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!
Before our weekend away I had to do a final water in the polytunnel - outside could look after itself for a few days, especially if this was the weather September was going to bring! Between torrential downpours I picked more tomatoes and left them on the Spares shelf, we'd already given some away to neighbours. I was tempted to take some away with us, but I think they have tomatoes in Bath ðŸ¤
The two redcurrant tomato plants are producing masses of tiny tomatoes - they’re a bit of a pain to pick, it would be considerably easier if whole trusses ripened at once, but they are so tasty and photogenic I’m glad I grew them.
I made the confit “con-fee” (apparently) with some of the redcurrant tomatoes as planned. I've mostly been having them as toppings for sandwiches and cheese biscuits. There are some left which we may have with halloumi tonight - they only keep for a fortnight in the fridge. They produce a delicious pop while eating them. The oil can be used for pasta, salads or cooking. I used some for frying aubergine this week.
Confit - redcurrant tomatoes and garlic
The aubergines have done well in the polytunnel this year - these were from the Graffiti plant.
They were used, along with tomatoes (obviously) for this tasty chilli.
And the radish pods were used in this concoction with non-chicken and an onion sauce - delicious. The pods didn’t last long, they’ve gone past their best now and rather stringy so the plants will be next in-line for the compost bin.
This is our latest trug which includes some Meatball aubergines. There are still quite a few small fruits on the plant, but that’s the last Graffiti for the year.
And this trug has more dried beans and our first melon, which I think is ripe. Plus a few tiny, tasty carrots - not sure they appreciated being container-grown.
The flowers are really enjoying the sunshine and showers weather at the moment, even though the nights are getting a bit chilly for me.
We went early with making some sloe gin using sloes from the allotment hedge - they’re so abundant this year. The sloes were frozen before adding to the gin and the jars are shaken regularly so the colour is deepening for (hopefully) a tasty liqueur around Christmas.
And just to show how autumnal it is out there …. This large fungi emerged in the woodchip pile. Not sure of the variety so it didn’t get eaten!
And because this post contains some beautiful things, Benson Boone provides the title track - enjoy!
As expected there weren't enough sloes in the hedge by our plot so we picked ours from Hungerford Common where there were loads. Some of the berries were pretty small but we filled a jar and made a litre of sloe gin in 2 kilner jars half filled with sloes and with about the same weight in sugar. We'll just give the jars a shake every day and in a few months we'll have a lovely drink.
