Flowers and wildlife

We had a bit of time on the allotment today but although Jamie was digging I was just faffing about (as is so often the case!).


Aster - such a pretty colour!

I was, of course, dead-heading and weeding. We were a bit worried by the look of our parsnips so pulled one with the grottiest looking leaves, it was looooonng and looks ok so will be having that in tomorrow's dinner.
I managed to snap a Peacock butterfly - got to be one of my faves and this is the first one this year that was willing to sit still for me.

Peacock butterfly

I also took some photos of bumblebees as there are a lot around at the moment - we could have done with a few more at the beginning of the season - they've not got much to work on at this time of year.


Bumblebees love the marigolds

I also found this little chap - it's a common green shield bug nymph. According to this amazing website it shouldn't cause us any problems on the allotment - just seemed happy hanging round the raspberry bush.


Palomena prasina Common Green Shieldbug

Then we took this trug of goodies home with us.

More pickling and picking

Jamie pickled the silverskin onions this morning in 25g of Demerara sugar dissolved in 350ml of Aspall Classic white wine vinegar.

Later we visited the plot. We were the only ones there, it's a bit of a dull day with rain threatening.
We picked salad for lunches and today had those lovely tomatoes and silverskin onions for lunch on bruschetta - such a tasty snack. We got 3 cucumbers - I think one of them will be given away at work, along with one of the courgettes.

The cabbage should serve us for at least two meals. The beets are from the raised bed and were pickled in sweetened red wine vinegar when we got home. Luckily there are a few cut-offs which can be added to my salad tomorrow!

Planes, plans and potatoes

We spent a few hours working on the plot this afternoon, it actually got pretty warm. There were lots of fellow plot-holders on site today too so there were plenty of reasons for breaks :-)
We had our own air show while we were on the site. Didn't get any photos but it was great to see the red arrows, 2 spitfires and a hercules. It seems they were flying back from an airshow near Cambridge.

Jamie finished digging out the grass on Plot8. We've decided that we'll put our strawberry bed in there, near the rhubarb - straight across where we were going to move the seating. So the bench can (probably) stay where it is - unless we definitely get another (at least) 4 years on the site in which case I want a pond and then the bench will need to be near that - but that can be decided on next year...

Anyway, where was I? So, the strawberries... we only want 8 plants as we know Geoff's did brilliantly this year and grew big bushy plants which will fill the space we've planned for them. I potted 8 of Geoff's runners - they're still attached to his plants and secured with wire until they've rooted.

We're going to plant them like Geoff's done - on that weed suppressant that you can see in the picture above.

I cut off the tops of the original broad bean plants which have succombed badly to chocolate spot - we leave the roots in the ground to add nutrients to the soil - mainly nitrogen. There's also a chance that we may get a further crop from them, but it's a bit late now really.
We got a whole bagful of dead-heads from the calendula! And riddled a bagful of lovely compost from our green bin which is now half-full of all the broad bean tops - we'll add some cardboard to that tomorrow.

Jamie found these two snails mating. Didn't have the heart to split them up but sent them to do their love-making elsewhere!
We pulled some potatoes, one of each plant:

• Orla - top left. This was one of the few Orla plants which actually survived this year. Disappointing though as there were only 3 reasonable tubers.
• Kestrel - top right. This had quite a few tubers, including a giant but one of the tubers had either slug damage or blight on it. A couple have deep ridges where they've grown against stones, but the potato should be alright for cooking.
• Chopin - bottom. Produced 7 even-sized tubers. The chopins have definitely been my favourites this year. There are a few small holes in some of them but generally they come out of the ground looking lovely and smooth with few blemishes.

We also got some more french beans and the last few broad beans from the original plants - not sure if they'll be edible.

Just finished cooking

The runner bean chutney is now cooling down in the two jars - it took 1 hour 45 mins to boil down to the right consistency.
I guess this makes it pretty expensive chutney, but we think it's worth it.

Looks good and can be eaten in 3 months - well, ours will wait till Christmas :-)

Picking and Pickling

A quick visit to the plot today to pick some bits and see what's happened over the last few days. We only visited the plot to pick runner beans during the week.
I was pleased to see there actually is evidence of a butternut or two on the bushes - they're minute but it gives me some hope...

Tiny tiny butternut

There are also about 4 little squashes on the Cornells Bush Delicata. I really hope that we get some more sunshine in September so that we get some winter squashes. A couple of the days last week felt very autumnal and days really seem to be shortening rapidly :-(


Cornells Bush Delicata

We picked over 1kg of runner beans (no shortage of those at the moment - even though they're selling for nearly £4 per kg in the shops!) and another onion. The santeror F1 which have really proved to be worth growing - a number of fellow allotment holders are trying to get a local garden centre to buy some stock for us next year. Also picked another bunch sweetpeas.

We made runner bean chutney, using our usual recipe. After topping, tailing and taking the edges off the runners we had just over the 450g (1lb) that we needed and 3 of our onions trimmed back just about reached that weight too.
It's still boiling down as I type this and it smells so delicious!


The additional ingredients

We also dealt with the silverskin onions which we've been drying out at home for over a week. They're being pickled in sweet white wine vinegar but first need soaking in brine overnight. They do look lovely - so white and shiny. We may use these for our main supply of pickled onions next year.

So very hot!

Extremely hot again - 28° according to the thermometer but it felt hotter. We spent a couple of hours on the plot. Watering and watering and dead-heading the bloomin' calendula!
Our sweetcorn seems to have enjoyed the weather for the last 2 weeks and now has some cobs forming - really hope they make it, they're so delicious!

Also the Cornells squash has a couple of tiny fruits growing. We've not been picking the beets as we should have and they've grown enormous, so I'm on beetroot salad most of next week I think. The Santero onions are still looking good; we've left them in the ground under their netting and just pick them a couple of days before we're going to cook with them.

We've seen blackfly on our radish which have gone to seed - we've hardly seen any aphids this year. I walked around the site trying to find ladybirds and only found one! That doesn't seem good - it seems the ladybird season is out of sync with the aphids this year :-(

We picked a huge trug load of goodies (including Kestrels and a load of runner beans for work colleagues) and escaped the heat.

By the way....
We haven't found any more of our potatoes with hollow hearts so far, but we're still not risking a baked spud

A new record!

We've beaten last year's record of 7 items of home-grown veg in one meal :-)

We reached 9 last night:

1. Potato
2. Onion
3. Cabbage
4. Carrot
5. Lettuce
6. Tomatoes
7. Cucumber
8. Pepper
9. Spring Onions

The cabbage and carrot were made into coleslaw with salad cream - soooo tasty. I could eat buckets of it.

The cabbage had quite a lot of damage to the outside leaves, but plenty inside to cover a couple of meals.

Plans for salad and sweet onions

We had a few hot hours on the plot this morning. Weeding, grass-cutting and dead-heading the calendula - every time you turn round another seed head appears. We really don't want them self-seeding everywhere again next year! They're beautiful but you can have too much of a good thing :-)


Silverskins

These are our roundest silverskin onions, have left loads in the ground in the hope that they will also grow more spherical. These ones are going into a little jar of sweet white pickling vinegar for Christmas martinis - haven't quite decided on the recipe yet.

The strawberries are having a second flush of fruits. Hopefully we'll get to eat some - we missed out on the first lot because the birds got them, well there were only about 5 that grew, and they weren't very good :-( Next year we plan to have a proper strawberry bed on Plot 8

Strawberries

We picked a great trugful of goodies today - the kestrel spuds look good (and no slug damage or hollow hearts in this crop so far), salad consists of lettuce, tomatoes, red spring onions, cucumber and even a little pepper. And we're going to have coleslaw made with our first cabbage - which is a bit nibbled but we can eat round that!

Red Tomatoes!

A very quick visit to the plot after work. The really bad rain in the week hadn't done any damage. The Lizzano F1 tomatoes needed watering and are leaning over - but they are trailers so I guess that's as intended! And we've finally got some red tomatoes to go with our amazing Rocky cucumbers - that's a salad for tomorrow then :-)

It's meant to be an extremely hot weekend so we should be able to spend a good few hours on the plot - lovely!

Bad potato news

We discovered something else about our potatoes yesterday - the kestrels. They appeared to have avoided internal slug damage but had fallen foul of the WET weather and succumbed to hollow heart which is most likely due to the wet weather we had this year. It is most likely caused by second growth in potatoes - this site gives a bit more info. We managed to cut round the dodgy bits and made mash which tasted lovely with broad beans. (Actually, to be honest, the broad beans had gone past their best too but they were still nice - even if I haven't sold the meal!) The Kestrel potatoes are a concern though as we've got another 8 plants - seems like we have a lot of meals coming up involving mash...

At least the tomatoes are beginning to change colour, gradually - there are masses of toms arriving if they can just beat the blight!
And here's evidence of squash flowers, but they're all male so far - they are not going to produce any Cornell's bush delicata winter squash so they'd better get a move on!!

At least the runner beans are paying out - these arrived within a day of us picking all the big ones - only 5 plants so we'll see how long they provide us for.