Excuses, excuses

Wow! A month since my last post - what a slacker!

Jamie and I have had various ailments over the last few weeks and the stormy weather often scuppered our plans when we did feel inclined to move outdoors! Anyway, excuses over (for now).

The mice have been enjoying our beetroot in the meantime. Cheeky things seem to have a nest under our raised bed. There are mouse-sized holes very close to these tell-tale toothmarks :-)

At least it wasn't completely wasted!

For a very brief visit earlier in the month we walked along the canal to see how flooded it was. Hungerford lock isn't doing its job very well - it's being repaired anyway.

 

 

Jamie spent a bit of time spreading 6x and manure around our two rhubarb plants. One is showing tiny signs of life but the other seems to still be dormant.


Raspberry Red Rhubarb

Still haven't actually achieved much on the plots, but it was lovely to be in the sunshine at the weekend's HAHA work day - though exhausting (I didn't do much, so here's a pic of other plotholders working!).

Aah, look at that Spring-like sky!

One sad bit of news - we found a dead barn owl on the site. I've put a bit more info on the wildlife blog. Shame

Leeks and not much else

Just a quick visit to the plot for me this afternoon. Another sunny day today compared to yesterday's rainy one. There were a few plotholders about, doing a bit of tidying, planning and, great to see, people are still harvesting.

Our leeks are looking ok but we want them to get a bit bigger before pulling any more. There should be a bit of cabbage and more sprouts too but there may be too much wildlife involved for Jamie and me to risk eating! The other vegetable that's still in the ground is my salsify. It looks like it's grown pretty well. Need to give that a try in a week or so...
 

There wasn't much to photograph. All the birds seemed to be in hiding, even though it was warm. Hope they're back for the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch next weekend (25/26 Jan).
So, just another cloud photo I'm afraid! Both these pics are taken with my new camera.

Coming out for the sun, leaving with the moon

Blue sky! How lovely to see!

That's the last of the Christmas Quality Street scoffed. 
 
I love that their plastic wrappers are made of corn starch. It means they can be composted and disappear totally. Our compost is surprisingly looking rather dry - all the runner bean stems in the bin probably should have been chopped up a bit before bundling them in.

The cat was making the most of the heat from the stonepile and keeping an eye on the coal tits in the hedgerow.

It was lovely to see other plotholders around too - we emerge from hibernation as soon as the sun shines! It is still too wet to do any work. Good job! as I really just wanted to play with our new Fujifilm X-S1 camera which we got as an Amazon bargain. 

This is my first ever non-compact camera, though not a full-on SLR (apparently) so bear with me as I've no idea what I'm doing if I move away from the Auto options! I'll be keeping my trusty Olympus SZ-31R on hand for a while yet...

Meanwhile, Jamie was checking the measurements of plot 8B, as the potatoes are going there this year to give Plot 7 a rest. We've got lots of planning to do. We're thinking along the lines of nematodes to protect our spuds from slugs. One thing we've decided is that we won't grow as much of everything, which ends up wasted....

... Did I say that last year?!

Ps. We did leave with the moon, but not because we stayed out for hours; the moon was on show all day.

It's Wet; It's January

Looking back over the blog, I see that 2012 started with a drenching and last year wasn't much better, and I'm happy that we're mostly just planning at the moment. However, we had a quick visit to the plot to see if the robin was about - there were two, but, so far, not friendly ones like last year :(

This photo shows two things 1) We've had a lot of rainfall 2) We should have cleaned our pots, tidied and sealed them away like good allotmenteers - groan, what a mess, but it'll wait a while longer!

The River Shalbourne, that we cross on the way to the site, was looking rather full but I was pleased to see the giant puddle under the railway bridge wasn't there, so that saved our feet getting a soaking. The river was at 0.26m, just 4cm above average high and way off the record high of 1.08m.

Marsh Lane has surprisingly good drainage and, although soggy in places, isn't a quagmire or underwater like some other allotment blogs have shown recently - my sympathies are with those plotholders. 

We wish we'd protected the manure from the rain, though I guess it's still acting as a weed suppressant and the blackbirds are having a field day with all the worms escaping the waterlogged piles.

I'm looking forward to having some more leeks and sprouts plus there may be a couple of cabbages that are still edible, but yesterday wasn't a day for hanging around!

Welcome to 2014!

I thought I'd add a quick New Years message to my blog. As we haven't really got any news from the plot I thought I'd find a nice picture on line... so...

Best wishes for a happy, healthy and veggie-filled
 new year!

A rather odd-looking spud I think you'd agree - but we've all grown one of them :-)

From http://www.scrapalbum.com/xmasp13.htm

And, this one obviously attracted the eye because of the beetle, and brings me to another fave subject - astronomy...

From http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/collections/local-history/social-history-images/19646817by

The Quadrantids meteor shower should be at its peak over the next two nights. So, if the rain holds off we may just be lucky... This sentence in particular is of interest....

"Early viewing on the evening of 3rd January therefore might just bag you a spectacular haul of shooting stars"

Post-Christmas Visit

What a lovely, lazy Christmas holiday we've had so far. We had some torrential rain but nothing like what other areas of the country have seen.

We had a soggy walk in the sunshine along the canal to see what's been happening on the allotments in our absence.

View back to town

I was pleased to see that the garlic on our plot has sprouted! It's the Garlic Vayo that I planted at the beginning of December. Apart from all the rain the weather has been very mild; just a couple of days over the last couple of weeks that there's been any frosted windscreens so obviously the garlic's been happy with that.

 

I forgot to check whether the Elephant garlic has sprouted on the HAHA plot. We didn't hang round too long. Far to wet to do anything, though, as usual there's plenty that needs to be done - mostly tidying up the mess we didn't clear in October!

There was a robin by our plot, so he's welcome to take over where our original little Robbie left off last year. Time to start bringing edible treats to the plot again.
We walked back home through town and spotted this grey squirrel dashing back to his little hidey-hole in a tree high above the pavement.



Merry Christmas Everyone!

This year our Christmas meal will mainly contain leeks, carrots and sprouts.

Merry Christmas!

Belinda

Chain Mail Article 3

This year I've been contributing to the Hungerford quarterly newsletter, Chain Mail. 

The latest one is here, in the Christmas edition, under the title 'Digging HAHA?'

The aim of the articles are to highlight the positives one can take from having an allotment - as an individual and as a community. 

Being on private land means that our site will always be at risk, particularly with the current housing plans being discussed. Of course, as plot holders we understand that more houses mean a larger requirement for allotments but unfortunately not all planners see it this way.

Although Hungerford is a rural town surrounded by green fields we are always being told that there is nowhere to have a permanent allotment site. So I, and fellow plotholders, need to keep raising the awareness of Marsh Lane Allotments which are often boasted as an asset but do not currently have a long-term future.

Looking at Hungerford on Google maps would make anyone think there must be some land available - unfortunately housing developers seem to have claims on every spot though..

No space for allotments?!
The highlighted field is the Marsh Lane site

Plotholders, in the guise of HAHA (Hungerford Allotment Holders Association), manage the site for the Council, so there's very little input required. We just need to find some available land.

KEEP FLYING THE FLAG for a permanent allotment site for Hungerford!

Clearing, Tidying and Planting

It was quite mild but cloudy throughout the day - certainly didn't feel like the 1st of December. We had a couple hours at the allotment this afternoon.
I planted the garlic on the HAHA plot:

 6 x Elephant Garlic (not actually garlic, but apparently a type of leek)

 11 x Garlic Vayo (a hardneck, pink-veined variety)

Hmm, which ones the Elephant clove?

Jamie prepared an area and I planted the other Vayo cloves on our plot near the leeks, which were in such a weedy state... That was my next job...

That's better!

We did a lot of clearing up. Our potatoes have been pretty bad this year; so full of slugs, and something has been digging them up and eating even more holes in them. We threw a lot away - straight to the Council green bin, not to our compost.

Nice to leave the plot looking a bit tidier, but now our two Dalek compost bins are full so we left with a trug of veggies and aching bones. Ah, it's good to be back :-)

Literally SSDD!

Here's the remains of our sweetcorn - looking very picturesque against the late Autumn sky  (should that be Winter?).

Such a pretty picture I put it at the top of this post, but the stems really need clearing and composting along with most of what's left on our plots!

 

Another 10 wheelbarrows of manure shifted today. Half to the HAHA plot and half to ours lucky one huge pile was dumped right beside our plot - very handy!

"Same sh*t; different day".

I'm pleased with the squash trellis we had this year. I'm surprised that the heavy fruits are still suspended even though the foliage has died back completely. That squash isn't actually tied to the trellis or rope at all. It was a real space-saver rather than growing this trailing monster across the plot.

The sun is so low at this time of year that it was getting dark and chilly by 4:00pm so we cleaned the tools off and walked home on the last day of November.