Time

Well, I really don’t know how it’s September already, but it is certainly feeling autumnal and now look! 30 leeks planted for next year…I think this is why the months are flying by, too much thinking/planning ahead but needs must.

The swallows are gathering for their migration later in the month. All chitter-chattering on the wires and then a great spectacle when they swoop off en masse. A flock of swallows is generally called ‘a flight’ and also ‘a gulp’! 😀 A ‘gulp of swallows’ sounds rather 20th century to me!

Our sunflowers are finally flowering. The bees do love them and the birds will enjoy the seeds in a couple of weeks. These are quite tall multi-headed ones and the flowers are at different levels of maturity - fascinating to look closely at the different stages.

And we’ve had a few more Purple Dragon carrots and these were reasonably carrot-shaped, though certainly wouldn’t win any prizes. I like the colour of but they’re orange just below the skin. These and the Desiree potatoes were part of a tasty roasted veg meal with our garlic which is hanging in the polytunnel.

Jamie pulled another Desiree yesterday and there are some real monsters in there! That’s the large trug.

Other harvests have been fairly consistent over the last couple of weeks. Just varying the type of bean!

The cucumbers have begun to grow in this shape, probably because of cool nights - our thermometer even measured 6° the other night 😖

We also managed to grow some heart and star-shaped cucumbers again but I’ll need to buy new moulds for next year. 

Apart from masses of cucumber sandwiches we’ve enjoyed this Asian smashed cucumber salad, with soy and sesame. It’s tasty, with less salt than the recipe suggests!

The brassicas (sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli) are looking a bit weak on Plot3 but there’s plenty more growing time for that. If these critters don’t take over - these are large white caterpillars and they’ve just started to appear. We’re keeping a close eye and removing any we find at each visit.

So, on that note I’ll just share this meal we had last night - another use of runner beans; with fake bacon pieces in red pepper tapenade with garlicky gnocchi - yum yum!

The title is provided by The Alan Parsons Project - haven’t heard this for decades! Enjoy.

Cloudbusting

I took a couple of slices of bread and butter to the plot for a fresh and colourful sandwich 😀 To be honest, it didn’t taste of anything but bread and butter, but it did look pretty.

This sandwich was tastier, with the addition of a freshly picked cucumber, cheese and mayonnaise 😊.  I only recently found out that snapdragons (Antirrhinum) and French marigold (Tagetes) flowers are edible and you can order tubs of ‘fresh’ edible flowers online…! Hoho, I don’t think I’ll bother.

Anyway, enough of that silliness, (though I think my sandwiches may include a few petals more often now). This is a row of nasturtium with self-seeded snapdragons - such beautiful colours, even on a dull day.

We are at the end of July and it’s raining, as it has been for much of this month. But the growth is amazing! This is the Jack Be Little pumpkins and the Incredible sweetcorn.

The Cornell’s Delicata that I sowed is clearly not the bush variety that I’d planned the space for! It’s a Winter squash and I’m pleased to see some fruits now appearing. I’ll try to encourage the plant to grow over the mangetout frame rather than over the path…

Meanwhile our sunflowers have peaked too soon - the measuring is 4 weeks away so we didn’t want them to flower yet. But they do look good and it’s so nice to see them all around site and the bees love them.

This really is perfect growing weather at the moment and it’s a nice temperature for working in - though the HAHA Work on Saturday morning was exhausting - clearing a mass of stingers and brambles from against the site fence near the wildlife plot - my arms were tingling all evening after so much stinging!

Here’s a Timelapse of the lovely bubbling clouds yesterday. We left before the rain started, with a trug full of veggies.

I was eating separately from Jamie so could have chard and fennel which he doesn’t like, oh yes, and asparagus peas 😃 and I used a few baby leeks as spring onions. The courgette had to be picked, but will have to wait a day.

I realise it looks like I was frying coleslaw! This is the mixture of grated carrot, grated fennel, chopped leeks, cornflour and a bit of seasoning. I should have chopped the fennel, or maybe added some of the foliage as the flavour didn’t really come through, but after frying for about 5minutes on each side, then 10minutes in the oven these fritters were very tasty with a satisfying crunch.

This was a teriyaki tofu and courgette meal we had the other night - I found it delicious. No home-grown tomatoes yet but they’re coming on in the polytunnel along with peppers and aubergines.

The French and Borlotti beans are flowering and growing over the old polytunnel frame so we should have some beans to add to our meals in a few weeks…

I’m into my second week of leave (feels like I’ve been work-free for ages) so don’t want to wish the weeks away! We’re enjoying watching England win their matches in the Women’s World Cup - supported by my new gnome 😀 - though the matches are tighter than expected!

Song title provided by Kate Bush - I was amazed to see that I haven’t used this title before. What a great song - but the Cloudbusting can stop now - we’ve had enough rain for the timebeing…

Start!

It’s been a very, very hot week. And dry; showers have passed us by and we’ve literally been able to count the raindrops! That’s not very helpful rain at this time of year so we’ve been watering and watering - backwards and forwards from the troughs. So much walking in fact that I've already exceeded the 68,000 steps for Kidney patients so I need to think about a new target...

This potted rudbeckia fulgida was looking how we felt, but (like us) perked up after a long refreshing drink. Over the weekend we planted up most of the remaining seedlings - I've added a row of rainbow chard and french marigolds to that plot - each plant getting a good splosh of water, but they really want some decent rainfall.

We've planted the two aubergines from the HAHA Plant Swap into the polytunnel - I'm not really keen on aubergine but will eat them if they're home-grown and they are such a lovely looking fruit (yes, like tomatoes they're a fruit not a vegetable - I had to look it up).

I've planted up two flower troughs for HAHA - I'm rather ambitiously hoping that they fill out a bit ahead of next weekend's Open Day, but I think that's rather unlikely!! Oh well, they should look cheerful in July and August.

I'm pleased to say that the mangetout are finally being harvested - a few being chomped on the allotment and others being added to various meals. Even if they don't make it into a meal I pick them to keep them producing so they don't run to seed. On the other hand, I'm pleased to see that these have run to seed. These are the Radish Rats Tails, which should produce long pods for adding to salads, stir fries or for pickling. I'm looking forward to seeing them form.

In the background of that photo you can see the sunflowers and the two mini cucumbers which have been planted up into pots. The mangomel melon is on Plot3 too and is planted into the ground with weed suppressant surrounding it. You can, just about, see it in the background of this sunflowers photo - all 3 plants are surrounded by netting at the moment to give them a fighting chance against everything that may try to stop them growing (which includes the weather).

I'm pleased to see that the Paris Silverskin onions that I sowed about a week ago have germinated. I like onion seedlings with their little bent stems. It makes them easy to spot amongst the weeds. These are sown into the raised bed but in recent years have been purely slug food - would be nice to have a few to ourselves this year....

I was looking at our garlic on Saturday as I was expecting it to be time for them to be pulled however they are still one bulb rather than broken into cloves. The Winter frost is meant to aid the cloves forming. Ivan advised that I should just leave them and in a few more weeks they may well separate into cloves. If they don't it seems that they can still be eaten as 'wet garlic' - they just don't store well.

They look ready, but the bulbs are showing that they're not.

The broad beans are providing us with regular harvests, they are so delicious. We've had several meals including a broad bean curry, broad beans in parsley sauce with souflettes, broad beans in a tomato sauce and in this stir fry with tofu knots (really tasty!) and radish (a nice colourful addition). The tofu knots are dried so I soaked them overnight prior to frying - we had 6 each and there are lots left over so that's a handy stash to keep in the cupboard.

Ivan gave us a plant (I thought it was a weed) that had appeared amongst his irises. It's now flowered and what a beauty! It's a Siberian Larkspur (Delphinium Grandiflorum) and is such a beautiful colour on its tall flower spikes. It's an annual delphinium apparently but will hopefully self-seed in the flower patch. Look at at that colour - it's like ultraviolet in the sunshine.

And Ivan gets another mention as he let me pick some gooseberries - payback was a bit of weeding. I used the nice simple recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

The song title provided by The Jam  is in reference to our first courgette of the year - I'm sure there will be many more to follow.

The flower was huge; the courgette tiny 😊 And, I've taken so long writing this that we've had rain - a perfect overnight drenching and some drizzle this morning before the Sun came back out - perfect. Will see this evening what difference it's made to the plots - perhaps the HAHA flower troughs will be full of flowers 😒

Step On

I’ve been on leave for a week and have a few more days off. I must say that I feel like I’ve been off for a fortnight already - the sunny weather has helped. Although the easterly wind is rather unwelcome, it’s not so noticeable on the allotment site and has even been a relief from the heat at times.

We’ve spent most of the time on the allotment, obviously. It’s been fabulous. We enjoyed a barbecue one day and plenty of allotment lunches and chats with fellow plotholders.

As you can see, the Nigella has flowered and the valerian is filling the air with its lovely vanilla fragrance.

Wildlife reports are showing a distinct reduction in numbers of bees and hoverflies which is apparent on site, though we’re beginning to see a few more this month. We have seen a lot more dragon flies and damsel flies this year - including the impressive broad-bodied chaser in the first photo.

The robins and blackbirds are enjoying the mealworms we take with us each visit, but we have to stand guard otherwise the magpies sneak in and take the lot in one go. They attempted to break into the pot to help themselves yesterday - they’re always watching!

More excitingly, we have been hearing the bullfinches recently but actually spotted the male yesterday. We’re hoping they’ll bring their young out soon as we’re beginning to hear baby bird sounds from the hedge.

We were disappointed that only 5 of our Lark sweetcorn germinated so I put a message on the allotment’s WhatsApp group and fellow plotholder, Nia, came to the rescue with 20 Incredible plants! THANKYOU NIA! So now our plot is looking less bare. There are two Jack-be-Little small pumpkins in the corners which we hope will scramble between the tall sweetcorn plants (although I’ve planted the corn a bit close together - the blurb says this variety can reach 8ft!).

I’ve been planting nasturtium in various patches around our plots - the hot weather has kept the slugs away (so far). My other flower seedlings are still too small to plant out but I’ve sown seeds in the flower bed by the bench. This poppy is self-seeded by the polytunnel.

And these irises have been in pots for a few years but I’m not sure I’ve seen the flower before - interesting colour.

My iris display isn’t as stunning as Ivan’s which all visitors to the site can’t help but stop and look at - so beautiful.

I’ve now planted out the Florence fennel, Yin-Yang dwarf beans (our seeds from last year) and a globe artichoke, also from Nia. They’re in the plot with the oh-so-slow-growing mangetout, asparagus pea and beetroot (which I’ve had to net again because birds were snipping the leaves). There’s a lot of watering required, but so pleased that the plants are now in the ground and will hopefully start bushing out/growing upward quite soon

The (blue lake) French beans and Borlotti beans are planted in the old polytunnel frame and we’ve direct-sown Scarlet Empire runner beans as the ones in modules didn’t germinate. And Jamie’s planted out our sunflowers Tall Timbers for the Sunflower Competition 😊

Broad beans are imminent, if the wind doesn’t damage the tall plants and we’ve eaten two 🤭 strawberries so far… They’re netted to protect from blackbirds - there’s a lot of protection needed these days!

The potatoes have been earthed up; garlic has been fed with epson salts and soil loosened to assist the bulbs swelling before being pulled later this month. 

So that’s most of what we’ve been up to. I’m doing for the National Kidney Federation - 68,000 steps in June to represent the 68,000 kidney patients in the UK. That target won’t be difficult while I’m off work and if nature doesn’t join in with the watering!

The song title links to this and is provided by the excellent Happy Mondays. You’re twisting my melon man 😊