Sunflower

Oh, it seems to be Autumn!

We've had some rain in the night and the sunshine was beautiful on the cobwebs early this morning. Actually, it's getting darker as the day progresses. The weekend was a mix of weather and the ground was perfect for getting our leeks planted up - well, Neal's leeks (thanks as always Neal!). 20 leeks, with plenty of room for hoeing in between.

I'm going to plant the garlic at the end of that patch, in front of the squash tunnel. I'm leaving the squashes on the plants until the necks dry off and the Honeyboat are finally beginning to produce a few fruits - I hope the weather stays reasonable so that they mature.

The brassica are a bit weird. We have two sprout plants and one has a problem, probably whitefly, but the other one has so far escaped damage.

And one of the three purple sprouting broccoli plants is decidedly weaker than the other two.

The single cavolo nero is small, but will hopefully produce enough leaves for a few meals.

I cleared a mass of overgrown plants from in front of our little pond on Plot7. Looks much better now  and the newly planted perennials should be a bit happier without being crowded out, but I'm sure the nigella and other plants have self-seeded everywhere and then there's the bindweed - ugh, what a horrible weed that is!

We had a salad last night which had potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, patty pan, carrot and spring onion from our plots. And these were the last of Iulia's plum tomatoes. I cooked them in garlic oil with grated horseradish, but it seems that cooking horseradish completely destroys the heat - not even a hint remained. I'll try again and grate the horseradish over the top after I've cooked the tomatoes.

I couldn't resist planting some horseradish in a pot, in case I decide it's worth growing. It's certainly hot when you nibble it raw, but it's a short-lived heat rather than like chilli so I quite like it.

That pot is in our 'nursery patch' behind the polytunnel. The hazel tree likes it there, as does this lovely fuchsia which was unhappy in the sunshine.

I was so pleased to finally get some reasonably decent shots of a hummingbird hawkmoth at the allotment on Saturday! Such a fascinating moth to watch and so nippy. I updated my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

And this morning we found that the little self-seeded sunflower had decided to open - what a cheery sight :-)

So this blogpost has moved from Autumn back to Summer, though it's raining outside and I now need to get back to work. Enjoy the ditty, provided by Vampire Weekend, though the video will make you dizzy!

Day of the Sunflowers

This is the veggie bake I made at the weekend - so pretty, but it took a long time to cook even though I’d thinly sliced the veg. The veg (potato, courgette and tomato on top of fried onions and garlic) was covered in a cheese sauce and baked.

The tomatoes were kindly given to us by fellow plotholder, Iulia. She gave us a bagful of different varieties, which was a real treat. She has said that I can dig some of her abundant horseradish. I saw a Nigella recipe with tomatoes so will have a go at that. When (when!) it rains, the horseradish smells so lovely but I don’t want the meal to be too spicy hot.

Some of those split tomatoes were boiled down with garlic and smoked paprika, which we had with gnocchi (and courgette) last night.

As you can tell, courgettes are still playing a major role in our diets! We thought the plant was dying back a couple of weeks ago but it (and the patty pan) have had a new lease of life. So... we made patty pan and carrot chutney at the weekend. It looks rather like marmalade, but I’m sure it’ll be tasty. It’s using our go-to recipe where we just change the veg for what we have available. We only made one and a half jars this year.

We had a most enjoyable HAHA picnic on Bank Holiday Monday. It’s so nice to sit and chat with our fellow plotholders. I made a colourful purple potato salad for the picnic and we’ve bean eating a few more of our super-sweet Lizzano cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

And the prizes were awarded by Ted for the Plotholders Choice award (well done to Jenny) and the Tallest Sunflower (well done to Zoe).

Zoe’s sunflower measured a towering 3.51m! Somewhat surprisingly, the first and third tallest on site are both multi-headed sunflowers. They’ve made an impressive display around the site, so I’m sure we’ll run the competition again next year.

Here we are measuring Zoe’s earlier in the day. Jamie’s job was up the ladder (I realise he's not in the photo!). This year’s top two heights were taller than last year’s winner - which was 3.21m.

No ladder required for measuring ours the day before, which now seems a paltry 2.49m.

I bought some potted perennials at the market yesterday (Jacob’s ladder, Coreopsis, Leucanthemum and Scabiosa). I’ve planted them in front of the bench for a more permanent display. I cleared some of the terrible bindweed round the pond and a golden frog appeared to see what was going on.

That was the last day of my long weekend; it was a welcome break from work. Yesterday afternoon we dug an area on Plot3 for planting some of Neal’s leeks. It was quite exhausting, the ground was hard in places and just dust in others, but it looks better now and perhaps we’ll get a bit of rain ahead of the leeks going in at the weekend. 

I peeked under the netting at the Chinese cabbage and pak choi that I sowed at the beginning of the month. I’ve left the enviromesh on to stop it being nibbled so much. I need to thin the cabbage but the pak Choi is probably ok.

And we've been having a few of the thinned baby carrots. Some are really tiny and so tasty.

Jamie sowed some Winter lettuce in the raised bed and then we played with the bubble machine 🤭

I'm eating chard and beetroot with other bits and pieces for lunches. The mornings are still beautiful but the sun is rising later and setting earlier, Autumn is definitely in the air at times.

The song title is provided by Basement Jaxx.

Time of the Season

The mornings have been foggy and dark this week, but this weekend has been mostly warm and sunny. I’ve been prepping for future meals. I do enjoy seeing jars of stored beans.

The Borlotti and Gigantes came from all these pods, which have mostly been drying in the polytunnel. The Gigantes are drying slower than the other beans and haven’t produced so many pods this year.

I filled the trug yesterday, with the intention of doing the podding at home. But it was so sunny that I did it on the plot and it was very relaxing. The Borlotti lingua di fuoco 2 are great; they basically just unzip and the beans pop out. The runners, Scarlet Empire were podded last week and taken home with the peppers. The slugs definitely enjoyed more peppers than us. We’ll probably grow a smaller variety (peppers, not slugs) next year so they’re ready for picking earlier.

I had some of the podded runner beans in a dish covering a couple of meals, along with the orange pepper, chard, garlic and shallots - a fully home-grown meal. Very tasty and even better eaten a couple of days later when the flavours were enhanced. It’s apparently a peculiarly British-thing to eat the pods of runner beans, with most other nationalities growing them for the beans. And, I was surprised to see that in the US they are predominantly grown as an ornamental plant (hummingbirds love them) and are not even considered for food. See this blog, The Sharing Gardens, which is an interesting read.

My chard is looking better now than it’s looked all year, so I roasted some with sesame seeds yesterday, to eat as ‘crispy seaweed’ along with roasted veg - another fully home-grown meal, which up till now have been infrequent this year.

Jamie has some sort of flu (not COVID-19) so I’ve been to the allotment on my own a couple of times recently. I always think I don’t want to go, but am so pleased when I do. It’s such a lovely spot and there’s always someone to talk to.

Yesterday I moved all the ripe squash into the polytunnel, there are still a few more to pick as they may still further ripen. 

Now that the foliage has died back, it’s clear that we didn’t keep up with the Rocky cucumber production! That lot will go in our compost bins so it’s not really wasted and we did eat a LOT of cucumbers this year.

The kohl rabi are beginning to bulb up. I’m concerned for them because the purple sprouting broccoli (single plant) and Chinese cabbage are being chomped by something - it looks like caterpillar damage but I haven’t found the culprit yet…

We also didn’t see who tucked into the sunflower seeds, but they’ve nearly cleared all of them now.

I had a couple of hours on the sunny plot again this afternoon. I took down the runner bean and Borlotti bean plants and poles. All the foliage will go in a trench under the squash tunnel once the plants are cleared and we’re expecting a HAHA manure delivery in a week or two.

And the cycle starts again with the Aqua dulce broad beans sown under their bottle cloches.

We’re hoping the garlic and shallots will be delivered in the week so can get them planted into their prepared beds. The title song is provided by The Zombies because, well, it really is that time…

Living in the Past

With a few days off last week I was lucky enough for them to be the sunniest we’ve had in a while. We had a barbecue at the plot. The sunshine ripened up some of our tomatoes before blight got them. Not many, but happy to have had some!

The peppers are still green and we may not get any if the slugs have their way. Each visit to the plot we check the plants and invariable another healthy looking pepper has been ruined by slug or snail damage…and sometimes we catch them in the act 😖

Eurgh, so many slugs and they’re so big!! We don’t help ourselves really, with so many hiding places on our plots. At least we’ve finally cleared a rotten raised bed that was sheltering at least 15 big orange slugs and Jamie dug through the area. There, that looks better. Our broad beans will over-Winter there.

At least most of the beans are avoiding damage and runners or french beans are part of most meals at the moment.

And there’s plenty more to make a proper meal these days.

That green squash is a tromboncino. One of the plants has produced these green fruits. The flesh is slightly more yellow than the usual light green fruits; the taste is the same, pretty bland. Quite a few of the fruits are really long but are rotting at the flower end and aren’t forming the bulbous seed end; seemingly because they haven’t been pollinated.

Our carrots wouldn’t be winning any prizes in the Horticultural Show on 18th September! Sadly we won’t be joining in this year due to my shielding from COVID-19 but at least it means we don’t have to worry about “Don’t eat that! Keep it for the show” 😄

We’ve pulled our first Kestrel potato plant. They seem to have escaped slug damage too, which is quite unusual for our potato harvests.

The song title is specifically chosen for Neal who requested some Jethro Tull. As he won the ‘HAHA Tallest sunflower’ competition last week and he insists on using imperial (10ft 3 inches) rather than metric (3.12 metres) I opted for this song title.

😄 Well done Neal! This song will be with you for days!

Fields of Gold

 How much do you like sunflowers?

This much?

Or maybe this much?

What a stunning sight! My sister has been urging me to go and see them in nearby East Garston and finally yesterday I got the chance without work or traffic getting in the way!

It was a rather windy but very warm day. The fields have been planted specifically for Winter bird food - see more info here. Look at them nodding their heads :-)

I couldn’t resist having this as a separate post, I hope you like the photos, with the title song provided by Sting. If you hear of a sunflower field near you, it’s definitely worth a visit!