Raining Again

This was such an amazing rainbow! It was so bright and huge, much more impressive than this photo shows but it’s the best I could get. So beautiful, I stood and stared for a while.

Sunshine and showers definitely sums up the weather over the last couple of weeks/months. I’ve got a few days off for Easter, but the hoped-for plot-days haven’t worked out yet…

We’ve had plot visits and have even done a bit of weeding but it’s hard work having to do it by hand because the ground is too wet to walk on let alone to dig.

Well, that’s the leeks patch cleared to make way for root crops. It’ll need better digging than that to grow some straight carrots!

The leeks were good this year. It’s worth planting them nice and deep to get plenty of white stalk.

The blackthorn has flowered in the hedge but the lovely flowers didn’t last long. The wind, rain, hail didn’t help, but hopefully they were pollinated.

We’ve seen bees enjoying the dandelions, dead nettle and grape hyacinths as well as the other Spring bulbs that are popping up here and there.

I was pleased to see some tadpoles in our little pond although I haven’t seen them since. I have seen a couple of frogs recently though and there’s some frogspawn appeared in the pond on the HAHA wildlife plot.

The teasels on the wildlife plot in a rainstorm yesterday (Good Friday). The sky went black but no thunder like we had on Thursday when the hail was apocalyptic.

Here’s Jamie fighting against the wind and rain while we were trying to secure a honeysuckle trellis which had collapsed on the wildlife plot.

We have achieved some tasks in the last couple of weeks. I’ve managed to weed and feed the garlic bed and Jamie’s cleared the bean tunnel.

And we’ve collected some of the manure for future use - it’s in a compost bin for now. £1.50 a barrow-load from HAHA - what a bargain 😊

Talking of HAHA. We have a fully tenanted site again - it’s great to see the newcomers joining us old-timers 👨‍🌾 And on the sunny breaks it has been a lovely busy site with lots of chat and catching up with plot-buddies. Aah, we do love our allotment and we really should get out there while the Sun is shining because it looks like today may be dry…. with just a small threat of showers… Moby provides the song title.

Time for Action

What a lovely long day we had on the allotment yesterday. It was warm and the Sun even appeared from between the cloud at times.

We’ve taken the net cloches off the broad beans so that the bees and other insects can do their pollination duty to provide us with some tasty broad beans quite soon. The photo above is one of the plants sown at the end of October- they survived the extreme frost; some of their gang didn’t which is why we have a bit of succession planting.

Yesterday we were mostly sowing (and chatting and listening to the birds) during our several hours on the plot. In the inner polytunnel tunnel we have: Flowers: Verbena bonariensis, Nicotiana Whisper, Ipomoea Iobata (Spanish flag), Calendula Officinalis ‘Canteloupe’, Marigold ‘Legion of Honour’, Sunflower ‘Tall Timber’ and veg: Rainbow chard, Asparagus pea and an All Green courgette is an early sowing at home.
The nicotiana (Tobacco plant) has the tiniest possible seeds - there they are a tiny smudge in the bottom of that miniature phial. And only 20 seeds! But I know they're a pretty flower so I hope they work.

 

Most of these flowers are destined for the flower plot this year, around the bench. It's great to see the perennials re-appearing now the ground is warming up and the daffodils finally came out.

I'm trying to keep on top of the weeds which are appearing and also pulling up some of the masses of Nigella. Having said that, Ivan gave us this plant, which looks a bit like Nigella - but we're not too sure what it is at this point. It's probably a weed as it was growing amongst his irises. I do like the foliage and I'm sure the flowers will provide an identification quite soon and we can decide then whether it's a keeper.

I was going to sow some veg outside but the ground was too wet. I have a week off soon so hopefully the weather will be a bit drier then. If we get the spuds planted out next week we'll have some space under the grow lamp at home. I've started parsnips by germinating them at home on a paper towel - they are notoriously awkward germinators so this way I'll only plant viable seed to get the best chance of a few parsnips this year.

At the weekend we spotted our first swallow of the season and then yesterday it was joined by a pair of house martens so it's really beginning to feel Spring-like, although night-time temperatures are still dipping close to zero (centigrade) and frosty rooftops are still regular morning sights. The birds were in full song at the weekend though and Ted pointed out at least two song thrushes, by their songs. That would help to explain all the broken snail shells but there are plenty of living snails left!

I spent a lot of time scrambling around by the pond trying to get a 'from the bottom of the pond' style photo. I had my camera on remote control using my phone and had some tadpoles in a transparent pot. It was quite awkward and of the 20-ish photos this was the best but isn't quite what I was aiming for ... oh well, perhaps I'll try again another day.

But I thought this gelatenous outline was quite interesting on this shot.

Anyway, enough about tadpoles! Here's an arty photo of purple sprouting brocolli and chive flower buds which formed part of my meal the other night. 

I used one of the frozen bean burgers that I made a few weeks ago. I squashed it flat like a pancake; it still fell apart, but I really like the flavour of borlotti beans.

At 3pm yesterday everyone (almost) reached for their phones as we received our first ever Government 'Emergency Alert' - great, what a hopeful new advance for the 21st Century...😕

Oh well, it gave me an excuse to use this song by Secret Affair. Let's hope we never have to hear the alert alarm again.

Walk on the Wild Side

British Summer Time is here - the weather doesn’t realise and it’s been mostly dull and windy plus we’ve had a lot of rain; 35mm in the last week.

That sounds a bit moany considering we had a pleasant few hours on the plot on Sunday afternoon and lots more flowers have bloomed in the last week providing such welcome spots of colour. Those cowslips in the above photo are putting on a lovely show on the HAHA Wildlife plot and there are 'common' daisies popping up in the grass paths.

Plenty of pollen for emerging insects but I only saw one bumblebee. The grape hyacinths are appearing in various places where we thinned out the bulbs from our plot and planted them around the site. And we have lots in pots where other bulbs are also growing. I wonder if the succession planting will actually work for once..!

The blackthorn blossom has now opened in the hedge. Such a pretty little flower.

Along with 2 robins singing their tuneful ditty trying to drown out the church bells, there were several tiny birds flitting about in the hedge. It was difficult to see what they were but Jamie managed to get this shot - thanks Sue for the tip to use ‘photo burst’ on our camera. Lovely to see a tiny goldcrest!

In the path alongside the hedge we have a lot of violets growing - white ones, and they don’t smell so must be common dog violets. 

A little tint of colour on the petals to direct the insects in.

And here’s another common plant alongside the hedge which flowers at this time of year. Creeping Charlie or ground ivy. The flowers are tiny but bees love them. The leaves have a lovely minty scent and can, apparently, be used for various ailments and as a herbal tea (though I expect it tastes nasty like most herbal teas 😏). Apparently it has been used in cheese-making as an alternative to animal rennet!

It seems to be treated as an invasive pest, but perhaps that's for people who want grass lawns - I prefer to see a mix of plants personally.

Apart from scrambling around the ground taking macro shots of tiny flowers, I did get up-close (down-close) and personal to the writhing mass of tadpoles in the HAHA Wildlife plot - as you can see, they have their external gills. They do form quickly, these have grown in 12 days, although there are some which are still little dots or commas in their spawn bubbles. 

Including the ones in our little pond. The spawn sunk when I added it to our pond and the spawn is still only at comma stage from what I could see in the murky depths. Quite interesting that you can see where they're eating their way out of their bubbles.

We did actually do a little work on the allotment too - our broad beans have been weeded, but left under their protective covers. The chocolate spot on the leaves is annoying but hopefully won't spread too far into the plant. It's probably caused by being under the covers but that offers protection from pigeons and heavy rain/snow.

Some of the plants which were sown at the end of October have flowers on, but many didn't survive the really cold spell. The plants are better where we popped a bean into the empty spaces more recently (was it before Christmas? Can't remember!)

And finally, at last, some purple sprouting brocolli to harvest! Nearly 12 months on from sowing! Mmm, it is lovely though so worth the wait. This mostly wild blog post has the song provided by Lou Reed - do...do..doo...do..di.di...doo

Month of May - Arcade Fire

What a beautiful May weekend we’ve had, after a rather grey start to the month.

We've had some of the rain that all us gardeners were waiting for, but there’s little sign of it on the site apart from the weeds growing taller! We spotted a couple of these (below) on the wildlife plot. Often mistaken for fungi, it's the spore-bearing 'flower' of horsetail (aka Mares Tail).

You can see the green shoots of the more familiar ferny plant just appearing. It's an interesting perennial with very deep roots and is a reason why some areas of our site aren't used as plots - though it's only a problem if left to run rampant. We’ve finally confirmed that we have teasels growing on the wildlife plot when we noticed the little 'ponds' in their leaves. So, I never realised that teasels are carnivorous but they gain extra sustenance from insects falling into these rain traps. Here's an interesting read about it.

Our own little pond on our plot has two frogs in it now. The tadpoles, if they haven’t been eaten, are lying low. They're about 6-weeks old now so may be moving on to a meatier diet and legs could start appearing, especially on the ones in the wildlife pond which have always been bigger than others on site.

We’ve been planting and sowing over the last two weekends: Blue Lake climbing French bean, Yin Yang dwarf French bean, Gigantes and Borlotti beans are all sown into pots in the polytunnel. The Zinnia are in modules on a window sill at home and Jack of All Trades pumpkin, All Green bush courgette, Sunburst patty pan and Mangomel melon are in pots under the grow-light. And today I sowed some Florence fennel directly into the ground.

The Shiraz mangetout, grown in the guttering, have been planted out and I added a few more seeds in attempt to get some successive harvests. The frame has a protective net otherwise the pigeons will decimate them as they’ve done previous years.

On the last day of April we planted our potatoes. I’m looking forward to the Salad Blue; I hope they’re as blue/purple as the Congo that we grew a few years ago - I just checked, that was 11 years ago! Wow, how time flies. And yesterday Jamie planted 4 Nicola into bags.

On Saturday we weeded on plot3. It was hard work, as the ground is so dry, but it looks a bit better. Some of the grass was too difficult so I’ll deal with that after giving the ground a bit of a water. I hope you can tell which is the After photo - thought there's still a lot of work to be done before I can get my squashes in (well, they're not sown yet so I have time).Whilst working on Plot3 Jamie opened our storage chest and found a wasp nest - it was only at embryonic stage but we couldn't leave it where it was. We felt guilty, but flicked it over the hedge and ran away as the wasp queen zoomed round trying to locate her babies. I live in hope that she found them and continues the nest in the hedge, but that's probably unlikely. More photos/info on my Wildlife blog.

We've been going to the allotment most days for watering. I like eating my lunch up there but it's so hard returning to work! With no rain forecast for at least the next week we'll be visiting a lot in May, but it is so perfect. We have great tits nesting somewhere on our plot and have seen the bullfinches nearby. Our visits are accompanied by the cuckoo over the marsh and a little bird, possibly some sort of warbler, singing a very repetitive song.

The purple sprouting brocolli went completely to flower and the leeks have woody centres so those remaining have been cleared. I'm still eating the dried beans from last year though and was very pleased with these bean burgers. Borlotti, gigantes and runner beans blended together with chives, tomato paste, rose harissa pesto and some oak-smoked olive oil. I did more beans than I needed so the burger was significantly larger than the bun, but was delicious.

What a lovely month May is! Such a busy site with everyone talking about what they're sowing and growing. Rhubarb will be on the menu this week and broade beans should follow quite soon. Aah... now, back to work Belinda!
Arcade Fire provide the title song.

New Life

I was amazed to see how quickly the frogspawn have developed. The frilly bits aren’t legs yet though, they’re external gills. The tadpoles look much more black in real life and are very small. I recorded their arrival on the Pondnet Spawn Survey.

Most of the hatched tadpoles were huddled together eating the remaining spawn jelly. I retrieved some more tadpoles from a puddle before it dried out in the hot March sunshine and put it in the newly- created pond in the bog garden on the HAHA Wildlife plot. It'll look better once there's a bit of growth round the outside and I'll probably buy a plant for in the pond.

When I pointed out the ‘pond’ to a new plotholder he said “I drink my morning cocoa from a mug bigger than that”. Haha, you’ve got to laugh! It may be tiny, but it’s a life saver to some residents at the moment. I’ve put a flat stone in it so the birds may like it too, but I hope they don’t eat the froglets!

We've had a beautiful few days and I was on leave so enjoyed a sunny 4-day weekend. On Friday we visited the Inkpen Crocus Field again - we visited 3 years ago in February and there were more crocuses then, perhaps due to our recent wet and windy weather - the ground was soggy, even at the top of the hill. 

It's so pretty and natural with the crocuses tending to grow individually rather than in clumps, it's quite fascinating and the origin is unknown; I prefer to think of them as from 12th Century crusaders rather than garden escapees.

We walked more than 6km that day; my working-from-home legs aren't used to it! And then for the rest of the weekend we were working on the allotment - quite exhausting, but so lovely to be out in the sunshine.

I showed a couple of new plotholders around and there were lots of people gardening on site. Along with many butterflies (comma, brimstone, tortoiseshell and whites) and bees enjoying the grape hyacinths and the few other flowers that are showing.

Let's hope they do their work on our broad bean flowers which have started to appear. Our bean plants are a really sickly bunch, so small after all the battering by the wind and frost, but we should get a few handfuls of beans eventually.

I spent most of the time working on the area by our pond where the mammoth sage had taken over with a tree-like root. Eventually managed to pull the remaining roots along with the couch grass, raspberry and various other roots - in fact I still have a tiny strip to do. The soil looks quite good, but I'm mostly clearing it for our new seating area.

We've actually sown a few seeds, including mangetout. They're in the polytunnel at the moment. On a couple of the sunny mornings this week I've popped up to the allotment first thing to open up the door. The temperature in the polytunnel has fluctuated between 30° and -3° over the last week! Jamie's been closing up at the end of the day. The mornings are so beautiful up there, it's hard to pull myself away to sit back at my desk, but it is a lovely benefit of home-working.

Seems like I'll be working from home for a while yet, as covid cases are increasing again - not suprising as people don't need to isolate. It seems that a 5th vaccination will be on the cards for immuno-suppressed people... ho hum.. Anway, less of that depressing news... the song title is provided by an extremely young Depeche Mode. Feel free to bop 😉