Open Afternoon - Success!

We had fabulous weather for the Open Afternoon - we were so lucky! It was warm (probably about 23°) and the sun even showed itself at times.

We were pleased it was so well attended - there were about 80 visitors that I'm aware of.
We even had a group of people from Swindon join us, they just happened to be visiting Hungerford and followed the carrot arrows that we'd posted along the route from the High Street!
I was really pleased to see Bill Acworth again - he was on the council when the allotment site was first set up. Without him we'd never have our lovely site. He was impressed with the changes over the last couple of years and understands what an asset the site is to Hungerford. 

The burgers went down so well that we had to send out for more stock half way through the afternoon. Even all the veggie burgers were all sold!

The cream teas were also a great success; people had made cakes and scones for HAHA to sell and, of course, there was lovely home-made jam too.

Children were entertained with paper flower making and a questionnaire which meant they walked round the plots spotting certain veg and water butts, etc.

Some visitors spent a lot of time wandering through the site looking at the various methods we use for protecting our veggies and our growing techniques - that's why we always like to see what's going on on other plots too.

I was looking after the tombola and really enjoyed it. We had over 40 prizes, mostly donated, and with a 1-in-5 chance of winning all the tickets were gone by 3pm! (Next time we'll need more prizes). It was such good fun and when I did have a couple of breaks my sister stepped in to deal with customers - thanks Joanne!

The produce stall was well stocked and visitors went off with bagfuls of fresh veg and home-made pickles, jams and chutneys. A bit of a shame that Joanne bought the cabbage that we'd put on the stall - I would have given her a freebie :-)

Jamie was on standby to provide me with food and drinks and enjoyed chatting with other plotholders and visitors.

Now we are looking forward to holding more events like this in the future!

Bye-Bye Toms and Hello Sweetcorn!

This last week has really felt autumnal; we had a lovely Summer but it feels like it's over far too soon. I went up the allotment before work during the week. There was heavy dew on the paths and look at our sad tomatoes :-(

Lots of fruits to be had but blight had struck so this weekend we cleared the area and to be honest, it's a bit of relief to have some space on that part of the plot! There were calendula there too but they had long since been buried by the pumpkin leaves and haven't been seen since July so they got composted too - not to our compost bin, but to the Council green bins.

The Jack-o-lantern pumpkins have taken over but probably won't have much more growing time - just hope they start going orange soon...
We cut back the runners on the strawberries - we've potted on a couple which will replace non-fruiting strawberry plants from this year.

Today we picked our first Spring(?!) cabbage. It's there in the trug with our first sweetcorn (fabulously sweet and didn't even need butter to make it delicious) and some of our Kestrel potatoes. They're extremely scabby and only about 5 tubers per plant...but one weighed 850g! Don't know what went on there - we're blaming the weather...! 

Marsh Lane Allotments Open Afternoon 2013

Have I mentioned the Open Afternoon on here? I don't think I have, though I have been talking about it a lot in real life! It's a little later in the year than intended, because of the lease extension and then time constraints of HAHA committee members but we're really hoping the weather will be reasonable - or, even better, SUNNY!

I'm going to be looking after the tombola/produce stall and am looking forward to it. Especially now that we have some gazebos to use, thanks to helpful plotholders and my sister :-)

So, next Saturday we're going to have a busy day tidying the site and making the communal areas look their best and then Sunday we'll hopefully have lots of visitors to see how great the allotment site is. There are going to be activities for children too including a 'Nature lotto' (allotment hunt) and paper flower making so they can be entertained along with the adults.

Hope to see you there and maybe a few more Hungerford locals will be inspired to get on the waiting list for a plot! Follow the carrots from the High Street to find the site :-)

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!