Eighties

Look at that! We had some proper rain yesterday!

Jamie was particularly happy as it meant he didn't need to go to the allotment to water. He sowed some of my favourite Gigantes beans and Ivan gave him several runner bean plants too. He also managed to dig some holes ready and waiting for our courgettes and tomato plant. The tomato has little fruits already, so it's begging to go out.
I actually went out again last week - in the daytime, it was on the last sunny day. We walked to a field that overlooks the town.

We walked down through to the town. There were a few more people than I've seen in weeks, but we didn't have to do much swerving to avoid other pedestrians - though, I must admit, I found it rather novel seeing the avoidance manoeuvres people make!

Apart from that walk, I've just been working. I bought a new gamer’s mousepad - makes my 'workstation' look cool :-)

Jamie pulled one of our garlic - they’re all small like this because they didn’t get enough water when the bulbs were forming, nice flavour though.

Neal brought over some more broad beans. We had them with two meals including this halloumi and grilled asparagus (You can tell when I've cooked because I like to make it look fancy)

And there were some left so I made hummus - I had to add some frozen peas, (there weren’t quite enough beans once they were podded and shelled) which add to the GREEN! It was very tasty, we had it with the roasted peppers, along with other tapas, on Friday evening.

The rhubarb is still providing and we’re still loving the mix with strawberries, so delicious and so easy:
Equal measures of rhubarb and strawberries;
1/4 measure of water;
1/2-3/4 measure of sugar;
2 tbsp of lemon juice.

Shaheen’s recipe for rhubarb and rose petal butter gave me the idea of soaking rhubarb in some rose liqueur and cooked that up a couple of days later with some sugar and a bit more rhubarb. I do love flowery flavours.

I harvested the first of the ‘micro greens’. They are nice and peppery, but basically just cress!

Today’s song is provided by Killing Joke, I saw them at the Elephant Fayre (in 1985 apparently) - I don’t remember them like they appear in this video. The country rather feels like it’s returning to those times - apart from coronavirus which is taking a bit of a backseat in the media, but it continues to kill over 1500 a week in Britain so please continue to stay safe x

Light My Fire

We had a HAHA Workday yesterday - our first proper visit to the site for over a month! It was great to be working out in the fresh air again. (I hope this video is working, it's using the slow-motion feature on my new phone).

Luckily the rain stayed off for most of the time and all the volunteers did a great job of clearing the site; chopping back overgrown hedges and getting rid of all the rotten wood around the place thanks to a great big bonfire.

It's been such a wet few weeks I'm sure we were all glad to be out. And naturally, cakes were provided by Ted so we had regular tea-breaks and time for a catch-up.

Jamie and I (with help) spent the time clearing our Plot 46A - we didn't do anything with it this year, so we're clearing it for someone on the waiting list. It would have been nice to have a plot in the middle of the site, but we're stick with our original ones for now.

We were pleased to be able to clear all the structures and all the rotten wood was burned. The barrels full of soil were left by the previous tenant, we didn't manage to empty all of them but we'll help the new ploholder if necessary. They have lovely soil in them, but unfortunately there's a lot of weed seed in there too.

The bonfire provided us with some extra warmth as the sun was going down when we left - well, it's November, it was only about 4:00pm.

Over the last few weeks I've been enjoying the last of our harvest of pumpkin and am still loving the dried beans. I must be sure to pick more for drying next year. This meal I had was so delicious, based roughly on this veggiedesserts recipe.

I intended for it to cover 2 meals but ended up going back for seconds and scoffing the lot in one sitting, and with a bit of cheese on top. What a piggy :-)

We've not quite finished all the Dido potatoes - they are a lovely yellow maincrop variety and have been delicious as mash, patties and as wedges. Today's song is, obviously, provided by The Doors - enjoy.

Eighth Day

I've been on leave for a week, we've been busy with other things but have also had time on the plot and achieved some stuff, though there's still plenty to do. We still have a few potatoes chitting at home - they're going into bags on the plot, at some point...Looks like an alien with his hands up "I come in peace".

We've had sunshine with some rain and the nights have threatened frost and also reached -1° so we've been fleecing and de-fleecing most mornings and evenings.We have plenty of weeds growing but have cleared areas and taken bagfuls home for the green bin.

But flowers are providing lovely bright spots. We have way too many of these Californian poppies, but they're so beautiful!

And the chives are all flowering so the bees are very happy.

We've potted on all the french marigolds and also some supervivum (houseleek) for the plant sale.

We've braved putting them outside under netting but we are fleecing them overnight if a frost is threatened - it's easier to deal with than in the greenhouse though and they need to toughen up...

The strawberries have so many flowers and tiny fruits forming that we don't want to risk them so they're fleeced each night too. So far they've kept their yellow centres so the frost hasn't got these..

But as well as protecting things and weeding we've been planting - broad beans are in...

Salad is planted in the raised bed with the onions.

And today I planted up a smaller raised bed with Boltardy beetroot, Red and White Salad Onions and Purple and Pink Asian radish. I spent some time yesterday digging out the masses of weeds in that part of the plot. I dug out another part of Plot7 on Bank Holiday Monday - here's a timelapse... you can see why it takes me a long time to dig... apart from having to pick roots (from the hedge) from almost every spadeful it does appear that I do quite a lot of chatting :-)

While I was doing that, Jamie was clearing a large area of Plot 3 and dug the runner bean trench.

It's nice that we're beginning to see areas which are free of weeds. And the beans are planted into pots in the greenhouse - Benchmaster and I have some Pickwick dwarf runner beans that another plotholder gave me.

Our rhubarb is growing monstrous and we've not eaten much of it yet, but did give some to a friend at work to make some rhubarb gin...

We had some torrential rain but no thunder. Anyway that sums up our last week and a bit, and so Hazel O'Connor provides the title track (it should be 9 days, but well, you know..!)

Looking for the Rain

We didn't have to look far yesterday, this is our front window. Torrential downpours in between drizzle was all we had for most of the day.

We were so pleased that it stayed away during the evening while we were at Newbury Racecourse for the fireworks - what a great display! The beginning was particularly amazing with the loudest bangs I've ever heard - it made the ground shake - and the soundtrack for the evening was the ending of the First World War 100 years ago today, so there were lots of red fireworks to represent poppies - it was actually really good (much better than this photo).

Today, Jamie is feeling very painful because of the Twister fairground ride that we went on last night - he was in the seat that gets crushed and has bruised his ribs (or maybe cracked one, as he heard a 'pop' - eurgh). So while he's resting up I made some pumpkin soup. I'm sorry to say that last week's roasted Crown Prince soup went in the bin - it was vile! So I didn't roast the pumpkin today.

And I peeled most of the skin off as this type of pumpkin tends to have rather hard skin. I fried two shallots with turmeric, paprika, cumin and a bit of curry powder, then added the pumpkin and some stock.

Mmm, that smelt so delicious

While that was simmering, I mixed up the pumpkin seeds in a bag with melted butter, salt and smoked paprika before putting in the oven on 150 for 45 minutes.

I decided to sieve the soup after I'd blitzed it, there were still some bits of skin which seemed a bit hard, and now it's a delicious smooth pumpkin curry soup. And more than half a pumpkin left...

The songtitle is by Unkle - it's part of the soundtrack to a Danish TV series we watched recently, The Rain. Tonight I'm off to the ballet to see Swan Lake, with my sister - my first ever ballet! I'm looking forward to it.

Feel Good inc.

On Friday night we had some rain! It seemed like a lot when it was pouring down and we had to go out and revel in it, but by Saturday it wasn't clear that there had been any at all on the allotment.

So, there we were lugging watering can after watering can across the site to our plots - this was today (Sunday).

Jamie watered on Saturday while I showed a new plotholder around the site. Mari was lucky, what timing! As on Saturday we had another tapas and wine afternoon. Lots of fun and thank goodness for the sun umbrella for when the sun peeped through the clouds. Hours later we walked home through the warm streets - I love this weather, especially now that I have a week off work - yippee!

The usual suspects: Jamie, Kerry, Jane, Neal, David and Ivan

Today we had several hours on the site, with lots of sitting down in between the watering as it was even hotter today than yesterday. I had two leftover cucumber plants so I've planted them against the strings and canes to replace the mangetout. During last week I pulled up the mangetout plants which were no longer producing; the purple ones (Shiraz) had a bad year. For some reason the pigeons took a real liking to them, but didn't touch the golden pods. I don't actually know what the cucumbers are that I've planted - I think they're long ones. We have our favoured Rocky mini cucumbers growing on Plot46A - one of them is growing much stronger than the other.

My squash framework is definitely more grotty than grotto - but the plants are beginning to go crazy so hopefully my woeful structure won't be seen under all the growth!!

 The Borlotti beans look good - I'm going to leave them on the plant for a bit longer and eat them fresh (out of the pods), I probably won't dry them - I don't think there will be enough to try more than two or three meals with them, but they do look great.

These are the edamame (soya) bean flowers - not like normal bean flowers are they? I saw a bee pollinating them today so I hope some beans will follow fairly soon... All the other runners and dwarf beans are beginning to set now.

And here come the courgettes... these Goldmine produced a huge yield last year and it looks like this year may be the same!

There we go - the first trug shot of the season!

Mostly full of lettuce, which I've made into soup. It's tasty, not lettuce-y at all, apart from the colour. I added a bit (too much) of the garlic salt I made the other day.

And I'm currently cooking the courgettes topped with mixed nuts, shallot and cheese - mmm it smells good. I'm trying to fry the aubergine to blacken the skin - you'd think I'd be good at that, but I don't want them to go too far...

And the song title is provided by The Gorillaz - great song.

Changes

The sky has been white instead of blue for the last couple of days but it has meant that we could get some work done at home and then yesterday we managed to clear the other half of Plot 46A - just a little bit more to do. But this post is mostly about the tadpoles.

Or should I say 'froglets' - look at that little one, with another one looking on from the water. They're so tiny - smaller than a little fingernail.

There's still a bit of tail that needs to go.

And there are others at varying stages of their transformation. Here's a little timelapse video of pond action from yesterday - the water snail is a busy little thing!

While we were clearing Plot 46A we found lots of ladybird larvae and cocoons. Any adult ladybirds we found we took to Plot3 to deal with our broad beans' blackfly problem - they seemed happy to help :-)

Plot46A has a serious weed issue. My salad seedlings are taking shape now so I can just about tell the difference between them and the weedlings but I'm going to wait a bit longer before I pull the weeds - I think it going to have to be a manual job, rather than a hoe...

 

The sun's coming out so today (Wednesday) we should be able to have a barbecue on site - hooray, but I still need to work on some more growing/weeding/sowing...
A great title song by David Bowie - a stay-in-your-head-all-day song - enjoy.