Bank Holiday

What a lovely start to the working week - an early morning walk around the wet allotment, enjoying the warm morning sunshine and the birds chattering around us.

We've just had a traditionally rainy bank holiday weekend but we managed a few hours on the plot all three days and it was pretty warm. I picked these chive flowers to make chive flower vinegar, but I need more than that so will have to see if the plants produce enough when they re-bloom.

Finally I cleared this area of weeds so I could direct sow mangetout. It’s usually one of the first harvests but the weather has slowed us down this year.

Things are definitely looking up though as seeds are beginning to germinate (PSB and sprouts were up within a week) and we managed plenty of sowing this weekend too. Jamie’s sown squash, sunflowers, calendula and marigolds. I’ve sown zinnia, ipomoea and echinacea. These are all in the window sills and under the growlight at home, we’ll move them up to the polytunnel as soon as they emerge - plenty more to sow!

We've potted up one of the tomatoes and a courgette in the polytunnel. That was a muddy job in the rain with a sodden bag of potting compost!

There's a lot of lush greenery on the site but unfortunately most of it is weeds that need pulling and the grass edges are harbouring masses of slugs and snails. There are a few other ‘pests’ hidden in the undergrowth too…This is one of a pair of female pheasants and there happen to be two males too - uh-oh! They do eat insects, but not slugs and actually I think they prefer fresh new seedlings...

There are points of lovely colour too. Just this one iris so far but what a beauty.

We've re-thought our plan for the year - quite late, I know but it'll be fine.. it all catches up eventually...

This is Plot 7. There are more spaces left over than the plan shows. I'm hoping to fill them with more flowers and I usually gain a few additional vegetable plants from the Freebies shelf or as gifts.

This is the 'other half' of Plot 8. I've got three varieties of carrots which I really need to start sowing, but that part of the plot definitely needs better digging so that I get some straight carrots/parsnips/salsify.

We're bound to wander from the plan, but that covers most of our needs. Of course Plot 3 is where our other brassicas, cucumbers, beans and garlic will grow. I'm thinking that I should also grow celeriac as it seems to be threatening to be a wet year...

So that's how we passed our bank holiday weekend and here's a bit of Blur to hum along to - hope you had a good one too and now it's back to work A-G-A-I-N!

You Need Hands

Look at all that fresh new growth. That was last weekend, a nice sunny day but a freezing wind and there’s fleece protecting our strawberry plants because there was frost in the week. I weeded the flowerbed by hand. Perennials are emerging and I’ve bought lots of flower seeds, mostly annuals, for sowing quite soon. I pulled quite a lot of the Nigella which does rather take over, but they are pretty flowers and seedheads.

What you may not have noticed in the photo is this broomrape (Orobanche) just emerging, there’s another one popping up too. They’re parasitic plants which get their nutrients from the roots of their host plants. If it’s Common Broomrape, which is likely, it has multiple rather than one preferred host plant - it should be more obvious when it grows more.

And here are a few of the tadpoles in our tiny pond. They stay low when the weather is cold but you can see movement when they’re eating the duckweed and they’re enjoying the algae growing on the sides of the pond. They’ll move on to eating meat quite soon so they can eat snails and flies that fall in the water. I really hope they get a taste for snails, there are so many everywhere!

At last there’s a bit of sowing and planting underway. These are shop-bought; a Blight Buster tomato, Money Maker tomato and a Summer Ball yellow courgette which we’ll grow in the polytunnel until (if) Summer arrives. Jamie has sown some Claret purple sprouting broccoli and Brechin Brussels sprouts seeds on another windowsill and we planted the potatoes yesterday! Yay!

Four Desiree into the ground on Plot7, two Wilja and four Rocket into bags on Plot8. 

I do like a close-up of potato chits! Such interesting features.

It was actually quite a pleasant day yesterday. Though rain threatened it didn’t arrive till later so we had a nice few hours on the plot and I got a bit more weeding done where I want to sow my mangetout. Last weekend I weeded ‘The Orchard’ - ok, so just 3 tiny twigs at the moment, but look!

Our first blossom! One day that may be a cherry 😄

Aah, look at that gorgeous blue sky and fresh leaves on the trees. This was last week, so beautiful and the birds are really active. On the advice of plotholder Linda we’ve downloaded the Merlin app and it’s great for recognising bird song, perhaps we’ll even learn from it. There are plenty of robins, blue tits, goldfinches and wrens around as well as gathering numbers of swallows. Also, lots of magpies, crows, jackdaws and 11 red kites circling overhead!

I’ve been watching this jackdaw and its mate from our window. See the two sticks poking up from the chimney pot - he’s been having a lot of trouble with them! I bored Jamie for hours with updates the other day 🤭 The jackdaw had selected a stick that was far too long to manoeuvre and he kept dropping it, I think he gave up in the end. And that’s why I decided on the song title - Malcolm McLaren’s version from the Great Rock & Roll Swindle rather than Max Bygraves.

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.

Woman

I’m not sure how it’s the 10th of March already, but that’s what life is like these days!

A frosted daffodil

So far March has brought frost, fog and rain, but thank goodness a bit of sunshine too!

I’ve enjoyed seeing the various poems in shop windows up the High Street for the Hungerford Poetry Festival - what a good idea! I haven’t had an opportunity to pop into the library yet to see all the locally written ones but here’s my offering - a Marsh Lane one, obviously 😊

We had a very pleasant allotment day yesterday, doing various bits of tidying and clearing - mostly not on our plots, but Jamie did finish the potato patch with a sprinkling of sulphur and a final dig through.

I dug and planted up some of Ivan’s irises - it’s a lucky dip for what colours we may get. There are 4 different plants there so hopefully a good mix - lots of plotholders have been taking them before the plots are re-leased to newcomers. 

Lots of us studying last year’s photos to try and work out which plants to go for ☺️ Here’s a reminder of last year’s fabulous display; we will miss it, but it’ll be nice seeing the colours spread around the site. And we’ve bought ‘Ivan’s Bench’ with donations that plotholders have given for the plants - for Ivan and others to sit and rest awhile.

Last weekend it was very wet but I managed to dig three holes and planted our mini-orchard - very mini! One Conference pear, one cherry and one golden apple. The pear and cherry are in bud but the apple is still dormant. I don’t know anything about fruit trees so it’ll be a bit of a learning experience.

After a nice plot day yesterday it has returned to grey skies today and overnight rain, so I’ve been mostly cooking. A curried parsnip soup made with three decent parsnips from the plot and plenty of delicious spices - that will cover a few lunchtimes this week.

Last week I used some of my dried Yin Yang beans with leeks and parsnip for a very tasty stew, made with passata. We also used a few leeks with a cheesy pasta, leek and Quorn lardons bake - so more-ish but we did manage to make it cover two meals.

As well as the soup today, I’ve been making a focaccia, using Waitrose garlic focaccia mix. It’s been very time-consuming with so much resting and turning but it certainly bubbled and expanded!

I thought I’d gone wrong a few times - the dough was so sloppy, but it looks ok now it’s out of the oven. As you can see, I decorated it with chives, peppers, tomatoes and onion - Some of those pre-roasted peppers look a bit too charred ☺️ And, it isn’t meant to be a Union Jack!!

The song is a reference to International Women’s Day last week and, well, it’s a great song by Neneh Cherry - enjoy (though the video is rather depressing)!

Cool for Cats

We’ve had a huge amount of rain again, the rivers are fit to bust again but yesterday we had some extremely welcome sunshine. We were surprised there weren’t more plotholders on site, but the ground is a bit too wet to dig.

We’ve been clearing weeds, edging and pulling the carrots which had been left in the ground way too long. And there were some proper monsters in there, most had severe slug damage so have gone into the green bin at home - our 3 compost bins are already full.

This is Jamie’s extremely neat handiwork last weekend - making way for brassicas. He added lime and chicken manure pellets after clearing all the weeds; the heavy bags of compost will help to firm the soil before the plants go in (well, they aren’t sown yet!). We hope to have Brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and Cavolo Nero.

Oh, and this is the area I’m prepping for our three mini fruit trees. Jamie and I have rather different clearing techniques as you can see! Well, my bit of ground is much more weedy and I’ve had to dig a new straight-ish edge. Jamie moved on to hand-weeding the potato plot yesterday. We’ve only bought a handful of spuds: Wilja, Rocket and Desiree. They’re chitting under a grow light at home now.

I saw one tiny crocus flower on our plot, but no other flowers yet. This is a macro photo of the hellebore flowers at home. They’re so pretty aren’t they and don’t mind the shade - perfect.

I found a perfect little frog yesterday whilst digging. It was only about 10cm long and golden. I didn’t get a photo because I had to move it out of harm’s way. I see people have started reporting UK spawn sightings - nothing at Marsh Lane yet. I did see a ladybird yesterday and a digger bee last weekend, but it’s too early for them to come out really, we’re still expecting a cold snap. I cleared the old growth from the perennials but have left them on an empty spot for the insects to stay cosy. It means I can now see the weeds on the flower plot and see a few bulbs are emerging, though the slugs have already spotted that fresh new growth 🙄

Talking of which, look at these clumps of growth along the grass path.

They’re wild onion and have really spread over the last couple of years. They have a lovely onion scent - a bit stronger than chives, and can be used in the same way. You can apparently eat the bulbs too, but they must be very tiny. I’ve never seen a flower on these plants, but I’ll try to remember to check this year.

It’s great to see the longer hours of daylight and some dramatic skies like this yesterday. There’s definitely been some overnight rain, but we’re hoping to get a bit of plot-time in later. 

Enjoy the song provided by Squeeze. Look at the handsome cat! He’s such a friendly fellow, but the magpies are very unhappy when he’s around. The active hedgerow was keeping him entertained yesterday. What a life - he’s got the whole site to monitor 😺