Bitter Tears

Anyone else had a rainy start to November? It was so rainy on Sunday that we had to shelter in the car when we got back from the allotment! The rain was streaming down the road.

While we were on the plot it felt quite warm and we even saw the Sun for a short while. We went to the plot specifically to pull our last potato plant - Nicola. Surprisingly they’re not very scabby and don’t seem to have been slugged. Although they were rather muddy.

I pulled up the Chinese cabbage which had been desecrated by slugs and snails. I was pleased to find a couple of cabbages that weren’t completely destroyed and had matured enough for form a heart. I think I'd try them again, under a sealed enviromesh net as they are very tasty. I like them raw but they're a nice addition to a chinese dish too.

That's a nice harvest for November. The tomatoes are continuing to ripen on the plants and the Chinese Dragon radish are lasting so that was plenty to feed me for a couple of lunches.

Yesterday, I added some left-over marinated tofu to the plate.

Last week I roasted two small squashes for dinner. A Honeyboat and a Winter Celebration. I thought it was a bit too much for just me (Jamie's still refusing to eat my lovely squash) with the Spanish rice and grains but I’m glad I chose to cook both squashes. 

 

The Winter Celebration tasted nasty, bitter (lucky Jamie didn't choose that day to try again with the squash!). I threw it away along with the two remaining ones from storage. I’m aware that cross-pollinated squash can develop a bitter taste, however these weren’t saved seeds and looked pretty regular. Apparently environmental stress can also cause bitterness, but that’s usually a result of temperature fluctuations rather than just the extreme heat of this year. Or, perhaps the lovely looking orange squash wasn’t entirely mature. Whatever, it was rather disappointing! Luckily the Honeyboat was as tasty as usual.

We’ve had so much rain recently and it’s been mild so there’s a lot of new growth. The HAHA Wildlife plot is looking good with plenty of ground cover with mostly welcome weeds and evidence of self-seeding from some of the flowers from this year. Very little grass and not too many thistles in evidence so far… In this photo I can see borage, foxgloves, allysum, daisies, evening primrose, golden marguerite and lots of nigella seedheads.

I should have put this photo on my last post, which was titled Autumn leaves, it’s been so colourful this year. Just look at this lovely lot from a tree by our flat.

The song title is provided by INXS, partly due to the bitter squash experience, but also the bitterness I feel to the housing developer and landowner of our site. In February a 10-year lease was proposed, with a  1-year cancellation clause, and was verbally agreed - Hooray! - then in September they "changed their minds". So the Council have to cover the cost of legal fees every year. Appalling and disrespectful behaviour to the 80+ households currently enjoying the site and the wider community. The latest development plan showed the Marsh Lane site as being 'not currently developable' - for 15+ years but they're just trying to use the site as a bartering chip for other inappropriate building schemes.  They make me sick 🤬

Rinse and Repeat

What a sunny scene of home-sown flowers 😊. 

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.

Rewind The Film

It’s here! The new drone video of the site, courtesy of Colin de Fraine. 

I hope you agree that the plots are looking amazing from all the different angles. How dry it is though! Still no rain, thank goodness for the borehole and generator to pump our water.

From Monday it’s National Allotment Week and we’re having a vote for the Plotholders Choice Award for the favourite plot. I hope lots of people join in and next Sunday we’re having a bring-your-own picnic for the prize-giving. We’re not quite ready for an open day with Covid cases still high, so this is the next best thing - also takes less organisation!

We haven’t had any rain all week and aren’t expecting any at least till Friday - hope it stays dry on Sunday for the picnic!

The dry earth makes digging the potatoes easy and they emerge clean, with no slug damage so far - it makes a nice change. These are Nicola potatoes. The tubers are mostly quite small. They’re tasty hot or cold. We’ve had them boiled, as roasted wedges and mashed. 

I had the carrot, fennel and spring onion with mayonnaise in a roll for lunch - yum yum. Only one Florence fennel looks like it may bulb up quite big - nothing like you see in shops though. They are mostly going to seed but are still good as a flavouring.

I enjoyed the last of the pulled Salad Blue potatoes with French beans and these smoky not-chicken bites. They were a tasty snack and added a bit of extra protein to this colourful little lunch.

Green beans, whether runners or French beans, are well and truly on the menu now. The French beans are  Blue Lake climbing French beans. And the cucumbers are just beginning to join most lunches. 

Mmmm, cheese and cucumber sandwiches… we just bought some fancy cheddar cheeses from the monthly Hungerford Food market along with some more garlic oil. I also couldn’t resist buying a couple of pots on the plant stall, including a salvia for the flower patch by our bench. Talking of which, that’s where I’m going now.

The song title is provided by the Manic Street Preachers. Go on, why not take another look at the video? It’s only 2½ minutes long.

All These Things That I’ve Done

This week has been all about the weather. Storm Eunice hit on Friday and there was quite a lot of news of trees down in the area but our power stayed on so I could work all day; just looking out each time there was a huge gust. I saw several lorries full of wood clippings where they’d been clearing fallen trees. 

We walked to the allotment yesterday and noticed gaps in hedges which weren’t there before. The lamp post in the photo above must have been entwined by that branch a while ago, but it was the first time I’d noticed it. 

At the allotment we were pleased to see our polytunnel still standing and only a bit of minor damage. Others weren’t so lucky… here’s one of Ivan’s polytunnels 😔

Plot3 was fine but we’d gained a couple of dalek compost bins.

The North-East corner of the site had even more debris so a few of us did a bit of tidying in the hope that plotholders will retrieve their stuff before the next storm arrives (we have a yellow wind warning today).

I’ve felt a bit washed-out after my fourth COVID19 jab last Sunday, but I hope that’s a sign that it had some positive effect on my anti-bodies… The previous day we enjoyed a few hours on the plot. I divided the beautiful geum into several plots.

I hope they grow and flower as well as the original plant did. I potted on the bay laurel that my sister gave us for Christmas, I’m not sure whether it’s edible bay leaf or not at the moment. Joanne also gave us a lovely little holly bush that we’ve planted on the wildlife plot; the birds will appreciate those berries I’m sure.

I did a bit of cooking, using our festival squash and Borlotti beans, as an adaptation of this recipe. That covered me for three meals. Not too sure about using cinnamon in a savoury dish though…

I’ve updated the Wildlife blog which includes the video (which I spent hours faffing about with!) of visitors to the pumpkin which we left out specifically to see who would eat it. Here’s one of the stars of the show - so cute!

I’m looking forward to this free talk in the week. I’m enjoying reading this book at the moment. The memoir includes so much from my life too, with Greenham, Beacon Hill, Combe Gibbet and other local areas of interest along with historical, nature and political interest. It even includes Thomas Hardy references, so it really hits the spot for me!

I struggled to find a song title but chose this one by The Killers (who needs an excuse for a Killers song!)

Arwen’s Song

We enjoyed a bit of snowfall yesterday. Nothing like the weather that Storm Arwen brought to the north of the country, but we don’t usually get much snow so I always think of it as a treat. A little slow-mo video.

We had a freezing night and this morning we awoke to a frozen dusting of snow on rooftops and a beautiful dramatic sky. You can (just about) see the crescent moon in the photo too.

I’m having a long weekend so we went to the allotment this morning to pick a couple of carrots and see how the site looked. Ok, so neither the carrots nor snow are that impressive, but it was nice crunching through the icy grass.

We were glad to have protected the broad beans at the weekend. They looked a bit limp through the tunnel, but not too bad.

Something had left interesting tracks on a plank. I can’t work out what made them. Brrr, chilly little feet!

We didn’t stay outside for long and came home to make a leek & potato soup, using a Jamie Oliver recipe. It only needed two smallish Kestrel potatoes. We really need to dig up the last plant, but not today!

We bought leeks as ours aren’t big enough yet and the soup has celery in it too. The carrot added a bit of colour. We blitzed it rather than leaving it chunky and it has a nice texture and flavour. 

Last night I ate my last spaghetti squash. It’s a shame I only got two fruits this year, but I’ll try again in 2022.

Roasted for 45 minutes then toasting after adding a cheese, nut and paprika topping. It really is a tasty squash variety.

We missed out on the Christmas lights switch-on and preparations for the Hungerford Extravaganza which we’ll also skip this year. We’ll stick to the plan to hopefully avoid Covid-19 including the new Omicron variant which has recently surfaced. We both took antibody tests today, mostly out of interest to compare our results rather than anything else.

I hope the storm didn’t cause you too many problems and this beautiful song from The Lord of the Rings is the only reminder of the first named storm of this season.

Get Up, Stand Up

 Not a sunny bank holiday Monday, but perfect weather for actually getting some work done.

Our new poly tunnel has been waiting to go up since last year, so yesterday was the day to finally do it.

So from this abandoned-looking plot...

To this, aah, that’s more like the Plot7 we know and love. The old polytunnel is going to be used for a squash climbing frame (plans for next year).

We’ve spent quite a few hours on the plot during the extended long weekend. We even cleared some of Plot3, what a mess!

So, it looks better, but what can’t be seen is the million tiny seedlings just waiting for a bit of rain!

It’s a shame to be clearing really, as there’s so much wildlife finding a Winter resting place. I even found another elephant hawk moth caterpillar today! My macro camera has been working quite well. Jamie found this amazing caterpillar. The id has now been confirmed as a Pale Tussock moth caterpillar. More photos on my wildlife blog, which I keep separate for each new creature I spot.

And we saw a couple of Angle Shades moths. Pretty.

And loads of white butterflies,

...along with far too many slugs and snails..!

So, lots of grub for froggy to clear up (but surely they don’t eat snails!?)

We found these rather interesting Hare’s foot inkcap mushrooms in our compost bins last week, which I think are worth a mention. They’re helping to break down all the garden waste we’re putting in the bins, along with plenty of cardboard as ‘brown waste’.

And the song title, with the rather weak link to the blogpost is of course provided by the great Bob Marley.