Year of the Tiger

 This dwarf iris provided a spot of colour on an extremely wet and windy site yesterday afternoon.

It didn’t seem like a day for being outside but working for a few hours on the HAHA wildlife plot was actually very pleasant. We put a wigwam up for the birds to perch on. We noticed that the bullfinches seemed to like standing at an angle when we were watching them last year.

There are lots of baby plants emerging so we wanted to remove the unwanted ones in order to make room for the ones we want - there must be hundreds of seeds in that soil! We tried to only pull grasses, docks and some of the other more intrusive weeds that we recognise. Jamie's cleared the bog garden. Some of the irises have spread well, but other plants we bought have disappeared without trace.

These are a few of the wildflowers that we think we recognise from the plantlets... of course, I welcome correction if you know better.

Rosebay Willowherb and Jacobs Ladder

Foxgloves and Teasle (hopefully) or is it Bristly Ox Tongue?

Cowslip at the top and (possibly) Hairy Hawkbit (left) and Corncockle (right)

As you can see, the cowslips are just flowering. I guess the plants should be divided at some point. The plot doesn't look much at the moment, but up close there are loads of nigella, feverfew and scarlet pimpernel seedlings as well as a few pockets of bulbs, which I think are grape hyacinth, so the bees will be happy when they flower in a few more weeks. In the meantime the blackbirds, magpies and robins were very happy with the bit of trowelling that we did.

When we got home I made some soup using part of the last Crown Prince squash with leeks and celeriac from the plot. 

I was disappointed with the other crown prince this year so I hoped this one would be a bit more tasty. I wasn't too convinced when I had a taster, hence the addition of curry powder! I think I'll use the Festival squash instead when I cook my next squash-based meal.

At the weekend we celebrated the Lunar New Year with a tasty Chinese veggie meal. It was delivered frozen a couple of weeks ago and it was fun opening all the parcels. I must say that the mushroom and veg buns are my favourite and I prefer the fried gyoza to the veggie dumplings. There was way too much for the two of us, so filling! We really should have only cooked half of it.

The cardboard steamer wasn't quite as successful as we'd hoped, as the gyozas stuck but it was a fun parcel to receive. We need to take our excitement where we can these days 😏 Saying that, I have my fourth COVID-19 vaccination next weekend, so that's a trip out of Hungerford! - fingers crossed it provides me with a higher anti-body count than I'm currently seeing.

Saturday was a much nicer day, but we only had an hour on the plot in the sunshine, this was the view through the hedge to Freeman's Marsh.

Anyway, the predictable song title is provided by Myles Kennedy.

Slow and Steady

The squash tunnel is enjoying the rain - we had torrential showers yesterday. The tromboncino have reached the top first but others are joining them. I have been manipulating them skywards but they do prefer to grow sideways and along the ground. 

We didn’t visit the plot today as we had stuff to do at home, plus Hungerford is jammed up because the M4 is closed this weekend. The Sun didn’t show itself at all and there weren’t even rain storms to encourage as outside.

I’ve finished varnishing the crate that I decoupaged using seed packets, allotment magazines and seed catalogues. It’ll be useful for displaying things at the food festival and other HAHA events when they start happening again.

I made a lovely rice dish last night (well, I thought it was tasty) with turmeric and smoked paprika flavouring. It was just courgette, onion, tomato and garlic - I love this kind of meal and it’s so colourful too.

And I did my Big Butterfly Count in the week. I thought I’d hang round the lavender but all I counted was:

3 x Large whites

1 x Small white

4 x Small tortoiseshells 

1 x Small skipper

If the sun re-appears I’ll try again. I’ve seen so many other butterflies on site recently, so it’s a shame they were a no-show but not so unusual!

I’ve made a Google album showing the different flowers on the HAHA Wildlife plot, it’s looking rather lovely at the moment - lots of pinks and purples.

So that brings us to the end of July and just one day left of my holiday, shame as it’s been a lovely break but I know I have another few days off at the end of August so not too bad and obviously I’m still working from home so no commute - hoorah! The song, by Of Monsters and Men, is in reference to the decoupage, which I see that I started in March - well, there was no hurry 🙂

Disappointed

The squashes for the tunnel are released to the elements now, and have been joined by an eleventh member, a spaghetti squash from Plot neighbour, Kate. I also took a patty pan plant off her hands and that’s planted on Plot7. Kate had the last spare Boston squash and all the others were re-homed too.

The Rocky cucumbers are planted out in their pots with a bit of enviromesh protection until they’ve settled in. The brassica cage is a nursery for the bean seedlings now that the polytunnel is home for the Aviditas tomatoes and peppers.

We didn’t get the torrential rain, but persistent drizzle has helped everything grow and the plots (and weeds) look happier as a result.

The pumpkins have started to spread, naturally in the opposite direction than we wanted so we’ll try to encourage a detour..

Yesterday Kerry called us over to see this beautiful Scarlet Tiger moth - it’s lower wings are scarlet. It’s on a nettle which is the preferred food of its caterpillar. 

Talking of wildlife…The wildlife plot is well on its way with a few flowers appearing. This is the bog patch, no flowers yet, but plenty of growth.

I’ll do a separate post when there are a few more flowers, but here’s a taster - needed the macro camera for these mini-blooms.

I’ve been pulling some of the over-zealous red shank (Persicaria maculosa) and a lot of the thistles but today we were watching a male and female bullfinch eating thistles on another plot on-site, so it pays to keep some growing there. Mares-tail is one that we’ll pull whenever we can access it, but this stem does look pretty with the raindrop decorations, don’t you think?

Today Jamie direct-sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans and I planted out the Gigantes runner beans. I planted all eight seedlings, even the one that was growing upside-down in its pot 🙄

Jamie earthed-up the potatoes during the week and added sulphur (brimstone) today to avoid scab which seems to offer an easy route in for slugs. The Nicola variety have just started producing their first flowers.

It’s been a dull weekend, weather wise, and not very warm but ok when we were busy and I made a rhubarb and strawberry crumble this morning so I’ve almost forgotten about the nil-nil match between England and Scotland on Friday evening…

The song is provided by Electronic..

Daisies are our Silver

What a beautiful week off work - proper June weather for much of it. We were working on Plot3 and had to move our bench to this lovely spot under the trees in order to cool down a bit.

We’ve spent many hours on the plot since last Wednesday. I managed to finish digging the manure trenches for the squashes (nearly killed me). There are so many hedge/tree roots in Plot3 it’s really hard work.

Jamie’s planted up the two courgettes and two pumpkin plants, with plenty of slug protection. It rained one day so we sheltered in the polytunnel but the amount of slugs and snails that emerged was horrendous!   I’m a bit worried about my squashes because of the placement of the compost bins, but too late to change that now.

Molluscs aren’t the only problem. Not satisfied with eating much of my mangetout, the pigeons have taken a fancy to chard and beetroot leaves this year - I’ve netted the chard now, I’m sure we haven’t needed to do that in previous years.

This is my chive flower vinegar - I managed to get a few flowers so it’ll make nice a pink and flavoured addition to salads. Although currently my salad crops are rather sparse...

Back on Plot7 I filled two holes with manure and put up two wigwams: one for Gigantes beans, which I’ll sow direct, and the other for the Borlotti beans which have germinated and are currently growing on in modules. I’m hoping to get some things planted out on Monday - last day of holiday, boohoo.

The daisies, buttercups, speedwell and other wildflowers are beautiful this year (not the ones we sowed, yet). The Spring weather was perfect for them, if not for our needs. My cousin quoted “Daises are our silver” on a post and it brought back so many childhood memories I had to share it here.

I have to say, it had completely disappeared from my memory, but now I can’t shake it off - such pretty words (it’s a hymn, but I wouldn’t have realised it when singing it at infants school). So, here it is - pardon the nostalgia, but it’s so sweet.

Wildflower

Look at the beautiful blue sky. What you can’t see is how chilly the strong wind was yesterday! Though I’m pleased to say that we’re quite protected at our end of the site.

You can see how dry the ground is, so we're already having to do a lot of watering even though there isn't that much in the ground so far. We're encouraging the garlic to bulb up and have been weeding some of the flower pots to help the struggling plants that have been swamped in them for months!

I planted out the celeriac seedlings. I need to remember never to bother trying to grow my own celeriac from seed in future years - the tray I bought had more than double what I needed and cost less than the seed packet (and my home-grown seedlings are pathetic!). I made a wonky trench for them so that I can keep them wet (they need A LOT of water) and earth them up when they need it.

I’ve protected the celeriac with the fleece tunnel as our night-time temperatures are still low and it may prevent some evaporation. I planted the beetroot and that’s under the green tunnel, but it shouldn’t really need protection; it just looked a bit vulnerable in the middle of that plot. Talking of tunnels.... we think that’s a vole in our shallot patch...

I planted some rainbow chard seedlings in a raised bed. And Jamie planted up some strawberries in this hanging planter, these are in the polytunnel (and are also wonky), it’ll be nice to get some early strawbs and maybe the birds won't venture in there.

Our main job today was to sow the wildflower seeds on the HAHA wildlife plot. Lots of different seeds, as you can see; some we bought, most were gifted or freebies. Hope they beat the weeds to the surface! We may get some rain this week...
The bog garden isn’t worthy of a photo; a couple of plants died (maybe frost damage) but the irises and a couple of others look like they’ll survive - well, it’s early days.

And last of all today, here's one of the frogs in our little pond. There are at least two that we've seen - they're both small, not ours from last year. The water has a lot of algae so I've been clearing it and need to get some more weed. Oh, and we heard the first cuckoo from across the marsh in the week - I do love having lunch at the allotment, definitely a bonus point for working from home! Although there's a lot of sarcasm from all the retired plotholders when I have to go back to work for the afternoon :-}

The song title is provided by Smashing Pumpkins, perhaps I should have saved it for when we have a plot-ful of wildflowers... no, best not tempt fate ;-)

Cheat

No, it’s not cress. That, believe it or not, is a celeriac seedling.

There are 3 or 4 like that. I'm not convinced they'll survive to planting stage but will keep them going, even though we nipped to a garden centre and they had these. Now they look a bit healthier and will be planted rather earlier than our home-germinated plants. Don't they look lovely and healthy?

Talking of healthy, our site is now 100% leased, with most plots looking prepped and ready for the year ahead - a bit different from this time in 2010, when the land developer had withdrawn the idea for allotments on Marsh Lane after 1 year of being set up. Thank goodness the Council were able to negotiate a 4-year lease for us - and that was 11 years ago :-)

We were on the site at the weekend. In between snow showers the sun would come out and it was really hot - as my boss pointed out, the sun is as high now as it is at the end of August! We sowed some teasel seeds on the wildflower plot and I'm pleased to say that our bog plants from Bakker are on their way so it'll be good to get them planted out. I moved the drainpipe of mangetout seedlings outside to a cold frame as I'll (hopefully) plant them out next weekend. The weather is still far more wintry than we want in April - look what we woke up to yesterday - snowy rooftops!

I thought it was going to feel like a soup week, so I soaked some of my home-grown dried beans - I added celery seeds to the water which smelled lovely.

To the stock, I added the few leaves of Cavolo Nero, that we'd grown, plus a few carrots and tomato puree, as per Shaheen's recent soup recipe. I have to admit that my soup doesn't look very pretty, but it tastes good. I wish I had mushed up some of the gigantes beans separately rather than blitzing the whole soup, though there are some whole beans at the bottom of the cup.

Remember our broad beans that got severely hit by the frost in February? They unexpectedly revitalised and now look! I hope the frosts we're having at the moment don't take them out at this stage in the game...

I have to start work now, but just one last thing... You must watch the BBC4 programme: A Year in an English Garden: Flicker & Pulse. It's so beautiful, with time-lapse and other fancy effects and just a little bit of talking - I really enjoyed it, in fact I may have to watch it again (and copy some of their ideas).

The song title is provided by The Clash and is because of buying seedlings from a shop. But, as I said to Forbes on site, "It's not cheating. It's common sense" ;-)