Weeding and Digging

Another lovely hot day! It was sunny but hazy so we were able to spend several hours on the plot. Lots of chat and sitting but also got some work done.


Calendula and sweet peas

Jamie very nearly managed to finish digging the new plot! So the whole plot has nearly been properly dug now but there are so many weeds about that dug areas are seeded within a few days!
I did a lot of weeding, particularly round the celeriac and the squashes which appear to be growing pretty well - though no signs of actual squashes yet... just lots of green buds.

Sprouting Rhubarb

There were also lots of insects including butterflies still desperately trying to get at our brassicas - but not succeeding.

There was fluff from groundsel and thistles blowing all over site today :-( The grass paths on our site look good but they sure do generate a lot of extra work. We mowed our paths and someone else was mowing the communal areas. The grass seed that's escaped on to the plot has grown well (grrr) and is a real pain to keep on top of.

Hot and Blighty!

We went to the plot after work as it's been a really hot day and was a lovely sunny evening. We found this mutant calendula - interesting look for a flower!

We had to cut down all the potato haulms (foliage) due to blight sweeping across the site - not at all surprising given the amount of water we've had this year and it's been very humid over the last couple of days - hopefully our tubers are mostly ok, but blighted spuds won't store. We stuck sticks in so we don't forget where each plant is!


Cleared spud plot

We also saw some exciting wildlife! Les and his son, Nathan, came down to our plot for a photo of the slow worm they found in their compost bins. It looked like it's tail had regrown at least once. We saw two frogs hopping round our plot.

Both of these are very welcome visitors.

A less welcome guest, but still interesting to see, was a mole! He was foraging through the grass, digging small holes for worms. Unfortunately my photo was too blurry to post.

As HEAT were on site for their weekly communal allotment evening there were drinks and biscuits provided, so we didn't leave till the sun had gone. HEAT (Hungerford Environment Action Team) really want more people to join in with their allotment - anyone who doesn't think they can handle a full allotment should come along to Marsh Lane on Thursdays at 7:30pm to talk to Suz or Catherine.

A brolly for a shed and leeks

We had some time to spend on the plot this afternoon, lovely and warm and quite sunny. We've bought a fishing umbrella. Hopefully for more sun protection as well as rain (I'm saying that quietly as we can do without rain for a few more days!).

Brolly/Shed beyond the coriander

We were offered some more leeks (thanks Malcolm!) and after losing all ours last year due to leek moth I figured it would be silly to refuse! So I puddled some into a space in the legume quarter - there was only room for 12 but if they get big that's plenty on top of the others that are growing pretty well so far under their enviromesh cover.

The sprouts have grown so tall that they were touching the top of the netting so we've added the extra struts back to the cage (we took them off when the cage blew off in the windy weather in June). We have replaced the netting but it's nice to see the sprouts looking so healthy - there's not much slug damage and no caterpillar problems so the enviromesh has done the trick so far.

There are already sprouts forming and on one of the plants they're really big - well, bigger than these little tiddlers.

When I removed the netting there were masses of spiders and beetles as well as centipedes and woodlouse but this was a prettier visitor (sorry, not you Dave!)

Shhh, no dogs allowed on the allotment!

Seasonal Firsts

It's been rainy and sunny throughout the day - torrential downpours then bright blue skies. We just a quick visit to the plot this afternoon to pick some food for a couple of dinners and to make some soup for lunches.
I was going to make cream of onion soup but once I got to the allotment I opted for my old favourite carrot and coriander as it meant I didn't have to buy any extra ingredients. This will be the first I've made from this season's carrots, so I picked 3 biggish ones, a nice big onion and some coriander leaves - the coriander has well and truly gone to seed so the leaves aren't really suitable though their smell is very strong.

Coriander, carrots, onion, french beans, courgette, broad beans & runners

We picked the first of our runners; only a handful, we're going to have mixed beans with our Quorn fillets and chivey-Kestrel mash tonight - something has been getting into the dwarf french beans, nibbling through the pods but not doing much damage.

We managed to get away before the next downpour started.

Sunshine and Showers

We had a nice couple of hours on the plot this morning - pretty warm and sunny but the wind was rather strong. Everything had grown a lot over the last 3 days! The sweet peas are looking very pretty and there are some runner beans growing long!

We pulled some potatoes:
The kestrel plant looked a bit sickly and clearly wasn't happy. We got 3 reasonably sized tubers (400g) from it, but the blight had got down into one of the tubers  :-(
The Chopin plant was the one that I had pilfered from before, but still got two lovely big healthy looking tubers (500g).
The Red Duke of York plant wasn't very happy looking but produced a fine harvest of lovely red spuds (1.3kg). It's been such a wet year, the tubers were caked in hard mud. It's hard to learn much about the different varieties this year, but Chopin really do seem to have been particularly successful... (hope I haven't spoken too soon!)

There are 4 Courgettes in the plant-uh-oh it's started :-) A couple of the sweetcorn have the male flower developing - the plants are very short though.

The kohl rabi has germinated and more of the broad beans needed cloching. I also had to cloche some parsley which I planted out last week - something has been nibbling it. We saw a tiny little froglet hopping about so hopefully he'll stay near our plot - he was smaller than the one we saw previously (only about 3cm big - aw!)

Took the netting off the parsnips as they were getting rather cramped.

We did some weeding, dead-heading and turned the compost before having to dash off because the light pitter-patter of rain turned into a torrential downpour. And look at the crowd we found in the communal shed!  :-)

Tony, Gill, Geoff and Kerry, with Jane & Derek hidden

Mmmm, lunch

With the few slices of beetroot which were left over I had a lovely lunch; with homegrown chard (red and yellow veins), spring onions, radish, lettuce and GranoVita vegetarian pepperoni - lovely!

Pickled Beetroot

Jamie prepared and pickled the beetroot today. We always bake them wrapped in foil, with the stems still attached to prevent bleeding; this keeps as much flavour in the beet as possible.
After an hour and a half at 190° they're ready and need removing from their skins. It usually slides off pretty easily but can get a bit messy!

25g of sugar was dissolved into 350ml of slightly heated Aspall Classic Red Wine vinegar. After the beets have cooled we like to cut them with the ridge slicer and Jamie packed them into the sterilised jar and covered them with the vinegar.

 There! Ready for Christmas!

It's August already!

What on earth has happened to the year? Can't believe it's August already - having said that, the weather is feeling a bit autumnal in the mornings :-(

We popped up the plot in the evening just to pick a couple of beets for Jamie to pickle. The beets are Moneta - a monogerm variety so only one beet per seed. The skin is very dark, which we think is due to the peaty-mix that we put in the raised bed where these were plucked from. Jamie found them to be much sweeter than ones grown in the normal earth last year, so should be perfect for pickling in red wine vinegar (should be able to post some details once Jamie has done the work tomorrow!)

I picked a few bits of salad - all the lettuces in the cloches have gone to seed but some of the leaves are still edible and I chop the chard leaves up to use as salad leaf too. Also (a bit cheeky) someone had left some lettuces for planting on the freebies table - I took a few of them to eat too ;-)

The squashes as expanding but the next two courgettes aren't quite big enough for picking just yet. It's rained today and yesterday so not much watering except for the tomatoes and the cucumber. Blight is pretty much all over the site. Lots of us have chopped the haulms down - we've only done our first earlies but will have to keep an eye on the other varieties too. We put bottle-cloche protection over the broad beans which have just sprouted; but no sign of the kohl rabi or carrots yet...

Then we had a long chat with Malcolm, discussed pickling and the Olympics, among other things, then went home while it was still light and not raining.

Pickled!

We pickled the shallots. They filled two large jars and two small ones. The shallots felt quite soft when we removed them from the brine so they should soak up the vinegar nicely.

We didn't do anything fancy - just used Sarson's pickling vinegar. Though we did add some dried chillies to two of the jars. We weren't sure how hot they'd be - we were given them by my sister a couple of years ago - but judging by the pain when I touched my eye later in the evening(!) I think they may be hot hot hot!

It's pickling time!

We nipped up the plot this afternoon, managing to avoid some serious showers, just to pick some bits for tonight and tomorrow. Tonight Jamie's making mash with the chopin potatoes and we're having our first crop of french beans with some broad beans and a quorn fricasee-type thing with one of our onions - great to be using four home-grown ingredients. And tomorrow I'm making a tofu, potato, carrot and onion layered dish with 3 home-growns - yum! The other bits are for salady lunches for a couple of days.

Includes first courgette, onions, carrots and green beans

When we got back home we prepared all the shallots for pickling - we should get four small jars and two larger ones. Some of the shallots were a bit dodgy, particularly where water had gone down the stems where the shallots had flowered.

When we'd finished peeling them we put them in strong brine (using hot water dissolve the salt) and they'll stay there until tomorrow or Tuesday when they get put into their sterilised jars till Christmas. The purpose of the brine is to remove water from the onions so that there's less water to dilute the vinegar once they're pickling thus getting crunchier onions - I still don't quite get how the water is removed when they're soaked in water, but it apparently works by osmosis... fair enough!

Onions in brine to remove water