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!
Another bonus for home-working. We visited the allotment for an early lunch and, although it was mostly cloudy, we saw the partial solar eclipse. In fact, the cloud helped with the photo.
I do enjoy an astronomical phenomenon!
It’s been a warm, moving on to hot, week and the weekend has been positively sweltering. We’ve spent lots of hours on the allotment and our runner beansare finally in the ground.
Those are Borlotti. Jamie has added wind protection round the Scarlet Empire as they’re a bit susceptible at the front of the plot, at least until they’ve got a hold on the poles.
The courgettes are freed from their mesh protection and seem to be happy. And, so far, all my squashes are intact. The plots are needing a lot of water at the moment, with no rain for a while.
It’s too hot for some of the seeds we sowed last week. The purple sprouting broccoli germinated, but succumbed to the heat yesterday and had collapsed. We’ll re-sow at home. Our peppers have been growing on at home for a while but they’re in the (tidy) polytunnel now in growing bags: Chelsea, Milena and Denver grafted plants.
Harvests are just starting - pretty meagre helpings but for lunch I had a nice salad with cold blanched broad beans, mangetout, salad leaf and chives and we’ve had a few strawberries. We’re hoping for more broad beans later this week. There they are… nearly ready.
The rhubarb has rather collapsed, not sure whether it’s the heat or because it’s so huge. We’re looking forward to this rhubarb and strawberry mixture with ice cream for puddings - it looks prettier before it’s fully cooked and smells amazing.
You may have noticed the England flag is in position - for Euro2020, postponed from last year. We do love a footie tournament and England won against Croatia this afternoon so we’re off to a good start 👏. So the song is one of the best football songs ever, by New Order and has a spurious link to the eclipse too 😊
Yesterday was my last day of freedom - back to work today (it's too early for work at the moment, if you're wondering!!), still full-time from home so that’s not so bad, but I have so enjoyed the last week that I’m sorry it’s over already. Morning and afternoon visits to a warm, often sunny plot - perfect.
Pink, flavoured vinegar in-progress
The weather for the last two days was very warm, but not too much sunshine which (I hate to say) was a good thing otherwise we wouldn’t have achieved as much as we wanted. Like (drumroll please) my 10 squashes are planted.
They’re being protected under netting, with slug pellets, until they get established, they look so vulnerable at the moment! The cut-off plastic bottles are for ease of watering when the tunnel has become a jungle (fingers crossed).
Regular visitors may remember that I bought celeriac plants because my seedlings were stuck at the ‘cress’ stage for so long. Well, I'm glad we didn't consign them to the compost as they eventually grew and so I made a trench for them on Plot3.
Neal gave us some Early Bird sweetcorn plants so Jamie dug the area on Plot3 where the manure pile was - clearing the many weeds and tree roots and they're protected by bottle cloches for the timebeing. I intend to try some Glass Gem sweetcorn (again) on Plot7 - I'm going to sow them direct one day this week, well that's the plan.
Plot3 is really looking like a worked-plot now!
But Plot 7 (and 8) will always be the favourites because they were our first. The polytunnel has been re-stocked with the following sown into modules or pots yesterday:
Borlotto Firetongue (dwarf beans)
Gaia (dwarf soya beans)
Speedy (dwarf french beans)
Gigantes (Greek runner beans)
Purple Sprouting broccoli - these have been brought home under the grow light
Moreton's Secret mix - "very mixed lettuces" from RealSeeds. I've sowed these in a tray and put them under the enviromesh with the carrots. The polytunnel would be too hot for them
The Scarlet Empire and Borlotto runner beans have a bit more growing to do before we'll plant them outside. And look at that big strawberry. Jamie assures me that if we wait till today we'll have a handful to eat rather than just one...
The flowers are enjoying the sunshine as much as us.
Aquilegia
Geum
The song title is an aide memoire, because I thought this was interesting but forgot to add to my earlier post. We've been hearing the cuckoo for weeks - it's somewhere over the marsh
but the sound has been getting louder and closer over the last week.
Not a cuckoo
We commented that we'd never seen a cuckoo, but then last week the cuckoo and its mate were flying overhead across the allotment from North to South. The male was 'cuckoo-ing' all the way across and as it passed over you could see plotholders look up like some sort of mexican wave! It was quite a sight (and sound)! I'd certainly assumed that they only cuckoo when sitting and looking for a mate.
Phew! That was a hot Bank Holiday weekend - how lovely to spend hours in the sunshine on the allotment again. I was pleased with this photo of a recently hatched Cinnabar moth. I particularly like the cape-like wings on this specimen.
I’d normally post this to my Allotment Wildlife Blog, but Cinnabar moths have been posted on there at least twice before; they’re a regular visitor. It’s the first one I’ve seen this year, but I'm sure many more will follow. My camera’s macro was really behaving this weekend.
These are the baby strawberries in the polytunnel - as a result of Jamie's paintbrush pollination (or maybe the abundance of flying insects in there).
And this is a Cardinal beetle - another regular on the wildlife blog as they’re so impressive. They’re not a plot enemy either.
Ok, that’s it for the macro shots. Here’s a sunny shot of our irises by the pond. Notice the may in the hedgerow, a bit later than usual this year, but still May.
I’m pleased that all the squash germinated. I started digging the trenches in the squash tunnel but only got 1metre done as this weekend was too hot for digging like that! 5 more metres to go... well, the plants have more growing to do - I'll just need to feed them prior to planting out as their modules are a bit small.
Our two Rocky cucumbers germinated too. We’re protecting them for the timebeing, we know how slugs enjoy a cucumber seedling!
I earthed-up the potatoes in bags yesterday and added a bit of potato fertiliser for good measure. We were both doing a lot of weeding and tidying - getting rid of the crazy grass edges, it makes such a difference and reduces the slug protection. I dug out some of the thistles from the HAHA wildlife plot, I know they’re good for birds and insects but we need to consider the neighbouring plots and they are rather invasive. It’s definitely greening up and the plants in the bog garden are slowly spreading.
We sowed the Scarlet Empire runner beans and Lingua di Fuoco 2 climbing borlotto beans into modules. The runner bean poles are up and I’m going to use wigwams for the borlotto and Gigantes.
The earth looks very dry, but it’s still wet under the surface. We’re still surviving on rhubarb, but look at this added luxury we had from Ivan on Sunday - it was so delicious! Thanks Ivan!
So that’s the end of the month of May. I'm looking forward to a few days off work this week - allotment all the way, hopefully. The song is by Birdy, because of the cinnabar moth.
We spent several hours on the plot yesterday and today we went up specifically to enjoy the rain from the polytunnel while having a coffee.
That’s our first chive flower to open. I’m waiting for more in order to make chive flower vinegar.
And here’s the evidence that Jamie’s pollination technique worked; our first little green strawberry is on its way.
There’s a sunny-ish photo from yesterday. You can see our giant rhubarb which we’ll be living on for a while - tasty rhubarb on waffles for breakfast. Yum!
We did lots of weeding yesterday and Jamie sowed some sunflowers. Alfie gave us some spare wildflower seed so I added that to the wildlife plot and Kerry had planted some self-seeded marjoram, which the bees and butterflies love. I spent most of the time planting up pots and a trough for taking home once the plants have got a bit bigger; Fuchsia and geraniums plus some trailing plants to cheer up a spot that doesn’t get sunshine.
The carrots haven’t germinated yet, but the potatoes have emerged in the bags and the ground. Some of the sown salad has popped up, particularly the salad onions and radishes but mostly it’s the weeds that have made the most of this sunshine & showers weather.
Yesterday I sowed 5 varieties of squash at home. Autumn varieties except the Tromboncino. These are all to create my squash tunnel (fingers crossed).
Selecting 3 seeds of each and now they’re under the grow-lamp. I hope they’re as quick to germinate as the courgettes and pumpkins.
Our trip to the plot today was very wet, but the birds were singing and the new growth everywhere is so fresh and clean so it was nice to sit and watch, but once my trouser legs were soaked through it got rather chilly so we went home.
The song title is provided by Patti Smith because I found this interesting setting on my camera. I rather like it.
So here’s the song - enjoy. By the way, I’m still none the wiser about the origin of our little clay figure...
Interesting isn't she, made of terracotta. She was dirty so must have been buried for a while.
Is she from a previous plot holder or from canal dredging before the Allotments were here? If anyone knows anything about her please let me know. I couldn’t find anything similar on the internet. And, of course, if you want her back because you lost her! Intriguing, it has the makings of a creepy novel ...
Last Saturday was a lovely sunny day after the rain the day before. I sowed various salad crops in the large raised beds (radish, salad onions, perpetual spinach and other leafy crops). I planned on doing more but another plotholder was having a bbq and brought me over a glass of wine and that was the end of my work for the day! Wine, sun, allotment - Marvellous :-)
On Sunday we sowed a couple of pumpkins (New England Pie) and courgettes (All Green Bush) at home under the grow light. They had germinated within a week. So they're growing on in the polytunnel now - the temperature is meant to warm up for a while. In the polytunnel yesterday, hiding from the wind and rain, Jamie turned to hand pollinating the strawberry flowers, because there haven’t been many insect pollinators in the poly recently. I hope it’s done the job. We’ll know soon, as the petals should drop as the fruit starts to form.
We stayed chatting for a while on site, but it was too wet to achieve anything. We were looking at the masses of tiny seedlings appearing on the wildlife plot. Talking of wildlife, I had to put netting round my mangetout in the week because the pigeons have seriously nibbled the little plants - the twiggy sticks were quite a good deterrent until they blew away in last weeks storm!
Look at the beautiful blue sky. What you can’t see is how chilly the strong wind was yesterday! Though I’m pleased to say that we’re quite protected at our end of the site.
You can see how dry the ground is, so we're already having to do a lot of watering even though there isn't that much in the ground so far. We're encouraging the garlic to bulb up and have been weeding some of the flower pots to help the struggling plants that have been swamped in them for months!
I planted out the celeriac seedlings. I need to remember never to bother trying to grow my own celeriac from seed in future years - the tray I bought had more than double what I needed and cost less than the seed packet (and my home-grown seedlings are pathetic!). I made a wonky trench for them so that I can keep them wet (they need A LOT of water) and earth them up when they need it.
I’ve protected the celeriac with the fleece tunnel as our night-time temperatures are still low and it may prevent some evaporation. I planted the beetroot and that’s under the green tunnel, but it shouldn’t really need protection; it just looked a bit vulnerable in the middle of that plot. Talking of tunnels.... we think that’s a vole in our shallot patch...
I planted some rainbow chard seedlings in a raised bed. And Jamie planted up some strawberries in this hanging planter, these are in the polytunnel (and are also wonky), it’ll be nice to get some early strawbs and maybe the birds won't venture in there.
Our main job today was to sow the wildflower seeds on the HAHA wildlife plot. Lots of different seeds, as you can see; some we bought, most were gifted or freebies. Hope they beat the weeds to the surface! We may get some rain this week... The bog garden isn’t worthy of a photo; a couple of plants died (maybe frost damage) but the irises and a couple of others look like they’ll survive - well, it’s early days.
And last of all today, here's one of the frogs in our little pond. There are at least two that we've seen - they're both small, not ours from last year. The water has a lot of algae so I've been clearing it and need to get some more weed. Oh, and we heard the first cuckoo from across the marsh in the week - I do love having lunch at the allotment, definitely a bonus point for working from home! Although there's a lot of sarcasm from all the retired plotholders when I have to go back to work for the afternoon :-}
The song title is provided by Smashing Pumpkins, perhaps I should have saved it for when we have a plot-ful of wildflowers... no, best not tempt fate ;-)
Such a windy few days! I’ve been busy all week with work, but have enjoyed looking out at sunshine, rather than needing to brave the wind. I have a decoupage project that I’m working on so have been cutting pictures out of the seed catalogues but it has been making me want to buy more. I’m sure you know what it’s like!
We had a few hours on the plot this afternoon but it was still horribly windy and rather cold. Our plots gained some pots and compost bins but luckily the only damage was to a table; the glass tabletop landed in the manure pile so didn’t smash 😆. I was pleased to see that our polytunnel is still intact and most of my mangetout have germinated as have the marigolds.
We’ve set up an old fire guard as shelving for more seeds in the polytunnel. And have sown the celeriac seeds at home. I was amazed to see how tiny the seeds are!
I sowed all 40, as they can be tricky to germinate. I could have sowed them in a tray but I was keen to use these cut-off milk bottles. They’re under a cover in Jamie’s foil-coated windowsill germinators. And we have some more marigolds germinating at home too. They make such a great display and bees like them.
Meanwhile more buds are appearing everywhere you look and the birds are pairing up. It seems so Spring-like, until the wind cuts you in half! I wouldn’t want to be a seedling out there right now... just need to hang on a bit longer...
We left the site just as it started to rain, having achieved little, but at least it was a bit of time spent outside. Look at it, just waiting...
To be honest, I would have sowed something outside if it had been a bright sunny weekend. Instead, I’ll hold on.. What a great song, provided by KT Tunstall.
