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.