Convoy

Ohh I do love a wispy cloud - especially when the sky is that blue! No enhancement necessary, beautiful! That was Saturday - a perfect day for Hungerford's D-Day commemoration events. I walked up the High Street and enjoyed seeing all the visitors sitting by the canal and lining the road, which was bedecked with flags and ribbons.

I came back to our less-crowded end of town for the 60-vehicle convoy to pass by. It was a bit late as it got stuck behind a steam engine which was also heading for Hungerford - haha, it's happened to us all! But standing waiting in the sunshine was no chore.

This old 1930s fire engine is driving past Hungerford's old fire station 😊 It was fun watching all the vehicles pass by waving and honking their horns. Oh, here's another cloud photo.

Following that interesting interlude we went back to the allotment. Such a beautiful day to sit, watch and chat but we also had a lot of work to do this weekend. I finally managed to clear the final quarter of Plot7 - almost impossible to dig, but luckily Cavolo Nero doesn't need a soft base. Fellow plotholder Mari responded to my plea for plants (thanks Mari!) so now I have 3 planted. I've put a net over them for now but it will need to be higher than that when they start growing - I'm hoping that the enviromesh will prevent whitefly which kale is so prone to.

The radish and chard that I sowed last weekend have germinated and I've sowed a row of Yin Yang beans alongside the one plant that germinated at home. I think I'll direct-sow some dwarf french beans too as the french beans on the frame on Plot3 are a bit sluggish.

We've planted our brassica into the cage on Plot3: 4 brussels sprouts and 5 purple sprouting brocolli. The ground there was rock solid too but they should appreciate that...

There are 3 sunflowers (multi-headed) planted out in the sweetcorn patch along with the 2 Festival squash and some zinnia. I'm hoping this is the 'Before' photo and quite soon that will be a lovely lush-looking plot full of flowers and foliage.... We're expecting to finish the last of the broad beans this week - they've been excellent this year - and they'll make way for the leeks in a few weeks time.

The verbena bonariensis is looking good - prettier in real life, but the lower level of the flower bed is looking rather bare. I'm sure the zinnia, marigolds and snapdragons will pretty that up quite soon, if they get a chance to fill out - although, look! It's July already 😯 Looking at last years photo we seem to be about 2 weeks behind at the moment, really hoping we get an extension to the end of the growing season.

I'm sure it'll be fine - just like the England football team who put the fans through hell last night but went on to nick the match in the final minutes! Yay- come on England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

And there's a pretty potato flower - Desiree.
Now, enjoy the song by CW McCall - oh those seventies movies!

And don't forget to VOTE - unless you're voting for the wrong choice in which case don't bother! 😁

You Need Hands

Look at all that fresh new growth. That was last weekend, a nice sunny day but a freezing wind and there’s fleece protecting our strawberry plants because there was frost in the week. I weeded the flowerbed by hand. Perennials are emerging and I’ve bought lots of flower seeds, mostly annuals, for sowing quite soon. I pulled quite a lot of the Nigella which does rather take over, but they are pretty flowers and seedheads.

What you may not have noticed in the photo is this broomrape (Orobanche) just emerging, there’s another one popping up too. They’re parasitic plants which get their nutrients from the roots of their host plants. If it’s Common Broomrape, which is likely, it has multiple rather than one preferred host plant - it should be more obvious when it grows more.

And here are a few of the tadpoles in our tiny pond. They stay low when the weather is cold but you can see movement when they’re eating the duckweed and they’re enjoying the algae growing on the sides of the pond. They’ll move on to eating meat quite soon so they can eat snails and flies that fall in the water. I really hope they get a taste for snails, there are so many everywhere!

At last there’s a bit of sowing and planting underway. These are shop-bought; a Blight Buster tomato, Money Maker tomato and a Summer Ball yellow courgette which we’ll grow in the polytunnel until (if) Summer arrives. Jamie has sown some Claret purple sprouting broccoli and Brechin Brussels sprouts seeds on another windowsill and we planted the potatoes yesterday! Yay!

Four Desiree into the ground on Plot7, two Wilja and four Rocket into bags on Plot8. 

I do like a close-up of potato chits! Such interesting features.

It was actually quite a pleasant day yesterday. Though rain threatened it didn’t arrive till later so we had a nice few hours on the plot and I got a bit more weeding done where I want to sow my mangetout. Last weekend I weeded ‘The Orchard’ - ok, so just 3 tiny twigs at the moment, but look!

Our first blossom! One day that may be a cherry 😄

Aah, look at that gorgeous blue sky and fresh leaves on the trees. This was last week, so beautiful and the birds are really active. On the advice of plotholder Linda we’ve downloaded the Merlin app and it’s great for recognising bird song, perhaps we’ll even learn from it. There are plenty of robins, blue tits, goldfinches and wrens around as well as gathering numbers of swallows. Also, lots of magpies, crows, jackdaws and 11 red kites circling overhead!

I’ve been watching this jackdaw and its mate from our window. See the two sticks poking up from the chimney pot - he’s been having a lot of trouble with them! I bored Jamie for hours with updates the other day 🤭 The jackdaw had selected a stick that was far too long to manoeuvre and he kept dropping it, I think he gave up in the end. And that’s why I decided on the song title - Malcolm McLaren’s version from the Great Rock & Roll Swindle rather than Max Bygraves.

Bridge over Troubled Water

It can be difficult getting into the swing of things after Christmas and 2024 started with such rotten weather that it hasn’t been very motivating.

The rain, brought by Storm Henk, was so torrential that there has been serious flooding in nearby towns and Hungerford’s rivers and canal have all overflowed with some houses needing to be pumped out - not us I’m pleased to say. What a truly horrible way to start the new year 😞

Here's the River Dun by the war memorial, at least 1 metre higher than it should be, with water gushing through from flooded areas upstream. Thank goodness for the marshland around Hungerford to capture most of that excess water. Nearby Marlborough didn’t fair so well…

We’ve had a few visits to the plot, mostly just to plod around thinking how nasty it looks, but our leeks have survived the drenching and continue to grow. This photo shows that there has been some very welcome sunshine this year - makes a nice change to see it on a weekend!

And the broad beans have grown quite tall under their protection as the weather has been mostly mild so far this Winter. We’ll leave them protected for now as the weather has turned frosty and snow is threatening over the next week…

The spindly garlic is the only other sign of good things to come on the allotment.

At home I’m so pleased to see that our hellebore is coming back to life. It’s such a pretty and long-lived flower - perfect for these dull months.

Apart from soggy plot visits, I have regular morning walks up the High Street, just to move a bit! I really like to visit the fruit and veg stall at our market - when we don’t have our home-grown this is the next best thing I reckon.

I’ve bought a few seeds which look interesting including some flowers (Zinnia, penstemon (from one of my mum’s flower lists) and echinacea) and veg (purple dragon carrots, piccolo courgette and biquinho red pepper). We haven’t really started our planting plan yet, but will do soon. 

I haven’t done any interesting cooking yet this year, but after Christmas I made this lovely chestnut & sprout puff pastry ‘thing’ and a delicious parsnip and chestnut soup. I probably should pull another parsnip for soup this weekend actually. I shouldn’t waste them as they’ve grown so well for a change!

Look at that horrible brown water which is usually calm, clean and has trout in. Aah well, it’ll soon be Spring 🫣 But it gave me an excuse to use this beautiful song, of course, provided by the great Simon & Garfunkel. Sit back, relax and sing along. Beautiful.

The New Year

Two weeks in and Christmas feels long forgotten, what a shame. We had such a lovely break. Here's a post-Christmas snack I made, very tasty along with the home-made carrot and patty pan chutney.

"Sprout Surprise"! The sprouts were from our plot and these little puff pastry cheesy parcels were a very tasty snack.

This beanfeast was flavoured with Rose Harissa and smoked paprika - it covered a couple of easy meals. The leftover celery and olives were added to a can of shop-bought mixed beans (not as good as my home-dried, but did include green beans and sweetcorn) and a carton of passata.

Now it's back to work. Luckily the weather has been so foul - since November it seems! - that there is nothing tempting me out of doors. I have been out a few times this year and we did visit the plot a couple of times but it's just soggy and not very interesting. The rain has been incessant. All the tubs, ponds and rain gauges have been filled to over-flowing. We found a dead frog by our pond 😔

Jamie removed the bottle cloches from the broad beans but a week later the little plants had been blown sideways so we've put netted cloches over them now - normally we'd add them to protect from snow but any snow forecast for us seems to have moved on for the timebeing.

Eurgh, look how soggy it is. And it's been windy so the bench is blown over every time we've visited. The garlic and leeks need weeding but that's not possible until it dries out a bit. The leeks look rather sorry for themselves and the garlic is difficult to spot amongst the grass, but there is actually quite a lot there.

The tunnel is going to be a bean tunnel, rather than a squash tunnel, this year. We figure maybe the ground would appreciate a different type of crop. The squashes didn't survive the freezing December temperature drop and sadly I had to discard most of them. I'll try to eat them quicker this year. Planning and seed buying has begun. There are a couple of new things I've ordered which I'm looking forward to growing - more on them in later posts, I hope.

We just picked some veg this weekend on a quick visit. I was pleased to see that the parsnips don't have canker and the carrots may be small but most aren't slug/fly damaged. The cavolo nero is good, but still covered in whitefly that come back to life when they warm up.

And then we went home and I turned it into a chunky soup with added tomato paste, rosemary, thyme and smoked paprika. Delish!

As I tuck into the last of that soup it's a cold and frosty day which highlights some good things about working from home: no windscreen scraping required, no icy drive on the A34 and no need to go outside (unless I want to).
The song is provided by Death Cab for Cutie. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

First of the Year

The last couple of weeks have been mostly warm, with much less rain than was threatened so we had to water every day. And there have been really windy days with sun-cloud-sun. Stupid weather doesn’t know what month it is!

I like this photo of a mallow flower on the wildlife plot, with its own little wildlife visitor. Talking of wildlife, I’ve uncovered two toads over the last few days. No wonder this one looks so fat with all the slugs that are emerging.

There’s evidence of a mole on Plot3, but it’s just circled the pumpkin for some reason. The young plant is being protected from slugs and wind damage, but we’ll have to release it to the elements soon.

The Wildlife plot has another not-so-wild visitor these days! Not very wildlife-friendly is it 🤭

Here’s Plot7 looking good after a shower, so much more effective than watering but the sun and wind soon dried the soil out. I’ve been weeding and thinning between the beetroots and the Florence fennel on that quarter. 

The thinnings make a good addition to salads and I’ve even had the first few small beets chopped up raw in a salad. I need to sow some more of the Chinese Dragon radish as the first sowing are just beginning to go a bit woody and going to seed.

The harvests are fairly meagre but it’s so nice to be eating fresh-picked again. Most of the meals involve broad beans and a handful of mangetout from every plot-visit.

I’ve really taken to the early-morning plot visits. I work from 7am for an hour then have an hour on the plot before working for the rest of the day. It feels less rushed than lunchtime visits and it’s so often sunnier than the rest of the day. Just look at that beautiful sky!

That’s our potato quarter. The salad blue have lovely flowers.

Of course, not every morning visit is sunny…but things still need watering even if we are in raincoats 🤭

We’ve finally planted up our Crimson Plum tomatoes in the polytunnel- look how pathetic they are! Hope they grow quickly before blight strikes, though they are meant to be blight resistant..

And our Lizzano tomato is planted outside on Plot3 and the two Brussels sprout seedlings are in the cage - well-protected by slug pellets. The black-covered area is where our cucumbers will go, in pots.

A couple more meals on the menu this week. First a lovely salad for lunch with lovage leaves adding a delicious celery-flavour topping and Squeaky Bean pastrami-style slices.

And for dinner, I added rice to this tasty mix including What the Cluck chicken-style pieces fried in chilli and garlic oil. It’s so easy being vegetarian these days, even Hungerford sells these meat-alternatives.

And that pan contains our first courgette of the year - it was tiny and very tasty. It’s the first one that’s actually matured rather than dropping off. Plotholder, David, gave the plant to us and it’s growing in a tub. And that is why I chose this song title by Skrillex.