Holiday? What holiday?!

Well, as you can see...I'm not blogging about growing tomatoes in sunny Tenerife!
We didn't make it out of the country! We're so disappointed.

The Arteriovenous (AV) fistula in my arm, which was used for needling during haemodialysis, stopped working the day before I wrote the last post. Because I have my transplant I don't actually need the fistula any more but it's kept if there's a need for it in the future.
I checked with my renal unit at the Churchill Hospital and they told me it could be painful and to take painkillers. Well, there's painful and there's PAINFUL!

Clotting fistula

After another trip to the hospital and some antibiotics the decision was made - I couldn't possibly travel and wouldn't want to have been abroad with an arm that hurt when a sleeve touched it.
So we've got a couple of weeks in Hungerford instead!

Today was the first day we've ventured to the plot. The sky was blue and sunny but no life in any of our recent plantings yet (garlic or broad beans) and nothing interesting to photograph. The minimum temp has been 2° and maximum of 13° (not 28° like Tenerife - no! Stop that!!)

Anyway, back home pretty quickly to nurse my not-so-swollen-now arm.
Tut, such bad timing  :-(

Blue Skies and Cold Temperatures

We made our final trip to the plot before our holidays. It was a beautiful sunny morning and such lovely blue sky. We just did a bit of composting (I added the dried out sweetcorn sticks and vegetable waste from home to the bin.
The ash tree has lost all of its leaves now - hope this one doesn't get infected by the ash tree dieback which is spread by a fungus. The fungal disease has spread to the UK from Northern Europe and is currently a big concern for all our ash trees :-(

The temperature has reached a minimum of -1° in the last week - with frost on the car a couple of days. Our rhubarb is gradually dying back but appears to have established well since it was planted at the end of July.

So that's that for two weeks - I doubt it'll look much difference when we return. There's not much to change the look of the plot at this time of year.

Happy Halloween

We had our squashes stuffed with Quorn mince bolognaise on Halloween night. Still have 3 squashes left over which will still be edible when we get back from our hols hopefully.

Jamie's head hurt

Over-wintering broad beans

Last night we baked one of the Cornells Bush Delicata squash - well worth growing. Jamie thought it similar to sweet potato and I've today found a reference to it as 'sweet potato squash'. It really was delicious, with butter and pepper on it - ooh, I'm drooling at the memory...

We pickled two jars of beetroot last night - again in red wine vinegar, with thinner slices. The lightest of the beets was yellow once it was cooked! It tasted incredibly sweet. I think they were all boltardy beets but there may have been a couple of moneta in there too, though they were all meant to be red ones!



A rather bleak-looking plot!

We went to the plot this afternoon - it was rainy and rather chilly. It was just a quick visit to sow the Aqua Dulce broad beans for over-wintering. We've covered them with the onion netting - hopefully that will protect them from mice and the worst of the weather (we're holding Kerry to this!). We've only sown 17 seeds - leftovers from last year.

It got to 0° last night... The chives have gone down and the marjoram went black a couple of weeks ago(!) but the hardier herbs (rosemary, thyme and fennel) are ok and even the parsley is hanging on to life for the time-being.

Plot 8 still looks quite colourful in this photo, but the calendula are just about dying back.

And this side of Plot 7 only has sprouts to show off!

 

A sunny, cold Autumn day

We had a couple of hours in sunshine. It was chilly though and the wind was blowing all the leaves about. In fact, it looks like Autumn has really hit over the last week - trees and hedgerow have changed colour and the berries really shone out in the sun because so many leaves have fallen (all over our plot).

Look at that beautiful blue sky!

The thermometer showed that the minimum over the last couple of days was 1.5° and there was ice on our tub. Washing the dirt off the beets which we're going to pickle this afternoon was hand-numbing!

We collected some wood which someone had donated to the allotment site - we're going to use it for a new cage next year. We need to work out a design for what we actually want; the plastic tubing is great but makes access a bit tricky so want to work on something to make that easier... We also collected some manure which had been in a tub by the gates for a few months - well rotted horse manure - should be good for mixing into the brassica quarter.

The chard was glowing in the sunshine, but has gone to seed so unlikely to get eaten now and this is what's left of the butternut - the wildlife is welcome to it!

Picking Bush Delicata squashes before the frost

Jamie visited the plot a couple of times during the week. It's been a grotty week weather-wise - basically living in a cloud, so everywhere is soaking.
Jamie said that the mouse or slugs have left empty hulls of the little butternuts, which came to nothing because they got going too late. They were Butterbush variety but did spread over the ground; possibly because they weren't confined to pots. I think the year's weather can be blamed for their poor show rather than the variety as each plant did produce several fruits. The squashes grew to about 10cm but were still green when the frost took them out :-(

More positively, Jamie picked all the good squashes from the Cornell's Bush Delicata - pretty good from one plant! He brought them home as we were expecting the weather to go very cold on Friday and it did - about 5° at work, though no frost on the car.

We're going up the plot later, after my flu jab, but still won't be able to burn the hedging day cuttings - they're probably wetter today than they were last week! As I look out the window now there's beautiful blue sky and sunshine but it sure looks cold - brrr. Where's our flask gone? I've a feeling we're going to need coffee!

Celeriac and Fennel Soup

Mmmm, yum, yes the soup worked though I needed to add more pepper to it - I always do anyway. Lovely for my lunch for a few days this week!

Fennel, Celeriac and Garlic

As I'm typing this there's a lovely smell - my fennel and celeriac soup is cooking. Aah, the smell of the celeriac on my hands is lovely!
I pulled three celeriac roots which, after hacking off all the unusable bits, weighed 500g. I've added a pint of veg stock to that, plus an onion, plus as many fennel fronds as I could cut from the big stem I brought home. I should have used the bulbous fennel stem but there wasn't one(!) so this soup is going to be more celeriac that fennel-flavoured. After I've blended it with my favourite kitchen accessory, my hand blender, I quite often have to add more water, but as celeriac is such a watery-type of veg it may be fine this time..

Soup in-waiting

During our quick visit to the plot I planted the Taylor's Solent Wight garlic - the one bulb had more than 15 cloves so I planted 5 rows of 3 - they're about 15cm apart. Some of the cloves are quite small and slim so not sure how well they will grow but if only half of them grow that will be plenty of garlic. It seems that planted now they should be ready for harvesting, when the foliage is dying back, next June.

Hedging Day

It was the first visit to the allotment for a week and it was a foggy start. The last week has been noticeably darker in the morning but I didn't think it was particularly cold. However, there had clearly been a frost - the squashes have definitely had it now.

Frosted squash

Something had enjoyed the last of our Rocky cucumbers! Not sure if it was a mouse or a slug - or a few of each!


Just hollowed-out skins left

We didn't do anything to our plot today (though I had intended to plant garlic) as it was a HAHA workday. And when the fog had cleared it was a lovely sunny day for it.
We cut back the hedging which was growing through the rabbit fencing and strimmed some of the overgrown communal areas. It was quite exhausting but a nice way to spend the day, though there was some guilt in cutting off the lovely rosehips and other berries - we left plenty for the birds though. It's been so wet recently that we got soaked by the dripping hedge but managed to finish all the way round the site.


Zoe and Alison

The brambles, hawthorn, ivy and other cuttings were piled onto the communal area and Jamie and I attempted to burn it...

Firestarter/Smoke breather

Unfortunately there was more smoke than fire and the wet green cuttings were really not wanting to burn so we've left the big pile to dry off for a bit (hopefully we'll get the Indian summer we've read about).

The barbecue was rather more successful and made for a welcome break for a chat - shame for the workers who couldn't stay for the grub though!

Hmmm, leek moth and lifecycles

Well, I clearly should have looked closer when I photographed the leeks yesterday! We have got some leek moth damage (not too much) and today we found several leek moth cocoons, which we disposed of, away from our leeks - hopefully our little robin will gobble them down! It would appear that the leek moth caterpillars had sneaked under our leek netting cage.



Leek moth cocoon

If these do develop into moths they'll be the parents that start the cycle to trash our alliums next Spring :-(
Talking of which, we visited the local Wyevale Garden Centre to buy a fork - they didn't have any!! - but I did buy a Solent White garlic bulb. So, we dug over the area by the leeks and hoed some chicken pellets in - we'll plant the garlic next weekend. I think there should be about 10 cloves.



Hoe hoe hoe (sorry!)

There are still quite a few butterflies about. Though it was cold enough for a frost last night it's lovely and warm in the sunshine. This small tortoiseshell butterfly was warming itself on the stones and there were a lot of cabbage whites about too. From the patterns on the outside of the wings I think it's a male. According to UK Butterflies, tortoiseshells stay in the UK and hibernate in outbuildings or hollow trees.

When we picked one of the cabbages early last month we took a tip from Liz and Ken on the allotment - they're long-term veg gardeners and know loads of tips. If you cut a cross into the remaining stem you can get extra cabbages to grow - well, this is the result. Not quite cabbages but certainly brassica leaves that can be eaten. We'll try them at some point if we get a chance while they still look edible.

The weeds continue to grow, we have a lot more weeding and clearing to do, especially with the rain and warm sunny days we keep seeing...

We picked two of the biggest celeriac and the last of the kohl rabi and sweetcorn. We rushed home to eat the sweetcorn within 20 minutes to ensure they retained as much sweetness as possible - it worked they were delish!!