That was 2016

This is going to be a positive post about 2016; highlighting ten good things about another lovely year within our allotment bubble.

In no particular order:

1. Star and heart-shaped cucumbers. The moulds probably work best with small, quick growing cucumbers, like our Rocky. They're apparently suitable for tomatoes too, but we didn't try that. They didn't work on courgettes.
   
   
2. Sunny picnics and some warm late nights on the plot. Summer started really wet with slugs and snails taking out a lot of early growth but July and August were delightful with plenty of sunshine.
   
   
3. A blue poppy. A gift last Christmas and I was so pleased when it actually flowered as the slugs had rather a taste for it initially! I hope there will be a further showing this year...
   
   
4. We grew a loofah. Well, that's cool, isn't it?!
   
   
5. Ratatouille - what a colourful meal - and it tasted good, especially covered in cheese and sprinkled with chopped nuts
   
   
6. Black tomatoes - Indigo Rose look so great but not a great flavour, this year we're trying some stripey ones. But we'll also be growing that tasty little red cherry variety Aviditas.
   
7. We found a coin - a 1744 farthing! For all our searching we've only found 3 in 7 years and this was the oldest.
   
8. Growing potatoes in bags - so pleasing to harvest. We used nematodes which we think worked well to keep the slug numbers down. Our favourite bagged variety was probably Orla.
   
   
9. Seeing a pair of bullfinches in the hedge - the first time we've seen them at our end of the site. We saw them later in the year too, which I hope is a good sign they'll be back next year.
   
10. The second HAHA/RBL Horticultural Show - such a great turnout, with over 300 entries. We're already looking forward to next year.
So, it wasn't all bad in 2016.
After all, at the beginning of the year we thought we may not have an allotment and then 5 days later we were given a reprieve....(which we're currently waiting on again....anyway, stay positive!)

I wonder what 2017 has in store...

The Show's Over

Aah, what a couple of busy, fun weekends! Yesterday was the Horticultural & Handicraft Show. Previously run by the Hungerford Royal British Legion, this year HAHA joined forces so there's been a bit of organising going on in the background as well as trying to encourage our vegetables to grow well enough to join in the fun of exhibiting!

Enough tomatoes went red for us to enter 2 categories and got a 2nd and 3rd placing

In the morning Jamie and I rushed about picking whatever we thought was reasonable and then went back home to clean things up - carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and fennel. I'd had some of my photos printed by PhotoBox but they didn't actually look that good; not as well coloured as they look on the PC screen; I entered a photo into each category (only got a 2nd place for one photo though), but there were a lot of entries.

I tied up the tops of the onions but hadn't dried out well enough so didn't win a placing.

We took all our vegetables up to the Royal British Legion Club (RBL) and spent about an hour chatting to other exhibitors - quite a few plotholders and some other people from Hungerford. It was all very friendly and I would have been happy to spend a bit more time there but had to go and pick up the Vegetables & Floral judge from Newbury.

Having picked up Jean we returned to the RBL and Jean did some meticulous judging for a couple of hours. I watched her in action from a distance for a bit but didn't want to hear the results so sat outside on the hottest day of August - it really was sweltering. Jean lent me her RHS Exhibiting & Judging handbook. That was an interesting read - a bit too serious for our event I think but definitely some handy hints!

A roomful of Lovely exhibits!

So, after I had taken Jean home (Thankyou so much for helping us Jean!!) Jamie and I made our way up to the RBL to see who had won what and for the really fun bit of the day.
We did win a 1st for our largest onion and quite a few 2nd, 3rd and 'Highly commended' placings so overall we won the Runners Up prize in the vegetable section :-)

'Any 3 Veg': Fennel, Crystal Lemon Cucumber & Garlic

'Any 5 veg: We got the 2nd place - that was the only 5 we could gather together!
Courgette(!), silverskin onion, chilli, tomato & Tenerife spud

The prizes were awarded and we were happy to see plenty of plotholders winning, then there was an auction of all the produce. The auctioneer got fed up with so many onion lots (it's been a good year!) so everything came with an onion - even a swiss roll :-)

Ooh, 1st prize-winning savoury scones - I had to have them!

We took home some lovely chutneys, picallili and scones (fruit and savoury) so it was a brilliant end to the day. Lots of money was raised and donated to the Poppy Appeal and more people in Hungerford are aware of the allotments.

And today we've picked our first harvest of runner beans and found some cucumbers we'd missed...