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!

The Only One I Know

Looks like an aerial photo of a desert landscape doesn’t it? Oh, just me?
It’s been quite the opposite, so much rainfall over the last week. Our 50mm raingauge had over-flowed, but I appreciate that we’ve been lucky compared to some parts of the country which are still flooded as the ground is so saturated.

We had some lovely blue sky yesterday (Sunday). Some tiny showers threatened more rain, but the wind blew the clouds away and we had a pleasant couple of hours clearing the sweetcorn patch. If the weather stays mild the weeds will love that patch of bare soil! You can see how much the grass is growing and the Calendula are still providing spots of colour.

Most of the other flowers are just seedheads now, although the verbena bonariensis still have a purple tinge and the Nicotiana has a few flowers protected under the glass table.

This seems rather unexpected in November - we’re still eating our tomatoes! They eventually turned red after being at home for a few weeks and are so tasty providing bruschetta lunches. There's home-grown basil on there but the Spring Onions are shop-bought - we simply can't grow them without slugs demolishing them. I sowed 2 long rows this year, but not one was fit to eat 😞 Any ideas?

Anyway, as you can tell, there’s not really much going on. Which is why I was staring at a plank for much of the time. 

But what a plank! The moss is certainly enjoying the decaying wood. There are at least 4 different species that I can see on there.

So, here are a few moss facts: moss is a type of bryophyte (along with liverworts and hornworts) and there are over 1000 species in Britain and Ireland! The British Bryological Society (formerly known as The Moss Exchange Club) is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year. 

Mosses can be found almost anywhere in the World, from deserts to the arctic but Britain's warm-ish, wet (getting wetter) climate is perfect for lots of species. This is the only one that I think I can recognise and name at the moment - Grymmia Pulvinata. The little things that look like flower buds, setae, turning back into the pincushion are the defining feature. Cute.

So that provided the song title - sung by The Charlatans. Sing along - marvellous.

Celebrate

January sped by and on the non-rainy evenings we enjoyed some amazing skies. The red stripes of this one were so much more dramatic than the photo shows - so beautiful. January offered us two excuses for celebration. Burns Night provided us with a delicious Stahly's veggie haggis and Jamie's version of neeps & tatties, followed by a Scottish film (this year, Shallow Grave).

Then the Lunar New Year, welcoming the year of the Rabbit, meant we could have a tasty mix of pan-Asian (I don't think we can claim it was chinese) fare, including these Itsu bao buns which are the most delicious! Followed by Chinese film Lian Bian (King of Masks).

Perhaps that's why the usually longest month of the year disappeared in the blink of an eye and now we're into February. It's started mild and not too wet so we've had two weekends of some allotment work. Jamie cleared the strawberry bed which has been entirely swamped by bindweed over the last couple of years. We're going to grow the strawberries in growbags this year in the hope that we can recover the area underneath. And I planted up the Egyptian onions (aka tree onions, walking onions) - look how tiny they are!

I should have planted them on arrival but the weather was too cold and unfortunately some of the bulblets were past their best - I hope I at least get a few to grow. I found out about them in a book I received at Christmas from my nephew - it's a little set of old Gardeners Companion books by Dr Shewell-Cooper (I can't help reading it in a Mr Cholmondley-Warner voice, from Harry Enfield 😃). I've also found this useful advice online from the LovelyGreens blog.

The last weekend in January meant it was the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch weekend. Unfortunately the Sunday wasn't a sunny day and the birds weren't very active, but we saw a few. All of these are regulars at the moment and there are actually 3 robins who are getting very aggressive with each other.

At the weekend the weather was quite reasonable, especially in the Sun, and like many other plotholders we decided the time had come to do a bit of ground preparation. Most of the beds look like this... weeds and lots of grass growth. The wet weather has made it easy to pull most of those weeds though and after a couple of hours both days we now have a cleared potato plot with sulphur sprinkled and dug in.

Aaah, freshly cleared earth is such a happy sight! We seem to have created a cliff at one end of the plot - I'm sure that'll settle a bit 😆

It was lovely talking to some of our new plotholders and old ones who we haven't seen since before Christmas. Ivan gave us a couple of plants for our flower bed - an iris (obviously) and phlox. They'll wait a bit before going out as we're expecting another cold snap.

We had some nuts left over from Christmas so I made this nut loaf - this is my version, adapted slightly from this one online. In fact my hairdresser mentioned it a few months ago - nuts, cheese and wine, how could I resist?

It made a big loaf and we had it for dinner 3 nights in a row. I really liked it, very tasty - hot or cold. As with most nut loaves, it refused to hold together but I would make it again (maybe half the size though!)

It's frosty this morning and once again I am pleased I don't have to go and scrape the car before driving to work. Plus I have a short week which is always a bonus! Have a good week all and enjoy this song by Pitbull - this post has a lot of celebration in it so it seems appropriate.

New Life

I was amazed to see how quickly the frogspawn have developed. The frilly bits aren’t legs yet though, they’re external gills. The tadpoles look much more black in real life and are very small. I recorded their arrival on the Pondnet Spawn Survey.

Most of the hatched tadpoles were huddled together eating the remaining spawn jelly. I retrieved some more tadpoles from a puddle before it dried out in the hot March sunshine and put it in the newly- created pond in the bog garden on the HAHA Wildlife plot. It'll look better once there's a bit of growth round the outside and I'll probably buy a plant for in the pond.

When I pointed out the ‘pond’ to a new plotholder he said “I drink my morning cocoa from a mug bigger than that”. Haha, you’ve got to laugh! It may be tiny, but it’s a life saver to some residents at the moment. I’ve put a flat stone in it so the birds may like it too, but I hope they don’t eat the froglets!

We've had a beautiful few days and I was on leave so enjoyed a sunny 4-day weekend. On Friday we visited the Inkpen Crocus Field again - we visited 3 years ago in February and there were more crocuses then, perhaps due to our recent wet and windy weather - the ground was soggy, even at the top of the hill. 

It's so pretty and natural with the crocuses tending to grow individually rather than in clumps, it's quite fascinating and the origin is unknown; I prefer to think of them as from 12th Century crusaders rather than garden escapees.

We walked more than 6km that day; my working-from-home legs aren't used to it! And then for the rest of the weekend we were working on the allotment - quite exhausting, but so lovely to be out in the sunshine.

I showed a couple of new plotholders around and there were lots of people gardening on site. Along with many butterflies (comma, brimstone, tortoiseshell and whites) and bees enjoying the grape hyacinths and the few other flowers that are showing.

Let's hope they do their work on our broad bean flowers which have started to appear. Our bean plants are a really sickly bunch, so small after all the battering by the wind and frost, but we should get a few handfuls of beans eventually.

I spent most of the time working on the area by our pond where the mammoth sage had taken over with a tree-like root. Eventually managed to pull the remaining roots along with the couch grass, raspberry and various other roots - in fact I still have a tiny strip to do. The soil looks quite good, but I'm mostly clearing it for our new seating area.

We've actually sown a few seeds, including mangetout. They're in the polytunnel at the moment. On a couple of the sunny mornings this week I've popped up to the allotment first thing to open up the door. The temperature in the polytunnel has fluctuated between 30° and -3° over the last week! Jamie's been closing up at the end of the day. The mornings are so beautiful up there, it's hard to pull myself away to sit back at my desk, but it is a lovely benefit of home-working.

Seems like I'll be working from home for a while yet, as covid cases are increasing again - not suprising as people don't need to isolate. It seems that a 5th vaccination will be on the cards for immuno-suppressed people... ho hum.. Anway, less of that depressing news... the song title is provided by an extremely young Depeche Mode. Feel free to bop 😉

No Roots

A 4-day weekend, I need more of these! Especially with weather like we had yesterday - sun and lovely warmth. Aah, that blue sky makes me so happy!

Jamie and I finished clearing the wildlife plot. Ready to sow the wildflower seeds in a couple of weeks and hopefully the bog plants won’t be held up by stupid BREXIT for too long; they’re coming from Holland and I’ve seen some bad reports online, but Ivan said his irises weren’t delayed. 

Anyway the temperature is dropping over the next couple of weeks, with snow tomorrow - really?! So planting can wait a bit longer...

The reason this plot isn’t leased is because it suffers from Horsetail, apart from the fact that it’s good to have an area on site where people aren’t trying to remove anything that wriggles or flies 🙄. We hope that the wildflowers will help reduce the spread of the horsetail, which creeps onto the site from the canal towpath. Grassing other areas has helped and the white coverings probably worked too, but look so ugly! We’ve also put some mini-plots on a horsetail plot because those plots tend to get more intensive cultivation which curtails the horsetail. Here’s some of the weed we found yesterday - it’s just sprouting, but so hard to spot when it’s dormant.

So, back to our plots. The crazy rhubarb missed out on being divided again last year - it’s trying to take over! We really must split it this year...

The beetroot and rainbow chard have germinated in the polytunnel. I’m hoping to be able to see the difference once they’ve grown a bit (I know! Why didn’t I label them?!)

I’ve got a new watering can for the greenhouse. The mangetout can go outside soon, they won’t mind the frost, but I need to prepare their plot.

The marigolds have germinated poorly this year. Only 4 or 5 from each batch at home and in the polytunnel.

We’re seeing a lot of different butterflies and bees on the site now that flowers are appearing, it’s such a positive time of year (especially when the sun shines).  This is ground ivy, pretty ground cover, with a nice minty smell. The bees love it.

We’ve also seen a lot more bee flies this year, they’re predators of solitary bees so not that welcome but interesting to see. They’re so bee-like, including a buzz.

So, that’s been our weekend so far. Today is Bank Holiday Monday and snow showers are now threatening today. It doesn’t look very welcoming but we’ll probably enjoy it when we finally get outside. The song title is provided by Alice Merton. I’d like to think there are no horsetail roots left in the wildlife plot, but I know that won’t be the case! Ooh, the sun has just come out!