Daylight

We’re mid-heatwave at the moment - it’s extremely hot (high 20s) but I must say I’m loving it, especially working my part-time hours. We go to the allotment for lunch and stay until we’re flaking out.

There’s so much to water now that we’ve pretty much planted all that’s going in … well, there may be some additions if the mood takes me. My row of Jacob’s Cattle drying beans have all germinated and we’ve potted up the polytunnel. Jamie can help with a lot, but needs to sit down even more than me these days, but the allotment is definitely his happy place 😊

In the polytunnel we have:
Aubergine - Graffiti
Aubergine - Meatball
Melon - Alvaro
Tomato - Redcurrant
Tomato - Black Moon

I’ve grown one of the Redcurrant tomatoes and three of the Alvaro melons outside too - just with holes dug through this weed suppressant - hopefully the melon growth will cover that entirely. It was only after I’d planted them that Jamie piped up “why didn’t you plant them in the middle?”. Hmm, good point, of course  I’m wanting them to grow towards the centre of our plot but they’re bound to head the other way 🙄

We’ve planted a Cocktail Crush tomato and a Baby cucumber plant on Plot3. We’re expecting that just one cucumber plant will suffice, rather than swamp us with cucumbers this year! I’ve sown some celtuce, a Chinese salad veg into the raised bed. The radish, mangetout and salad leaves are providing me with some small lunch additions. I’ve used the garlic scapes in various meals and have used a couple of bunches of shallots (picked before fully mature) as I’ve given up with salad onions.

I have pulled one garlic but it needs more drying. I’ll probably wait another week before pulling the rest. And that is our first courgette of the year - we based our whole fajita meal round that tiny specimen 🤭

I’m pleased to see the verbena bonariensis has started to put on its show amongst the feverfew flowers, just as the valerian oficinalis is going over. Zinnia and pot marigolds are on their way too and I hope to have some hollyhocks photos very soon…

I’m also happy to see more ladybirds arrive with the heat. I’ve been collecting them from our stinging nettle pot (it started out as a raspberry pot) and placing them on my Gigantes beans which are climbing well, but the blackfly have found them.

So, today is the longest day and it’s meant to be the hottest. I expect we’ll be doing a lot of watering, a lot of bindweed pulling and a lot of sitting for much of the 16hours and 37minutes of daylight. Enjoy the song by David Kushner.

Early Days

The last couple of weeks we’ve had a mix of hot sunny days, frosty nights and more recently strong winds. We had a couple of showers but not enough rain to make much difference to the dry soil.

I’ve had a lingering cold and had my Covid booster so haven’t felt like working or plotting, but perhaps I’ll manage some today before rain is due this afternoon and I have a week off work after Easter so I hope there are some reasonable days for catching up. On a couple of quick visits we managed to hastily sow a row of parsnips - if they germinate I have a feeling there may be some wonky veg growing there!

And I dug a small plot and sowed mangetout. They’re usually one of our first harvests, but I’ve been a bit slow this year. I’ve put some protection round now they’ve popped up or the pigeons will clear the lot. The shallots in the raised bed have all got healthy looking green shoots now.

The purple sprouting broccoli has been producing lovely shoots - so delicious.

I’ve sown some asparagus pea and chard in modules in the polytunnel. I’ll choose the coloured chard stems to plant out, once an area has been dug.

The seedlings are growing quite slowly because of the fluctuating temperature but that is suiting our slower pace of life at the moment. Jamie’s walking without a stick most of the time, but the fatigue still makes things difficult, but slowly, slowly…

The broad bean gap-fillers that we sowed last month have sprouted and I’m hoping the blossom will be out in our ‘orchard’ when I go up in a bit - shame the sky isn’t this lovely blue today.

Blog title provided by Paul McCartney. Because it is…early days.

So Here We Are

I had an early start on the plot this morning. The Sun arriving over the rooftop at 7am while Jamie slept on. It was a quite chilly 4° but ok once I started digging. There, that looks better. The 3 plants in the middle of that plot are salsify. I’ve left them to flower as Neal’s looked so good last year.

I’m tired now, but hopefully we’ll go up later as I want to pot on some seedlings. We ordered a couple of ‘basket collection’ packs of the tiniest plug plants and potted them on in the week; they grow so quickly and seemed like a bargain though I didn’t mean to order two packs 🤦‍♀️ There are petunia, lobelia, begonia and bacopa snowtopia.

We went for a lovely walk round Bowdown Woods (near Greenham Common) at the end of March. The wood anemones are so pretty carpeting the ground between the bare trees. Masses of bluebells are growing their leaves but no flowers yet.

It was certainly our longest walk for many months and possibly a bit too much for Jamie really, but it was such a beautiful day.

Many of the trees are coated in lichens, which I understood to be a sign of clean air - though I’m not sure how clean the air is around the old RAF Greenham Common Airbase 🧐

I’ve had some home-grown veg over the last couple of weeks. I’ve pulled some leeks and found an unexpected harvest of Brussels sprouts when I was chopping back the plants - they were delicious!

And I’ve had two harvests of our purple sprouting broccoli. It is worth the wait. This was tasty in a red pepper sauce with some fake bacon.

It’s felt like a good week, helped a lot by the warm sunny weather. The temperature was 23° when we visited the plot yesterday afternoon. Jamie’s feeling quite a lot better and sleeping is more comfortable some nights which helps with motivation. We drive to the plot for a quick visit most afternoons, even if we just sit down it’s a pleasure (if there’s no cold wind). Who wouldn’t want to sit under this beautiful blackthorn?

The polytunnel needs to be opened and closed each day because nights are very cold with sweltering days in there. Our seedlings seem to be enjoying it and they’ll be staying in for quite a while yet. I’ve got a lot more digging and clearing to do…

We planted the Red Sun shallots in the raised bed a week ago, there are 12 in there. No green shoots yet, but I’m sure their roots have already started moving down to find the well-rotted manure at the base of that bed and the soil must be pretty warm.

I sowed these flower seeds at home at the end of March; no sign of the cleome yet, but the tagetes minuta have germinated and have been moved into the polytunnel. We really need to start thinking about more veg seed sowing, but there are only so many hours in the day!

Our lives have changed so much since Jamie had his stroke 2 months ago. I was used to him doing all the shopping, washing up and most of the cooking. Well, it’s my turn now! Jamie had his fair share of caring when I was on dialysis. 17 years ago today I had my kidney transplant. I regularly thank the NHS for that life-saving opportunity and now we’re thanking them again for Jamie’s treatment and care. I know where we’d both be without the NHS and it’s a bleak picture. But we have a National Health Service and it may be struggling, it may not be ‘as good as it used to be’, it may let some people down but I am ever thankful for it and will always support it.

Title song is brought to us by Bloc Party - enjoy the fine weather if you can and make the most of where you are.

I gotta Feeling

The blackthorn is in flower and look at the black sky beyond. We had a sudden sharp shower in the middle of a rather lovely warm day last weekend. By the way, in case I ever remember … Blackthorn blossoms before its leaves start to show, whereas hawthorn flowers after its leaves have emerged.

Here are the seedlings. 1 week after sowing, the redcurrant tomatoes and most of the lark sweetcorn had germinated; the courgette emerged a couple of days later. We wrapped them in fleece and they’re now in the polytunnel, getting over the shock of the move.

Zinnia Forecast were sown into window sill modules on 23rd March and those seedlings look like cress so they’re also protected in the polytunnel. I’ve sown Penstemon into modules. They’re a bit more tricksy and need to germinate at 4° before being brought back into the warmth. They’re on our cold doorstep, no sign of life yet.

I’ve been logging into work really early (before 6:30am 🥱) and then we can have a couple of hours on the plot after work - that’s the plan but it doesn’t always work out. We’ve lit the chiminea but a cold wind has meant we’ve had to cut visits short. Jamie is suffering some bad neuropathic pain down his left side, he’s on pills but we hope the warm weather will soon arrive which may encourage a bit more movement.

Jamie started a bit of weeding of the garlic and the plants definitely look happier now, especially with a bit of added garlic fertiliser. Luckily we’ve had a little rain after the photos were taken; the ground is surprisingly dry after our drenching Winter. The area beside them will be for the potatoes in a few weeks, so that’s on the list for clearing soon!

We reclaimed some pallet collars which make excellent raised beds. This will be for some shallots. After not moving for a few months I’m finding the exercise to be quite <erm> challenging! But allotment visits are definitely good for mental well-being.

I popped up to unzip the polytunnel the other day and I really wanted to stay. Look how many birds were singing during a 30second recording! So beautiful.

Our broad beans really didn’t enjoy our Winter this year, so we’ve popped seeds directly into the soil to fill the gaps.

Ok, I realise there are more gaps than plants at the moment! But there are flowers, so hopefully we’ll achieve a bit of succession harvesting…

And finally. Some PSB is appearing! Such a slow harvest, but I do think it’s worth the wait. There are more florets than that!

And now I think I’d better go up to open the polytunnel. It’s been a cold night but bright sunshine will now be heating those little seedlings up too much. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse later. It does look beautiful out there, but I gotta feeling it’s going to be cold!

Black Eyed Peas give us the song title - dance around, keep warm!

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.

Now that we’re halfway through October we’ve not been visiting the plot every morning, it just depends if we need to pick anything, water the tomatoes and peppers or close down the polytunnel. Thursday morning we were swathed in a thick fog - thank goodness for no commute!

Two days before that we had a proper frost and another day to be grateful for working from home. We had to scrape ice off the car and just look at the grass on site. The lowest temperature in the zipped down polytunnel had been -2.8°

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...