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!
Saturday 23 September 2023
Sorrow
Sunday 7 August 2022
Rewind The Film
It’s here! The new drone video of the site, courtesy of Colin de Fraine.
I hope you agree that the plots are looking amazing from all the different angles. How dry it is though! Still no rain, thank goodness for the borehole and generator to pump our water.
Friday 3 June 2022
Army Dreamers
We have froglets! The tiniest you’d ever see! I’m so happy 😊
There are a least five. The weird thing is that there are still lots of tadpoles which haven’t even developed legs yet. And, weirder still, the frogs are smaller than the tadpoles! 🤔 Here you can see how small this one is compared to duckweed.After a bit of a chilly start to the week, yesterday was lovely and, because it was a Bank Holiday, the site was really bustling. We planted out our three types of climbing beans: Scarlet Empire runners, Lingua di Fuoco borlotti beans and Blue Lake French beans.
Saturday 23 October 2021
A Forest
So that's the last of this year's squash tunnel photos - I hope I didn’t hear a little cheer - the area is cleared and waiting for the trenches to be re-dug in time for the manure delivery so that I can prepare the bed for next year.
Sunday 10 October 2021
Time of the Season
The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.
The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.
I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.