Burning New Year Wishes

We had a lovely couple of hours on the allotment this afternoon; quite surprised to be the only ones there as it was so sunny and pleasant, but I know some people had to go back to work this week.

We were joined by many different birds: a robin, blackbirds, long-tailed tits, blue tits, terns and even the little egret flew over a couple of times - none was willing to pose for a photo though!

So I've sneakily added this photo of a kingfisher which I saw the other side of the hedge, on Freeman's marsh, on Monday (well, it's probably the one that we saw on the allotments last year {poetic licence!})

Jamie and I got on with our chosen jobs. Jamie cleared and dug manure into the sprout bed for next year's Christmas meal! (We missed them this year) The patch is covered in weed suppressant now and we'll weigh it down so the earth is nice and firm, just how the sprouts like it. That quarter will mostly for brassicas and root crops. There's a row of beets still in the ground but they're probably destined for the compost - I think the mice have started enjoying them already!

Before Christmas I went to a Chinese supermarket and bought, what I thought, were some paper hanging lantern kits (not the pretty set-fire-to-wildlife floataway type). I asked a Chinese girl at work for some advice and, after speaking with her mum, she said the paper wasn't for displaying (it would bring bad luck) and that I should write wishes on it, then burn them and put the ashes in a mountain stream (tricky, in Hungerford) or in a tree. Well, I figure on an allotment is probably acceptable so that's what I did. I burned all my wishes and some dried cuttings, but not as much as intended as the smoke was blowing straight along the hedge towards the nearby house and we don't want to cause problems for our neighbours. The ashes were watered into the ground, so my wishes can grow (I think that's the general idea).

It's rather a dull pic so I edited it a bit

I spent the rest of the time moving the compost bins to their new position. It's back-breaking after not doing much for a few weeks! It was a good opportunity to give the compost a turn - I'm pleased I didn't find any mice in there. I added some vegetable scraps, brown cardboard waste (and the remaining Chinese paper) to it. It's looking good; masses of fresh pink worms - lovely!

We left as the sun had gone and the moon was shining. A happy start to the new year - let's hope those wishes work :-)

 

ByeBye 2014!

Looking back it wasn't such a bad year, but with just 32 blogposts clearly much of it wasn't on the allotment - 2015 will be more productive!

HAHA Committee Christmas Meal

I'm happy to say that our Christmas meal included home-grown: carrots, cabbage and parsnips and we've enjoyed 2013 chutneys and pickles over the Christmas break too. I was very pleased with the New Years Eve meal that I cooked: parsnip, chestnut, carrot & potato gratin, with a cheesy nutty topping - Mmm, so tasty, but I had to buy a big parsnip for that. Ours were ugly-looking with so much canker there was little left to work with, but they taste lovely.

Yum yum!

So, we visited the plot on the last day of 2014 and it's looking quite reasonable. The ground was frosted solid, so hopefully lots of unwanted beasties have been killed off the natural way.

2015 has begun with mild, wet weather and I can smell stew cooking in our new slow cooker, with the last of the parsnips in it.

The best-looking of our parsnips

We've got our new poly-greenhouse to play with and as a result we're having to re-organise the plots a bit - still need to do some planning. Is it a good idea to put the compost bins right next to the greenhouse? Apart from the mice who clearly love our Dalek composters, surely we'll be inviting pests in to infect our seedlings..? Advice would be appreciated.

Happy New Year everyone!

A Big Sprout?

No, it's a cabbage! The first of this year's.

There are masses of white fly so we had to remove lots of outer leaves, but there's plenty to have with fresh carrots (carrot fly damaged unfortunately) for our Quorn roast dinner. We're a bit concerned that the parsnips may have succumbed to carrot fly too, but we'll wait till Christmas to find out...

And as we've just finished decorating our Christmas tree I'm feeling Christmassy so here's the annual shot of the lovely Hungerford a Christmas lights - always stunning!

Oh, here's my latest Chainmail article - Hungerford's quarterly publication. I think I wrote it in a hurry :-/

Soup, but no garlic, yet

A rainy and grey weekend means we still haven't planted our garlic - I think there's still plenty of time (even though I hear Gardeners Question Time are saying it's too late). I understood garlic cloves are planted by the shortest day and harvested on the longest day. I'm just worried that our bulb will start sprouting in the cupboard.

I've had three festival squash waiting to form part of a meal but one went off so I decided to deal with the other two a bit more promptly than intended. So, of course, they're now soup! That's next weeks lunches sorted.

I roasted the squashes before adding the flesh (and a shallot) to the stock, with plenty of pepper. I love my hand blender - my favourite kitchen utensil :-) I may spice it up a bit, but it tasted nice as it is. I tasted a bit of the squash before making the soup - okay, but not as tasty as the Cornells Bush Delicata.

More Carrots, More Soup

We only visited the wet plot this afternoon to put some kitchen scraps in the compost bin and pull the carrots. We can't remember what variety they were - possibly sugar snap - they should gave been picked small for salads but it just didn't work out that way. Some had grown so large that they split, so they went straight into the compost.

That's the last of the 'summer' carrots - soup for next week, made with smoked rape seed oil. The soup is a bit more runny than my normal gloopy soup, so I hope it will be tasty, it smells good at the moment.

We left in the pouring rain - felt very similar to last Sunday, but no sunshine through the rain - so, a bit of a cheat - here's a photo of last Sunday's sunset as we walked home from the plot in the rain then too!

Colourful Days

The last two weekends have been good allotment weather - weirdly warm for the time of year, even at night. On the last weekend of October we made up the new bed for another row of strawberries. We piled up a mixture of home-made compost and the well-rotted manure. Then covered the row in weed suppressant.

Jamie cleared the Desiree potato rows and disposed of any which looked slightly dodgy, but we got a fair few gigantic ones which make delicious mash and one potato makes plenty for both of us!

We did a lot of weed clearing - there's so much grass which is where all the slugs are hiding. The plot looks much prettier again now! And look at the asparagus peas! They just won't stop growing. 

Our Tundra cabbages are looking good, considering their sad start and are just starting to form heads. We had to remove quite a few caterpillars from under the netting.

So, we left with some pretty veggies including a couple of Hooligan(!) squashes from fellow-plotholder, Jonathan. Thanks!

November arrived and still the temperatures aren't falling but it rained hard overnight on Saturday. Sunday afternoon was ok so we got our eight strawberry plants into their new bed.

The rhubarb plants have died back completely and the area looks good with no weeds and two (Jamie-neat) circles of manure & compost mix.

I picked a lovely bunch of carrots for tea and some lunch soups. I also picked some par-cel which Jamie added to our mash - our flat smells of celery, mmmm, yum!

Some of the carrots have a bit of carrot fly damage.

We left as the sun started to go - too early now the clocks have fallen back. Aah look how pretty and berry-laden the hedge is.

Holidays are Over :-(

We've been away in lovely Tenerife for a couple of weeks. Puerto de la Cruz is in the North of the island and is very beautiful. It doesn't get quite as scorchio as the South of the island, but night-time temperatures were 23°, so not bad for October!

Banana plantation

We had a few hours of rain over a couple of daya; the trees and shrubs really appreciated it but everything dries off so quickly as soon as the sun emerges.

Rainy morning

Here are a few of our flora and fauna pictures - more photos can be viewed here if you're interested.

We visited the plot the day after we got home - just for a quick look. The temperature remains high for the time of year, but there's been a LOT of rain. Mostly last Monday I've been told.

I don't know when the temperature dipped to zero but the plot looks pretty much as we left it - though there's more grass, in the wrong places!

I picked a couple of squashes. The patty pan was okay but the zephyr was going brown on the inside so I didn't eat that and I'll be chopping the plants down for compost fairly soon. The boltardy beetroot was still delicious even though it had grown big.

Oh, and I still got a good harvest of asparagus peas. Most pods have grown a bit too big but there are loads of flowers and new pods coming.
Talking of aspargus; I had some delicious lunches on holiday; asparagus & brie tostado, asparagus and tofu sandwich - mmm, so tasty. It was at the vegetarian restaurant, El Limon in Puerto de la Cruz - if you're ever there, I recommend it - particularly anything with asparagus in it!

Que aproveche!

Composting & Harvesting

A warm reasonably sunny afternoon gave us time to deal with our compost.

Purple-podded mangetout with such pretty flowers

We're moving their position back to where they were year 1 - they hopefully won't mind the hedge/tree roots as much as some of the vegetables do.
The black Dalek bin has been warmly composting all the old cuttings, cardboard and kitchen waste (and a bit of manure) for over a year - close to 18 months.

Straight from the compost bin

Lots of lovely clean, pink little worms, wood lice, millipedes and beetles (mostly devil's coach horses) have been doing a good job breaking down all that organic matter. We roughly riddled it all - through an old fire guard topped with chicken wire - and bagged up the resultant compost.

The end result after riddling

Mmm, so good to feel with your fingertips! We're storing it in the empty bin to keep it nice and warm before we make our new (additional) strawberry bed with these potted-on runners.

Runners still attached to the mother plants

The remaining woody bits, cardboard and eggshells (which we're amazed remained un-rotted) were returned to the other compost bin as brown waste.

Before going home I picked a load of Zephyr squashes and some other veggies for a few meals, plus a few for work colleagues. There's parcel in there too - lovely celery tasting parsley-type herb to add to some potato salad lunches this week.

The mangetout and asparagus peas are so delicious fried in butter!

Patty pans a-plenty!

Festival Squashes

As you can see, the patty pan are going a bit crazy and some Festival squash seem like they may actually come to something - especially if the weather warms up, as forecast. I hate to say it, but we could really do with a few drops of rain! We keep having to water our toms. I've ordered some jar lids so I'll soon be making tomato chutney - hooray!

British Legion Horticultural Show and Chain Mail Article

It was show time again yesterday. It's a shame so many of our fellow plotholders don't fancy the idea of 'showing' or were away. The event sounds so much grander than it is, with sadly only 2 or 3 entries for each of the vegetable categories.

Our Hungerford show is a very local-type show with 'nice', 'normal' looking veg rather than monstrous exhibition vegetables! That's not to say I don't like seeing the monster veg, but I know we'll never go to the efforts of growing it!

So, we entered a few photos and produce for the following vegetable categories:

•  4 White spuds - we got a winner! Jamie's potato-polishing did the trick :-)

•  5 Bush tomatoes - we didn't win. Our tiny toms looked a bit sad wobbling around on a white paper plate!
•  5 Dwarf French beans - a winner. Our first French beans of the year too!
•  Longest runner bean - mine was over 30cm, but the winner was substantially longer!
•  5 Carrots - I think we won this because we left the full leafy tops on
•  Any other vegetable - I had a big yellow Patty Pan squash. Looked pretty and won!
•  Selection of any four veg - Got a 'highly commended' (loser) sticker for my beetroot, colourful chard leaf, purple mangetout and Rondo-carrot. It looked colourful, but Neal's display looked much better.
•  Funny shaped fruit/veg - our mutant Desiree potato won that one for us!

Some of my photos won, but I can't remember which - will post later if I find out.
I was going to put an entry in for chutney but didn't get my act together, so I'll save that for the Hungerford Food Festival next month. There were plenty of jars of pickles and jams though and the flowers were lovely.

We unfortunately couldn't attend the prize-giving and auction so I'm not sure who won best in show. I hope it was a plotholder!

This was our haul of Chopin potatoes from about 5 plants - many more had slug damage
(they're not the winning carrots by the way!)

Oh, and my latest Chain Mail article is here, if you want a little read.