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, 29 March 2025
I gotta Feeling
Monday, 17 October 2022
And It's Still Alright
I made these very tasty carrot and bean burgers on Saturday. I used this recipe for my dried borlotti and runner beans from last year and fresh carrot and shallots. Our shallots actually turned out better than we initially thought, so we’ve been using them instead of onions for a few weeks now. I used a little turmeric and cumin rather than coriander and cumin. I didn’t bother adding the flour, they held together well.
That finished off the zinnias and most other things which weren't in sheltered areas on the plot. We noticed that the hedge offered protection from frost as did Ivan's grapevine.
We've almost managed to eat all the sweetcorn this year - probably just one reasonable one left on the plants for this week. And we're taking Crimson Plum tomatoes home as they ripen (or get close). The Lizzano outdoor tomato got frosted so no more tiny toms from that bush - it's yield has been a bit disappointing this year with some of the tomatoes being the size of blackcurrants and a lot splitting - obviously the weather is getting the blame for that as it usually produces delicious cherry tomatoes.
The Love-Lies-Bleeding has also not enjoyed getting so cold. I was thinking of harvesting some of the 'grain' but I don't think I will now - I'll leave it for the birds, though I haven't seen anyone enjoying it so far.
One plant that hasn't been upset by the frost is our cavolo nero. I've seen it looking good in the frost on other people's plots in previous years. The white fly are crazy on site and you just have to touch any brassica leaf to be surrounded by the tiny moths. It seems that they are frost-resistant too.
I stripped a few leaves off yesterday and after much shaking to rid it of whitefly and a good wash I blanched it then stir fried it for a bit with olive oil, garlic and tomatoes. It was a delicious addition to my all-home-grown meal last night. I can see that it's far superiour to chard... It doesn't appear to have been affected by caterpillars/slugs so I wonder if it can be successfully grown outside of the netting - I see a few people on site have done this, I shall have to inspect their leaves!
Yesterday was warm when we visited in the afternoon. As with most visits now it was mostly about tidying. Jamie did some strimming, weeding and clearing the zinnia from the raised bed while I did a bit of digging. I do enjoy digging. Look how dry the earth is, we've had some rain but it disappears quickly. We haven't worked out our plan for next year so we're not sure what's going in this plot in front of the broad beans, but I wanted to clear all the grass and other weeds that were threatening a take-over, as you can see from around the Love-Lies-Bleeding. I couldn't bring myself to pull up the self-seeded broad beans and one of them has flowers on.
In the week Jamie bought me a celeriac and chestnuts to make soup. Unfortunately we had two apples left over and seeing this recipe, I thought I may as well use them up. The apple made it far too sweet for my taste and rather ruined what would have been a delicious soup 😒
My friend from work suggested adding chilli to detract from the sweetness. It worked, to a certain extent ...

So, another weekend passes in a blink of an eye 😔 Back to work, oh, I'm already here! Have a good week all and enjoy the song title provided by Nathanial Rateliff, because the year may be flying by but, no matter what's going on in this mad country we're currently living in, so far, it's still alright...
Wednesday, 20 July 2022
In A Moment
Hands up who else was flagging like this yesterday!
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Sagging Patty Pan plant |
The sun reached the top of site first.
Jamie took the haulms off one potato plant which had died back - just one Nicola out of the row. We firkled to see how the tubers were doing - no sign of blight, so perhaps the plant just died due to lack of water. Anyway, the potatoes were lovely.
That courgette was one of Neal’s. We had a larger one than that another day and I stuffed it with shallots, garlic, baby carrots and cheese. Really delicious.Thursday, 25 November 2021
Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
November has blurred past me along with much of this year. Too much work and not enough play! I shouldn't complain, I like my job and I'm still working from home full-time - things could be so much worse!
Last week I was living off a Crown Prince squash. The beetroot noodles and peppers made a very pretty meal but I have to admit that I was rather disappointed with the pan-fried squash. It didn't have much flavour and certainly wasn't as sweet as I was expecting.
I added cayenne pepper and cumin to flavour the soup which I made with half the squash, which I roasted. Subsequent meals included more additional flavourings like this layered bake.
A tasty home-grown dish of beetroot, celeriac and squash flavoured with plenty of thyme, sage, garlic and topped off with cheese. It was meant to cater for me for 2 meals but was so tasty I scoffed the lot in one meal 😏
It was pretty cold at the weekend but we were pleased to see a bit of sunshine on Sunday. We put a small greenhouse up in the polytunnel. It's hoped that this will keep a few degrees higher so that we can start seeds a little earlier next year. So far it has shown to be 1.5° warmer than outside the little greenhouse, so that's a good start.
We had to cut the pipes down slightly so that it fit but it'll be good in the spring and there's still room for us to sit in the polytunnel 😊
We were extremely pleased to see that our Purple Sprouting Brocolli has already started producing; we weren't expecting it till February. There was only enough for one but I enjoyed it steamed with a seitan schnitzel that evening. We only have the one plant - all the others didn't make it beyond seedlings - so I hope we can keep harvesting to encourage more florets.
Here are our shallots, growing in the raised bed. Some garlic have just sprouted too.
And here are the leeks and broad beans. Both should be fine through the Winter, they can survive low temperatures and we know from last year that broad beans can be frosted down to the ground and still perk up again.
We left the plot wih a few of our small carrots, some of Neal's chard and a Honey Boat squash (definitely the most tasty squash this year). Added to the last of our shallots and pre-soaked and cooked Borlotti beans I made my staple meal - with chopped tomatoes, smoked paprika and lots of garlic. This lot did serve me for two days and it really is my favourite kind of 'cooking' - all shoved in a pot in the oven for 40minutes and eaten with bread - yum.
So there's been quite a lot of cooking for me over the last couple of weeks - Jamie refuses to eat anything that looks like this 😀 so he's on veggie burgers for the days I cook for myself. And at lunchtime this week I have some scrumptious fennel and home-grown celeriac soup - based on the basic River Cottage recipe, it's the best! I hope next year that I'll have home-grown fennel to use.
So that's what I've been up to for the last two weekends - not much and not much planned for the next few, but I have my antibody test to do later. Whatever the result, I don't think I'll be venturing out too far for a while yet - well, the weather has gone too cold for me now anyway 😉
Jamie bought me this Tweetie-Pie mug, hence the song title by Middle of the Road - I know, I know, but I was struggling to find an appropriate song 😂
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.