A drizzly day

I had the day off work today - not a great day for working on the plot, but at least it was only drizzling for part of the day (unfortunately that was the part while we were there!).

We made up an enviromesh cage for our onions - we're hoping this will keep them clear of leek moth which was all over the site last year :-(
We did say last year that we're going to cover the whole site with enviromesh, but we'll stick with just covering individual beds for this year :-)


Yellow is this year's colour for enviromesh

We cleared the beets which have been in the ground for about 10 months  - this ugly giant and most of the others have gone into the compost but we took a couple more reasonable-sized ones home; Boltardy aren't meant to go woody even when they're old - we'll see...
The vole/mice hadn't even ventured into this big one, but some of the others had severe slug/snail damage.

Me, with the ugly giant

We hoed and levelled the potato quarter where the onions and other alliums will be going. We're making sure that the chicken manure pellets are well worked into the ground before we get the onions and shallots planted.
We also cleared the cabbage patch and there are only a few sprouts left and then that quarter will be ready for the potato trench preparation.

Chitting Our Potatoes

Not quite so cold today - only about 0° and very sunny. Unfortunately no time to go to the plot though.

We took our seed potatoes to my mum's cold spare bedroom to chit for a few weeks (months actually as we don't intend to plant till end of March/early April). Along with the Orla, Belana and Kestrels I couldn't resist buying 3 Duke of York Reds at the garden centre yesterday. The Orla we intend to keep in the ground for a bit longer as they were tasty last year and kept very well.

One of the Belana was damaged (by a spade it looked like) so we only have 4 of those, but hopefully we'll get plenty of small new potatoes from each plant.

 

Brrrr! Very frosty

We intended to work on the plot this morning but it was too frosty with hard ground and it was still foggy. A low of -5.5° last night.


The sun trying to get through the fog

We were shocked to see how badly affected the broad beans were. Perhaps they'll recover as they're meant to be Winter ones... (Aqua Dulce Claudia)

Sad-looking broad beans!

We measured up for our shallots and onions which were delivered from T&M this week, along with our spuds which we'll chit round my mum's as we have done previous years. They've arrived a bit earlier than we expected, so we've got to start working the ground - but not today!

Our ever-present friend!

Sprouts and Wind

Today was our first visit to the plot since the really windy weather last Wednesday and Thursday. First thing I noticed was that our sprout cage was missing, then Jamie pointed it out in the hedge!!

Wind damage

We had secured it in the ground with bamboo legs but they'd snapped off and all the bricks holding down the mesh hadn't done their job. It was a bit tricksy getting the mesh off the hawthorn hedge but it's not badly damaged, so now it's back in place protecting our sprouts from the pigeons!

We bought 3 bags of organic farmyard manure from the garden centre and have piled that on the area which is for the sprouts next year - after Jamie dug it over. The ground needs to be firm to prevent getting blown sprouts (where the sprout is leafy rather than solid) so a bit of weight on the area for the next few weeks should hopefully do the trick.

Firming the sprout bed

I turned the compost and added more cardboard and veggie cuttings. We chatted with other allotment holders who were taking advantage of the amazing weather for January - 11° in the sun today and 0° minimum over the last week.
And, of course, we picked some more sprouts and a carrot!

Angle Shades Moth

Jamie found this big Angle Shades moth on the kitchen window. It very likely was hidden amongst the cabbage we brought home the other day - we've found quite a few of its bright green caterpillars on the plot.
The moth doesn't cause damage but the larvae are damaging to foliage and flower buds.

Angle Shades Moth

Great looking moth!

Rainbows and Carrots

We took some compost up the plot - including the cellophane wrappers from our Quality Street (it says on the tin they're compostable - made of corn starch apparently) Interesting to see whether they do actually dissolve; we've found the biodegradable plastic bin bags take longer than 18months to dissolve so we don't use them anymore.

We cleared the original carrot trench - which we sowed in April! Most of the remaining Rainbow Mix carrots had split wide open, so they went in the compost bin, but the Early Nantes looked so good we had to take them home.
Also picked some spring onions, which have been in the raised bed for months, parsley and one of the green cabbages - we were hoping to have some lovely coleslaw. However, apart from the slugs which were tucked well into the cabbage there was mould on the edge of the leaves throughout. So, that went into the compost bin and I made carrot and parsley soup instead! The carrots were really tasty even though they'd been in the ground so long.

Now, when we walked to the plot it was reasonably sunny. While we were up there there was a torrential rainstorm and we got soaked. Walking back we did get to see a lovely rainbow though!

New Years Eve

We went to the plot to pick, you've guessed it, sprouts and carrots :-) This carrot weighed 333g - that's what Autumn King carrots are all about! (Not kilograms as I originally recorded!!)

We spotted a hoverfly in the sprout netting. I didn't realise they'd be around at this time of year, but apparently so.  Not much for him to feed on at the moment, but he must have found something to get pollen from...

Also spotted our little rodent - but it's a vole, not a mouse. He ran between the compost bin and under a wooden trough.

New life is already sprouting - the chives have got plenty of re-growth, and though the chard looks pretty awful there are signs of new leaves. The mint has gone a bit mad - growing round and round the pot and shot off under the paving slab - needs a bit of work next year...

Runner Bean Chutney

This is the runner bean chutney which Jamie made on 5th September - lovely and sweet. It was our usual french bean recipe but with red onions - looks pretty similar to the french bean chutney but is a bit darker - may have been boiled down for a bit longer.

Made some carrot and coriander soup with 4 lovely big carrots that we picked yesterday - they didn't split this time, so these were probably Autumn King - we sowed 2 different types of carrot in the one trench (where our parsnips didn't grow) and can't really tell the difference between them...

Today it's very rainy and has got a bit chillier. The thermometer on the plot yesterday showed that it was 7 degrees and that was the minimum temperature!

Carrots & Sprouts

That's pretty much what we'll be living on for a while! Jamie's going to stir fry some sprouts tomorrow and I really fancy some baked in a dauphinois-style potato and carrot thing - my preferred method of cooking anything :-)
Though there are cabbages left in the ground they look pretty ropey, so not sure how they'll be - if we ever get to pull them...
The broad beans look ok so hopefully we'll get some early beans this year.

We were the only people on the allotment today. Only went to pick a bit for dinner and deposit coffee grounds, papaya skins, sprouts waste, potato and carrot peelings into the compost but ended up doing a bit of tidying.

I cleared the bedraggled stems of the sweetcorn - birds and mice had completely removed all trace of corn. There are masses of stringy roots left in the ground which Jamie dug up a bit - mostly to get some worms to come out for the little robin who was hanging round.
We put the sweetcorn remains in the compost as they were quite dry to use as 'brown'. Whilst turning the compost we saw a mouse run out and then back again when we'd finished! Really is worth stirring up the compost and not just leaving it to become a mouse sanctuary!

Christmas Eve

We went to the allotment on Christmas Eve morning before visiting our relatives. Many of the usual suspects were there, picking their produce for Christmas dinner - which is what we were doing too.

Shame this year, the only home-grown food we had to show was carrots and sprouts to go with our Quorn roast! We had to buy parsnips and spuds.

Having said that, we've had lovely chilli pickled onions and pickled beets to go with our cheese and biscuits snacks! The sloe gin and raspberry vodka has also gone down extremely well :-)

We got a couple of lovely allotment books for Christmas so are enjoying looking through those. We also got a couple of journals - one for both us to record what we think is important through the year. Most of the info gets put in the blog, but it's handy to have a book to record some stuff too.