Iris

Aah, I do love that dewy daisy - it's one of the Ox-Eye daisies on the HAHA Wildlife plot, which is full of growth at the moment with honeysuckle, dog roses and campion all flowering. These flag irises in the bog garden are so pretty.

And that's where this little gathering of snails ended up - there are a few creatures on the Wildlife Plot which would have enjoyed those little snails. Note to us: we really must tidy up the piles of pots on our plots - we're really not helping our situation!!

Our harvests are just broad beans and strawberries at the moment, but that is definitely not a complaint.

They are so delicious and, dare I say, we don’t seem to be sharing quite so many beans with slugs now. The broad beans are making an appearance in most of our evening meals.

That was a tasty tofu with teryaki sauce meal and last night we had beans with bangers and mash - yum yum 😋 The strawberries are sweet and delicious - no wonder our little vole is enjoying them so much, but there are plenty to share.

Ivan's been working on his old fruit bushes, which are now the HAHA Community Plot - he and Linda have pruned and picked masses of gooseberries. Lots have gone to the primary school where they have cookery sessions. We made a tasty gooseberry and strawberry sauce with our supply - the strawberries mean that not much additional sugar is needed.

Mmm, fresh strawberries for breakfast, it must be June (even if the weather isn't playing ball!). The early morning visits to the allotment for watering have been rather chilly recently. The min/max thermometer has been as low as 2.3° and the wind has been horribly cold this week. The fleece and an emergency blanket were called upon for this weekend's picnic! And the brollies were windbreaks rather than rain protection. Not a scene we expect to see in June really, is it?!

We've planted out our Festival squash, Piccolo courgette and Zuccini courgette but they are sulking at the moment because they preferred it in the warm polytunnel. They are protected by slug pellets and surrounded by netting to keep the birds away from the pellets. And these little cloches are protecting morning glory seedlings - can't risk anything these days! These are planted where my mangetout disappeared...

The beetroot and carrots have germinated but no sign of the parsnips or salsify which I sowed yet. Well, there's plenty of time really - it is only June after all...

We've enjoyed seeing 'our' robins feeding their young and now there are four or five more little speckled robins enjoying the mealworms and gathering around the water supply. And we've been seeing/hearing the bullfinches so we think they will be bringing their young out soon - all good and maybe I'll manage to get some photos for next time!

In the meantime, the allotment then work beckons - enjoy this excellent song by The Goo Goo Dolls.

I can't believe I didn't use this all the while Ivan's irises were putting on a fantastic show - remember these beautiful scenes from last year.

Something got me Started

It's been a very blustery couple of weeks - with another named storm (Kathleen) passing by but the strong winds helped to dry off the land a bit to make weeding a bit more feasible. There's still a lot to do though!

Other plots are looking a lot more ready than ours but we'll get there - in fact, the site was looking rather lovely as the Sun was slipping away yesterday. We have just one empty plot left at the moment - a bit different from this time 8years ago where I recorded that we have 50poles empty! We're celebrating 15years of the site this month.

Other celebrations have been going on in Hungerford over the last two weeks too. Hocktide celebrations included decorated trees with flags and ribbons in the town. Here's our HAHA tree (a pollarded tree is quite hard to decorate!); the man who lives nearby came out while we were decorating it and said he was looking forward to having a stew 😀 But the veg was still there last time I looked!

And this weekend the 'Constable's Parade' was held. HAHA opted for a less-traditional participation which caused much amusement. Drawing attention to the allotment in an unusual way but also interest was gathered for the Horticultural Show planned for later in the year.

We had a celebration of our own when Ivan brought some wine and we had a little picnic though it did get rather cold so we made good use of the fleece before wrapping up the strawberries 😆

And while we were sitting there we saw the first two swallows of the year on the site! So we decided that two swallows must make it Summer, but it really didn't feel like it. Hoping the fleece will save these little flowers from the frost risk this week - it would be nice if they could survive to become our first strawberry treat of the year!

Last weekend we thoroughly weeded the strawberry bed but the bindweed has started re-appearing already.

Saturday was warmer than Sunday, especially when I was clearing out the polytunnel so we now have our inner greenhouse up for the seeds to start off. There were so many bees, flies and ladybirds in there but also snails on nearly everything I moved and so many ants nests! It was a good weekend for insect spotting with several orange tip, brimstones and peacock butterflies flitting by and I added an Ashy Mining Bee update to my Wildlife blog. Also the little froggie in our pond even stayed above water for long enough to be photographed. He's definitely sharing the space with a few tadpoles.

Oh, and exciting news! Our new tiny cherry tree has it's first blossom and the pear and apple have leaves appearing. Talking of trees, here's our hazel sapling which I planted up after a squirrel had left a hazelnut in the ground at least 3 years ago.

All-in-all the weather has been decidedly April-y and we've had a fun start. And this morning Jamie has sowed our first seed - a Zucchini courgette to grow in a pot, initially in the polytunnel and then to be moved outside. Simply Red provide the song for getting started - yay! Go on, have a little dance, it's Springtime.

These Days

What a welcome long Easter weekend that was! The site was full of plotholders each day and it was great to chat to newcomers and old-timers, like us 🤭

The rain stopped for a couple of days so on Saturday we managed some digging - where the carrots and parsnips will be grown this year. It was so warm even I was down to short sleeves. The birds were singing and one of the robins has found a mate to feed. There were quite a few butterflies on site including brimstones, peacocks, whites and tortoiseshells.

This is a comma butterfly with its wings closed. The little white mark is why it’s called a comma - funny isn’t it? The most striking thing about it is the wing shape; I’d expect it to have a name associated with that!
There were other interesting insects about too, including masses of bee flies and mining bees of different varieties. I managed to get some nice close-ups of these three. Based on data from various sources I'm pretty sure the ids are correct - more photos and info on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

The dandelions are really putting on a show at the moment so these pollinators have made a very timely arrival and the dandelions have timed it so their seeds will be dispersed into the wet and windy weather this week.

Strong winds started on Saturday but it was still mostly sunny and it was warm enough for crop trousers. We burned a lot of gathered up wood and cuttings which finally had a chance to dry out. The wind was carrying the wind through the hedge to the canal, rather than towards our neighbours. We couldn’t have done it yesterday (Sunday) as the wind force was significantly higher and it rained again 🙄

Jamie's planted up two strawberry plants into tomato bags, with a pot to water through in each bag. We're hoping that the three bags and black covering will curtail the bindweed which is growing underneath in the original strawberry bed... We'll see, but at least should get a few more strawberries this year.

That freshly cleared patch now has a row of beetroot - I sowed them quite thickly as I enjoyed the early thinnings in salads last year and hope to eat the beets while they're small. I sowed mangetout into guttering in the polytunnel a week ago and it's just beginning to germinate. Along with other digging, clearing and weeding in various spots, the garlic got a chicken manure feed and we had some more tasty purple sprouting broccoli to harvest.

And these were some beanburgers I made at the end of March, with stored borlotti beans, fresh chives and shop-bought peppers - to be honest, they need a bit more seasoning so the two remaining I will have with some sort of spicy tomato sauce, but they look nice 😏

Song provided by Nico, aah these days.... and now, back to work.

Sweet Harmony

What a month June has been. In the last week we’ve had beautiful blue skies and high temperatures (~30° on Friday) but night-time temperatures still fell to 3.4°! And now we’ve finally had some welcome rain. What a great growing-month.

So happy to have teasels on the wildlife plot

We had a couple of early morning visits to the plot in the week, to water and enjoy the sights and sounds of the waking allotment. So beautiful, but I only had an hour before returning home to start work 😔. A benefit of a morning visits is picking fresh veg to have for lunch. That scrummy salad included broad beans, radish and mangetout.

Other days we’ve had lunchtime plot visits. Aah, working from home definitely has benefits, but I have my fifth(!) COVID vaccination at the end of month so maybe things will change… we’ll see.

Those are some of the flower seedlings that I potted on a couple of weeks ago including lobelia, zinnia and love lies bleeding. In fact I planted some of them out yesterday and their roots had grown well in 2 weeks. I’m concerned for the zinnia as slugs apparently love the seedlings 😖 Will discover later whether they survived their first rainy night in the wild…

Okay, I agree, it doesn’t look much at the moment but I’m hoping that will be a riot of colour in front of our bench quite soon.. If you want colour you have to visit the wildlife plot which is looking lovely.

I’m pleased to say that the squash tunnel is now mostly planted: 2 x Honeyboat, 2 x Festival, 2 x Sunshine  and, thanks to plot-neighbour Kate, 1 x Butternut and 1 x Spaghetti.

I’ve left positions for the 2 x Winter Celebration squashes which have only just germinated, about 10 days after the other varieties. It seems that they may prefer the warmer temperatures.

The climbing beans (French, borlotti, runners and one Gigantes) are, well, climbing and yesterday I planted out the three Yin Yang dwarf French beans that managed to germinate. The mangetout have been providing small harvests for me, if they make it home, and I’ve been enjoying the Chinese Dragon radish. They’re peppery and crisp and, as you can see, much better than ‘normal’ radish.

The ‘normal’ radish have all been resigned to the compost bin as they’ve gone to seed - like they inevitably do. I don’t think I’ll bother in future; I’ll stick with the Chinese varieties.

Yesterday was a HAHA workday. We cleared the site of rubbish and surplus ‘junk’ followed by cake and a cuppa.

Which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the HAHA stall at the jubilee picnic. I wasn’t interested in the party, but when I went along to help set-up I couldn’t resist staying to help with the stall. We made over £60 and gained three new members on the waiting list, so it was very worthwhile. Our site is currently full again, which is great.

And our plots are almost full too! We’ve planted 15 Lark sweetcorn, chard, a love lies bleeding and 2 sunflowers on the last quarter of Plot7.

So it’s been a busy month so far. I hope we get outside in some sunshine today so I’d better get off my butt!

We’ve been watching TOTP from the 1990s on BBC4, which is why the song is provided by Beloved and it refers to the DELICIOUS pairing of rhubarb and strawberries - mmmmm, that smell ❤️

No Rain

April’s a tease; making us think it’s sowing time, or even Summer-time, then going cold and windy.

We had a few hours on the plot last Saturday and Sunday. Lovely in the sunshine; chilly in the easterly breeze.

Hairy legged bee (female) on Dead Nettle

The wildlife plot is a year old this week. The bog garden plants have spread well and the cowslips will definitely need dividing for next year. There are seedlings popping up, along with a few more flowers, though mostly dandelions which we try to clear before they seed but the bees do love them.

The radish seeds sown last week have germinated and something is already enjoying them 🙄

We sowed some more sunflowers and rainbow chard - into modules so that I can plant on the coloured ones rather than the green leafed plants. Also, our grafted tomato plants have been delivered - Crimson Plum. We’ve potted them on and they’ll stay home until the weather behaves or the plants get too straggly.

Look at my Loves Lies Bleeding seedlings! They’re so tiny, like cress at the moment. I'm wondering whether I shouldn't have sown them in clumps.

Jamie put his new toy composter together. It’s a rotator and is meant to produce compost in 3-4 weeks! It doesn't hold very much, but if it's successful we could try a larger model.

Beside the composter there is a pot of snowdrops. I planted those snowdrops about 20 years ago at home and they've never produced a flower or divided! I'm hoping it was their position rather than the actual plant. We'll find out next year...

And I did a bit of digging on Plot3. Trying to keep up with our new neighbours 😀

The strawberries are flowering around the site. The night-time temperatures are close to freezing at the moment though so those flowers may not make it into fruits - as happens most years. These plants are in the polytunnel so may get away with it, as the temperature is held up by about 1°

The song title is brought to you by Blind Melon (although we did have a tiny shower on Monday, you get the gist!)