Not Perfect

What an exhausting week! Daytime temperatures exceeding 30° and nighttime temperatures hovering around 20° Phew, it really was too much, especially with my lingering cold 🤧

Morning plot visits to give everything a water, a quiet sit down and then home to recover. Most of the plants seem pretty happy. The hollyhocks and sweet peas have loved it.

The yellow splash in that photo is a big clump of ragwort. I know it’s a weed but the insects really love it and it’s nice to see a bit of yellow. Surprisingly no cinnabar caterpillars or moths yet, but I’m sure they’ll arrive.

The sweet peas are a lovely jewel-coloured mix with a delicious fragrance. I’m picking the flowers regularly in the hope to extend the flowering season. They are sown with some mangetout but they are only producing infrequent pods and by the time I spot them they have already filled out with peas, but they are a tasty plot-snack.

The salad has gone past its best. The lettuces have bolted and lots of the little turnips have brown splodges inside - even though they look perfect on the outside. It seems to be due to boron deficiency so if I grow them again I’ll need to remedy that in the soil. It’s a shame as they are a nice addition to salads. I’m leaving the remaining radish in the ground; the roots have gone woody, but I’ll eat the seed pods once they start to appear.

The runner beans are flowering and climbing up the old polytunnel frame. They are mostly Painted Lady but I think a few Scarlet Empire flowers have appeared too. On the other side of the frame the second sowing of Gigantes and Borlotti have finally germinated.

The dwarf bean plants that we bought from a Garden Centre appear to be climbers, so I put up some netting for them to cling on to. They have small mauve flowers so we’re thinking they’re probably purple French beans. (I’m sure that central post is straighter in real life 🤔)

We have some parsnip seeds germinating on paper towel and sweetcorn kernels soaking so I hope to sow them today or tomorrow. We sowed a couple of mini cucumbers and one has just grown its first true leaf so we’ll be planting that out in a big pot soon - the temperatures have fallen back to normal so we can think of actually achieving a bit more on the plots. Though it has been nice sitting watching the flowers and wildlife. There are lots of butterflies about, including marbled whites like this beauty which I freed from the polytunnel.

Here are a few of the pretty flowers:

Californian Poppies

Verbena Bonariensis, Nicotiana, Dianthus and Coreopsis

Hollyhocks

The song title is provided by Tim Minchin and it’s to celebrate our first trug of the year - Orla potatoes firkled, a few shallots, tiny carrots and wobbly courgettes. Well, they’re definitely not perfect but they were tasty.

Here’s the song, particularly liking the interaction with passers by. Filmed in Leeds by the way.

Heat Waves

Oh, I know I’ve moaned a lot about the weather over the last 6 months or so; too cold, too wet, too windy but the last 3 days really have been too hot! Even for me, a Sun worshipper. The early mornings are so beautiful and not too exhausting to carry watering cans around.

A few of us had an early-ish session on the roundabout on Sunday morning, before it got too sweltering.

It’s just about complete now, though Nia wants to fill a few spots. There are two outside rings of seed - calendula and cornflower. We’re away for a couple of weeks soon so I hope when we return it’ll be a mass of flowers… it would be helpful to have a few downpours.

We waited for storms yesterday; we could hear thunder nearby but it seems that a fierce storm emptied all the rain over Wiltshire and didn’t reach Berkshire, at least not Hungerford - shame, but the building clouds were impressive.

Watering is an unavoidable chore at the moment, the tomatoes are happy in the polytunnel but germination of our beans seems slow (nearly 2 weeks, though we’ve now seen that some have germinated but not appeared above ground yet). We decided to buy some dwarf bean and runner bean plants yesterday. If the sowed beans also grow then that’ll be a bonus. It feels like there’s too much bare earth showing at the moment, but it is only May so I think I’m being impatient.

The runner bean plants we bought are Painted Lady which are a red and white flowered variety.  As it happens we’ve just started seeing Painted Lady butterflies on site, they’re very pretty and quite large but I haven’t managed to get a photo yet. I did capture this lovely Small Copper butterfly that was in the polytunnel. Wasps will eat them if they stay in there so we always release them.

And this impressive male thick-legged flower beetle was on one of the perennial pot plants - it eats pollen so doesn’t cause any damage. No points for guessing how he got his name!

There are masses of bees and other flying insects about. They really love the purple thyme flowers but this bumblebee was determined to get something from this pretty poppy.

We’ve been waiting to see the great tits fledge - the parents have been so attentive. Taking turns to take grubs and caterpillars back to their nest in that storage area. They’ve not minded us working around them. The great tit is in that photo.

Here’s a little video where the parent flapping its wings seems to be encouraging the young to exit but then the other parent takes some food down to the nest. When we went back in the afternoon there was no sight of them so it seems we missed the little ones actually fledging, but it’s been nice watching the parents over the last few weeks.

The flower plot is looking pretty with pink verbascum, white valerian, blue Nigella and red poppies providing scent and colour. 

These wild poppies are so delicate and pretty but the flowers don’t last a day. Other seedlings are emerging but no flowers yet.

We were amazed to see that the remains of the tagetes French marigolds which were completely frosted and brown have actually re-grown! Good job I was lazy and didn’t bother pulling them! I definitely thought they were dead. 

Monday was incredibly hot - the hottest May Day on record, it was certainly about 32/33° on the plot and Jamie and I had a barbecue <phew>. We did start quite late in the afternoon and stayed till the Sun was about to set. It was so lovely, mostly staying in the shade and just enjoying the lovely warmth in between cooking.

I lay on the grass at one point, it was quite nice and cooling and provides a different view of the world, although it was rather itchy. Aah, just look at that beautiful blue sky.

My next post will probably be about Tenerife, unless something dramatic happens during our final plot visits this week….

The song title is thanks to The Glass Animals as the heatwave continues. 

Changes

Here we are in June and some real rain arrived yesterday.

We were enjoying coffee in the polytunnel watching the plants enjoying the rain. In between some torrential downpours I managed to plant out the dwarf purple Mistik French beans which germinated at home in a week and direct sowed a row of these Jacob’s Cattle Drying dwarf beans.

We have three wigwams of climbing beans: Scarlet Empire runners, Greek Gigantes and Lamon Borlotto, which have been difficult to germinate this year. I’ve attempted to direct sow a few to fill a couple of gaps but may only have four plants.

We started the month with a plot barbecue for Jamie’s birthday. We had to delay it for a day so we could sit and enjoy sunshine rather than hide from the wind - May has been such a windy month. It was a really lovely day and Ivan joined us for a while too. 

Our first broad beans were included in the salad. We’ve picked another lot for dinner tonight; blackfly are out in numbers so we have resorted to spraying as we haven’t seen any ladybird larvae yet.

Plot7 still has an area that could be planted up, but I’m not sure it’ll happen unless I buy some plants and maintain my method this year of <ahem> casual no-dig! At least the front quarter should fill out with parsnips, nasturtiums, radishes, asparagus pea, a sad courgette and the dwarf beans.

The leeks have been left to flower and look quite interesting like penguins looking skyward, but are taking a long time to bloom. That was yesterday’s stormy sky but no thunder and lightning.

The flowerbed on Plot8 is looking lovely with the highly scented valerian, red Geum and Nigella. Zinnia, verbena and other flowers should start filling those gaps quite soon.

If you know the scent of valerian, this photo will fill your nostrils with the memory. Such a lovely plant.

The pot courgette is producing lots of flowers now, but they’re all male so no threat of a courgette glut at this stage. I haven’t sown any climbing squash (yet) and not sure I’ll be able to deal with plot3 to plant them - we’ll see, but there’s not much time.

The sweetcorn plants are still in their protective cloches and are tiny but have started producing their flowers - I’ll be amazed if they manage to produce cobs. They’re not meant to be mini-corn 😖

The salsify put on a good show, but they finally succumbed to the wind. I’ve put lots of the stems in the compost bins, but it may not be the last we’ve seen of those three plants - the seed heads are quite impressive!

Black Sabbath provide the great song to mark all the changes since I last posted. Growing season is upon us - yay! We’re spending quite a lot of time just sitting and watching - it’s very pleasing.

This is the Day

Look at that! A month has passed. It’s been a busy month with lots of sowing, a bit of digging and some planting. The weather has been extremely dry and mostly sunny but a northerly wind has consistently caused irritation. Jamie has been walking a lot with regular allotment and shopping trips

We planted our potatoes in April - Kestrel and Duke of York in the ground, with a couple of Nicola in bags. They’ve been earthed up now, managed to avoid a couple of frosts earlier this month. They’re in front of these salsify plants - the flowers open in the morning, but close by lunchtime.

The hedgerow is full of life and we’re peppered with confetti whenever we sit on the bench as the May blossom is just going over, it’s been a good year for blossom, even with the wind.

We sowed our climbing beans (Scarlet Empire runners, borlotti and Gigantes) on 2nd May but only the Gigantes successfully germinated, so they’ve now been planted in a wigwam. We’ll re-sow the others.

The sweetcorn finally got planted out, I meant to do a block, but planted in two rows instead for ease of protection from frost. Lots of the parsnips germinated and I thinned them out this week. It’s so dry the watering is quite a chore, but essential at this time. We’re expecting some broad beans to be ready for harvesting soon, so keep them well-watered. We’ve sown carrots into a green crate and beets, lettuce and radish are sown. Chard and nasturtium are in the raised bed along with parsley, which was a supermarket-bought plant and divided into four.

The plots aren’t looking very tidy but things are growing and that’s the best we can achieve during this difficult year. The weeds are going to love that bare earth when the rain does arrive 😒 I’m fighting the bindweed in the orchard; the mulched ground makes it easy to spot the bindweed, but it just keeps coming back and our little apple and cherry trees got aphid attacked this year.

As long as we harvest a few crops, grow some pretty flowers and get time to sit in the sunshine amongst it I’ll be happy. Sadly, Jamie’s not really enjoying it at the moment, understandably, as he’s still so worn out and not feeling sociable but I hope that will improve along with his health.

The song title, provided by The The, is to mark my change to part-time working. Hopefully more free-time will help with everything!

Bad Day

That is the top of the allotment site on Friday 13th September - you may not be able to see it, but there’s frost on the ground! And it’s steaming in the bright early morning sunshine. The temperature dropped to 0.8° and walking through the site it was clear that flowers and plants, particularly squashes, had been frosted. By the next day their leaves were black 😖 Too early! We were hoping for an extended growing season after the rough start! It’s the earliest frost we’ve seen since having a plot. I’m pleased I put fleece round my butternut squash, they may be small but I hope they are worth saving. 

I chopped all the excess growth and tiny fruits off the other week so the plant could concentrate its energy into these few squashes.

We may have had the last of our Summer squashes now. These have been quite tasty, but a bit too large a seed cavity so not much firm flesh for cooking. The chard is really pretty this year, great stems!

Those lovely spring onions are from fellow-plotholder David. I can never grow them but he has too many! They are really spicy too - delicious. The cucumbers succumbed to the frost and we’re not too unhappy about it - we still have some in the fridge 😀

I’ve started drying my beans in the roof of the polytunnel. I now know why my borlotti beans didn’t grow very tall or turn red - they were dwarf Yin Yang beans 🙄 It seems my labelling got a bit muddled and none of my borlotti survived the Spring slug-fest. I have more Yin Yang beans which I protected on the frosty night as the plants are still green. I’m going to dry the runner and French beans too this year, but they’re not ready to pick yet; they need to start drying on the plant first.

We’ve cleared and dug that area in front of the bean-tunnel for over-Wintering our broad beans. And this area is ready for the garlic to be planted quite soon. It looked straighter than that while I was digging and edging 🫣

September has thrown a lot of weather at us. Thunder was rumbling round for days and we’ve had some torrential rain but it’s really hot again when the Sun re-appears. Have seen some excellent clouds.

I think we left just in time before that storm broke. And this was an interesting sky. I think this was on one of the rumbling days when it was really muggy.

But the sunshine days have been glorious!

There are so many bees and butterflies around. Making the most of the buddleia…

The sunflowers…

And the Autumn Joy sedum.

Harvests continue including our first delicious sweetcorn last night which was added to this halloumi meal. Served with our Desiree potatoes with garlic, shallots and red pepper tapenade - so delicious.

And either kale or chard has been added to a variety of different bean dishes that I’ve made using the last of last year’s beans and our carrots.

This was the last harvest of runner beans for this year. They were just on the edge of going stringy, which is why I’m going to dry them - too many on the plants to waste. And that was the only lettuce I got to pick before slugs and caterpillars had a field day!

Tomatoes are providing meagre pickings but I’m glad the frost didn’t take them out…there are plenty to come if they get a chance to mature..

Song title is a blast from the past (1983) to celebrate Friday 13th - a good song though I had almost forgotten about it and the singer, Carmel.