with ice cream for puddings - it looks prettier before it’s fully cooked and smells amazing.
You may have noticed the England flag is in position - for Euro2020, postponed from last year. We do love a footie tournament and England won against Croatia this afternoon so we’re off to a good start 👏. So the song is one of the best football songs ever, by New Order and has a spurious link to the eclipse too 😊
