Chain Mail Article 2

Just a quick link to my second article for the Hungerford Quarterly magazine, Chain Mail.

I pretty much summarise what I've written on the blog over the previous months and try to raise the profile of the allotments within the local community. We need all the help we can get with the short lease still hanging over us.

Anyway, here's a link to the article.

And here's a photo of a hover fly that I took on our wildflower patch on Wednesday - every blog post should have a pic :-)

Lunch at the Allotment

I was working from home today and it was such a hot day that we decided to go to the plot for our lunch. It was lovely; certainly could have stayed there for the afternoon!

Jamie picked some long-awaited runner beans for his dad and we picked some bits for our dinner tonight - fried marinaded tofu with veggies (tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, basil).
Our peppers are rather gnarly but they taste fabulous.

I also took some photos of the many 'beasties' and will put entries on the wildlife blog. I'm not a fan of spiders but the one I took a photo of today is quite amazing looking! It's your standard orb weaver garden spider - the type that makes a web across your porch so you walk through it in the morning <shiver>

I meant to post this photo the other day of our pickled silverskin onions, runner bean chutney and tomato & courgette chutney.

We've decided that the pickled onions will provide us with enough for next year too so we won't plant any shallots next year - will give us a bit of space on the plot for something else...

Chutney and Pickles

I know, we're a bit obsessed with preserving at the moment - I'm sure we're smelling rather sweet and vinegar-y too. I certainly know our flat is!
We picked this lot from the plot this morning - the silverskin onions are currently soaking in brine prior to being pickled tomorrow. Some of the courgettes will go to work but some are for dinner for the next two days as well as for the chutney. There are also a few leaves of perpetual spinach from fellow plotholder Geoff (Thanks Geoff).

Yesterday we made some runner bean chutney - the same recipe that we always use, as it's so delicious.
And today we've been making tomato and courgette chutney, with a different recipe - based on the one I found here, but with a few adjustments. This is the ingredients list we've used and we just put it all in the pan and cook until it thickens:

• 455g courgettes
• 284g onions
• 284g tomatoes
• 270g Demerara sugar
• ¼ pint malt vinegar
• ¼ pint pickling vinegar
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ½ tspn paprika
• ½ tspn salt

 It's smelling delicious as it simmers away so hopefully it'll taste just as good! We'll find out at Christmas.

This is the stage we figured it was ready - it's always a bit tricky; The spoon leaves a clear path through the mixture until the liquid slowly covers it again.

Here's the end result, along with the pickled silverskins and the two types of chutney. The courgette and tomato is far right, with the runner bean in the middle - mmm

We're Pickled!

That's the shallots all done. Three big jars and four smaller ones.

Two have got fresh chillies in - hot! hot! hot!

All in storage for Christmas along with the pickled beets Jamie did last week.

Plans for Pickles and Meals

It's pickling weekend so the flat smells of onions. We peeled all the shallots yesterday and they've been soaking in salt water overnight. We'll start the pickling after I've written this. We went to the allotment earlier, it's been a lovely hot day but we didn't spend as much time on the plot as we intended. Here's a photo of the asparagus pea; I felt it deserved a photo after I was recommending it yesterday. There should be enough on there to have them with a meal later in the week - they need to be eaten when smaller than 2.5cm or they are tough.

The squash are going crazy. A couple of the Uchiki Kuri really look like they're ready, but surely it's too soon..? I read somewhere that it's better to leave them to mature for longer but am a bit concerned that they'll go over if I leave them on the plant too long. The climbing frame has worked, so that can stay for next year.

Our peppers have gone red on the top side where the sun touches them - a lovely shiny red. We've had a couple in salads and they are tasty but the skins are a bit tough. I may add them to the roasting tin of veggies tomorrow. There are lots of green ones on the plants still and they're getting very big, so hopefully the sun will continue to shine for them to go red too.

We've pulled our silverskin onions and have them on the drying rack. We should be able to pickle them next weekend, although we really want to get some bean chutney done then and I want to do some tomato chutney - ooh, so much to do!!

I was hoping to make chive vinegar, as shown on the Horticultural Channel but the second lot of flowers which are now coming on our chives don't look as healthy as the flowers in Spring - looks like that plan may have to carry over till next year.

Another thing which will have to wait till next year is the fennel recipes I had planned. My florence fennel plants have gone to seed (such a shame, I should have started harvesting earlier). I've left a couple of the smaller plants in the ground but I think they've probably had their day too.

We left with our trug of goodies. That's our first Kestrel potato plant of this year - one of the tubers weighs over 600g! We hope it's ok on the inside. A lot of them are very scabby but we're hoping to bake a couple of them and scab makes the skin lovely and crispy :-)
There's also a couple of garlic; they've dried out well up the plot, even though we've had quite a lot of rain over the last few days, it's dried out in between and the garlic seem to be unaffected.
 

Lizzano and Picasa

Our Lizzano tomatoes were bought as grafted plants from Dobies. They did well last year so we have three plants in pots on the plot this year. We tried to give them more room, as last year they toppled over. However, this year they've grown even bigger and in attempting to pick we are finding ourselves treading on fallen trusses. Having said that we're still having plenty to eat.

We've been picking small amounts over the last few weeks but now masses are turning green so now our meal plans are tomato-based, still with the occasional courgette...

Our Rocky cucumbers are still paying out well and today we finally got round to eating some of the asparagus pea. We'd tasted one raw and it was horrible - one of those plants that sucks all the moisture from your tongue :-{ But stir-fried in a bit of butter - mmmm. And they really do taste of asparagus - lovely! We'll grow them again as they're such a pretty plant too.

The wildflower patch is also now looking really pretty and providing lots of pollen for the bees and butterflies.

I was fiddling about with the image processing tools in Picasa.

Saturation

1960s

Boost

I don't generally use the tools to modify photos on the blog - except for cropping and occasionally I need to up the brightness.

But the Orton-ish tool does give a pleasing result!

Orton-ish

Now, back to pickling our onions...

Two Trugs of Goodies

Two visits to the plot over the weekend produced two trugfuls of lovely veggies. Both visits weren't very well timed and we got rained off on Saturday.

Onions attempting to dry out

We were pulling the  potatoes to make way for the leeks. Our various new potatoes have not been terribly successful. They are very tasty but we've had to resort to mashing them as they refuse to cook properly and quite a few are too big anyway. We did have a couple of the Red Duke of York ones baked in the week and which were delicious - lovely red crispy skins.

One of the potatoes we pulled was a Bonnie, a pretty red-patched potato which produced monster tubers but they are sadly very tasty to slugs. We also pulled a Casablanca and a Pentland Javelin. That trug is also packed with runner beans, french beans and mangetout. My mum got the mangetout and french beans and we had the runners.

On Sunday I finally got the leeks planted up. They're the biggest leeks we've ever planted - previous years they've looked rather spindly. They always say leeks should be 'pencil thickness'; ours were more like wax crayon width. They've been growing in their modules since 22nd April!

As usual, I chopped the roots and the top of the leaves back, made holes with a post and then dropped the leeks in. After puddling in they look a bit higgledy-piggledy but should end up the right position. We've got 26 plants and have put the shallot cage over the top of them to help them stay clear of leek moth.

 

We left on Sunday with a trug covering a few lunches and dinners. Fennel and carrot soup again for me, with home-grown onions this time! Dinner included stuffed courgette - done in a different way this time; in rings like burgers. They were very tasty. We used a Granose meat-free burger mix to make life a bit easier after an afternoon of weeding.

The BIGGEST caterpillar I've EVER held!! Not found on the allotment so shouldn't really be on the wildlife blog, but had to get a mention!

 

Today I'm a Fennel Fan

There were a lot of plot holders on site today; the warm.weather and weeds had drawn people out! Jamie's happy because we're now eating runner beans rather than saving them to grow the longest one! I picked a lot of mangetout; turn your back on them for a moment and another crop have appeared. The mangetout went into the freezer - I couldn't face another salad just yet!

As advised by Sue Garrett, we've pulled our garlic so that it doesn't stay in the ground too long and split. I've hung it over the pea support to dry out. No idea what were going to do with it all!

We have taken the cage off the shallots and lifted them slightly to get them to dry too so that we can start pickling. There are some very large shallots there, but we may find that they divide more when we skin them.

You may remember that I grew fennel and celeriac this year specifically to make soup. Things haven't gone to plan: earlier in the year my fennel was being destroyed by slugs and my celeriac was growing too slowly so I had to buy celeriac plants.
There are a couple of plants which look reasonably healthy, but no sign of a bulb (I haven't kept them wet enough). This is what most of the plants look like....rubbish..

And the Florence fennel is ready to pick. So, I decided to try fennel pan fried today. Oh My God! It was sooo tasty! Not so aniseedy as it smells raw. I added the remaining fennel to carrot and onion and made a really delicious Carrot and Fennel soup (albeit a bit thick at the moment). That will cover a few lunches at work, I can hardly wait!

Royal British Legion Show 2013

Yesterday was the Royal British Legion Show. We had tried to encourage more entrants from the allotment sites and there was a small group of us from Marsh Lane so it made for a fun evening. Between us we managed to get some good placings.

Our veg cleaned up and ready to go to the show

We tried to put entries in for as many categories as possible, but our onions, shallots and french beans weren't ready. And can't believe I couldn't find four suitable courgettes to make a grouping!

Fellow plot holder, Chris, won the overall category prize for his veg - he pipped me (AGAIN!) in the Longest Runner Bean category - just a few millimetres in it..
We also missed out on funniest veg. Ours is the tomato with a nose; beaten by John's many-legged carrot.

Funny Shaped Veg

We did win a couple of Firsts though: Five pickling onions (our little Silverskins) and Pair of matching cucumbers (our little Rockies). We also got a few Second and Third placings.

Our 'four veg' highlighted came 2nd

I was pleased to win the overall prize for the photography competition. We got first placings with these two pictures - and Jamie took one of them, so it was definitely a joint win!

Autumn

Domestic Pet

 And, to end a good evening, while we were walking home we saw two Hedgehogs. The first living ones I've seen for years!

Mostly Tassles and Squashes

There are so many insects around at the moment that I've been neglecting my duties on the plot and mostly photographing the visitors. There are so many interesting flying things around! Anyway, back to the veg...

We're not too convinced we're going to get much (or any) sweetcorn this year :-( We've got plenty of male flowers but we're only just seeing any female tassles and there are no cobs appearing yet. We're pretty sure there should be cobs under the tassles...

Male flower

Female tassles

Well, it's early days, maybe we're just being impatient...

Something we won't go short of is squashes! The Uchiki Kuri is looking good. In fact, this one looks like it's almost ready to harvest, but I'm going to give it a couple more weeks so the skin gets a bit harder.


The courgettes continue to pay out but unfortunately the Floridor Yellow on the HAHA plot appears to have a disease. The courgettes form but the skin is lumpy and on cutting into one we found that it has brown patches in the flesh. Jamie thinks it may be Mosaic Virus. We'll probably pull the plant to stop the virus spreading to the other squashes. As well as being lumpy we have found that that plant isn't producing as many fruits as the plant on our plot - so, luckily we haven't given many away to people.

Our Lizzano plants are covered in tomatoes and we get a couple of red ones every now and then, which are delicious. We're expecting some more hot and sunny weather so hopefully that will get them reddening up...