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!
I remembered we have cucumber moulds, so the continuous supply of Baby cucumbers are now looking different.
As long as they’re sealed in a plastic bag in the fridge they are still perfect after 3 days. I’ve seen some tasty recipes for them, but we’ve mostly been having them in sandwiches or with hummus dips. Jamie has made this soured cream salad with added tomatoes and salad onions a couple of times which we’ve enjoyed.
The big news this week is, of course, the weather. After the super extreme heat it actually rained - proper rain, with thunder and lightning two evenings in a row! The plots looked much healthier as a result.
On Tuesday morning we were greeted on site by a ‘flight’ of swallows (I prefer the collective noun ‘gulp’ actually) on the overhead cables and it was marvellous when they all swooped off together. And there was also a flock (a ‘charm’) of goldfinches. It was a beautiful morning actually, shame I only had an hour. The birds were clearly relieved that the rain had arrived and the extreme heat had past (thought it was still very warm).
Tuesday evening we had the most torrential downpour. We opened the windows to enjoy that welcome sound and smell.
The next morning the rain gauge showed it to have been a proper drenching - 25mm in one night.
Too late for the French beans (right) which seem to have gone over very quickly but the runners (left) are still producing flowers at the top and the borlotti/gigantes wigwam (centre) is looking bushy and healthy.
I needn’t have fretted last week. As Flighty pointed out, the cob tassels will soon arrive after the flowers start providing the pollen. And here they come on the Lark sweetcorn.
And look! The Lizzano outdoor tomato has given it’s first fruits - what a feast 😁 Well, it’s quality not quantity that counts! And you can see, there should soon be more…
Trugs are colourful at the moment with the chard and more of the Salad Blue potatoes.
Also a Nicola potato and I podded those French beans to have with orzo (a pasta, which rather seemed like slippery rice on eating), What the Cluck and a sun-dried tomato pasta sauce.
Last night I used chard to make a sort of colcannon with the Nicola potatoes. It was very tasty, but I think I should have made sure there was less water in the chard before mixing with the spuds. Although it wasn’t sloppy, it didn’t quite mash properly. It’s served with What the Cluck and garlicky-shallots.
Today it’s feeding day for the plot, though it’s certainly beginning to feel a bit Autumnal which is sad. It’s still a lovely temperature and no rain expected today. Even the clouds in the photo below, from yesterday, didn’t produce rain. It’s probably just because we’ve got used to blue skies and sweltering heat. But there are plenty more flowers and veg on their way, lots of deadheading to do and surely more cucumbers and courgettes to pick!
Aah, this song will pretty much sum up today I think. And what a great song by the Small Faces! Can’t believe I haven’t used it before. For the rest of today, I shall be mostly speaking in cock-nay 😆
I must remember to sow lobelia into modules next year. It’ll make it far easier to pot them on. Zinnia seem to be the flower of the moment. And ours are appearing. They’re multi-coloured so some of the orange flowers are zinnia rather than marigolds.
I’m seeing them everywhere, but look closer and they’re even more fab. No wonder the bees were enjoying them today.
I’m really happy with the Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus Caudatus). There are 4 plants around our plots. This one on Plot7 is the most advanced and this lovely long tassel has started to turn the deeper red. Such an amazing plant from the tiniest of seeds. The birds will apparently enjoy those seeds in the Autumn and I may well try some myself, as explained here by the Laidback Gardener’s blog. I hope some will set seed to re-grow next year.
The harvests are continuing and are not very varied, but a bit of creativity means that meals don’t need to be boring. That said, I am missing the kitchen at work where I used to leave all the surplus for my colleagues to take home. I must admit that we left a large patty pan and over-grown courgette on the spares shelf at the allotment and I was pleased to see that someone actually wanted them! I’m also very pleased that the chalk addition to the patty pan watering has largely resolved the blossom end rot problem.
This Rose Harissa dish with sticky rice was tasty though a bit too spicy for my taste (I got carried away with adding the harissa paste!)
The only flavouring in this stuffing, with added pine nuts, was the garlic, shallots and garlic oil. We had this in stuffed courgettes, with some left over for lunch the next day.
This weekend has been so sweltering that cold salads have been best for lunches.
The temperature has reached 33° in the shade but it's been lovely sitting under the sun umbrella with a deskfan run on a Jackery power station, which we’ve bought for heating the polytunnel in Winter really!
The weather is what everyone is talking about. We even had to postpone our HAHA picnic; not due to rain, but because we’re in the amber extreme heat warning area.
It’s just beginning to cloud over - watch the clouds.
It’s still sweltering and some of us aren’t convinced that the rain/thunderstorms will hit Hungerford over the next few days, but the temperatures are forecast to drop to a more average 23°. Too late for our pumpkin, which has gone into emergency mode and decided to skip a couple of months.
The other squashes don’t seem to have had the same idea, so hopefully more than one fruit per plant, though the ‘tunnel’ hasn’t quite developed this year.
My Florence fennel has sadly all gone to seed. It’s just not been possible to keep it wet enough.
At last the sweetcorn has developed tassels but no cobs are emerging yet, which seems rather slow. We’ll see…
Summing up the last week: Work, water, harvest, deadhead, work, water, eat, sleep and repeat. And, I must say how much I like it 😊 Song title provided by Riton.
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 ❤️
These weekends are flying by; the weeks are too, but I don't mind that so much! The previous weekend was warm and dull, but last weekend was mostly sunny and very warm. That’s when we saw this interesting cloud formation (cirrus uncinus?)
We had some rain in the week but have still needed to water, but as crops are dying back we have less watering to do (thank goodness!)
All those pumpkins, plus at least two more which have crept into the tunnel, are all on one plant! They're New England Pie variety so I'll have to try making a pumpkin pie this year.
Some of the other squash foliage is dying back and un-ripe fruits are beginning to shrivel. The Festival still has the greenest foliage and started to produce later than the others. There aren't as many fruits as I expected; I don't know whether the Tromboncino hogged the water or whether making the plants climb used more energy. Anyway, they have a few more weeks to do their thing before they get composted if they haven’t ripened. On Sunday I decided to measure the longest tromboncino (drum roll please)… 134.5cm! It’s not a record breaker; it’s 42cm shorter than the European record!
We’ve been harvesting the sweetcorn over the last few weeks.
They are so tasty, I think I prefer the cobs grilled rather than boiled. The pollination was a bit hit and miss, with probably half of the cobs not being fully pollinated. Still enough kernels to slather in butter though 😋
We’ve also been enjoying the Nicola potatoes, which were grown in bags. They’re very versatile and have been good roasted, baked, mashed or boiled.
Cold or hot.
Finally a couple of peppers; one red, one orange, have ripened and we’re having them in a meal tonight. I hope we get more than two peppers from the plants, but the slugs have enjoyed them sooo much 🙄
Up till now I’ve had to make do with bought peppers for lovely dishes like this (with Naked Glory soya-based strips). There are still a few more french beans to eat, but the runners have gone over.
I’ve had the last of the patty pans and I think the courgettes, which are now marrow-sized are past their best. So the year is certainly moving swiftly on. I’ve updated my allotment wildlife blog as there are so many interesting creatures about at the moment. This weekend the Ivy hedge was full of life so I made use of the macro settings on our camera, still need a bit of practice but some shots I was pleased with.
I sadly missed out on the Horticultural & Handicrafts Show this weekend because I’m still basically shielding until I get my third COVID jab. Well done to all who joined in - especially plot neighbour, Neal, who won the Banksian medal. We’ll be back next year… (hope, hope hope!) but in the meantime Neal can wear the crown 😄 Only joking, but here’s the song title by Spacehog.
