Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
Over the last week we spent a lot of time clearing weeds that we've been ignoring for a few weeks - so much grass, bindweed and occasional giant thistle! So the plots were looking their best for Saturday morning for the Hungerford in Bloom Allotment judging.
Look at that! Not a weed in sight.
It's good to have a reason to clear the plots up, but unfortunately we came 4th - so no certificate for us this year. Maybe our plots have a few too many flowers or too many gaps? Well, not to worry I love our plots this year - the weather has been really good for growing (along with plenty of watering).
On Saturday afternoon the Marsh Lane site was open to the public - we didn't get any public (! - there were lots of other local events on) but we got plenty of plotholders and cakes that they had generously made and donated.
So, even though we didn't get to show off our plots to other locals, we
got to have a good natter, eat cake and have a drink or two...
And, although we had some rain in the morning, it didn't rain in the
afternoon and the wind only flipped the gazebo onto its roof when it was
being taken down :-)
I pulled the rest of the garlic as they had all collapsed and the leaves have browned. The ones I pulled a week earlier are drying in the greenhouse surrounded by tomato plants.
The leeks are planted now and, at last, so are the pumpkins! One Atlantic (not so) Giant and two Jack of All Trades. I don't think these will even get us a fourth prize :-) They're planted in holes filled with manure but the ground hasn't been dug very well on that empty plot that a few plotholders are using for the competition.
Lunches and dinners have been involving courgettes quite a lot. We've bought a Spiralizer so at least meals look a bit different, even if they have very similar ingredients :-) That's my first fennel bulb. I'm shaving it into salads this week and eating it with the first of our Chopin potatoes from one of the bags - very tasty, but not a huge haul considering it was two plants - but it'll provide us with about 6 meals in total.
So, you can see where the blog title is derived from - thanks to George Ezra (and my cousin Jen for sharing the song)
Two weeks of extreme heat and still no rainfall have meant plot visits have mostly involved watering, watering, watering! But because of next Saturday's Open Afternoon and Hungerford in Bloom (Allotment) judging in the morning we're doing a lot of weeding too.
We fed nearly everything. The green things were given a nitrogen-rich mixture and the flowers were given a coffee-based mixture, which is potassium-rich as well as providing a bit of caffeine!
After the confusion with the pumpkins in my earlier post it turned out that the four gifts were courgettes - that took us up to 7 courgette plants! A few too many :-) So we swapped two of them for 2 Tromboncinos, a spaghetti squash and a Jumbo Pink Banana! They're all in the barrels and as they grow we'll try to encourage them across the wires over the top of Plot 46a.
And, we now have 3 pumpkins which have germinated - 1 Atlantic Giant and 2 Jack of All Trades. They're rather behind the other competition growers but hopefully we'll have something to show! And here's the first trug shot of the year - nice and colourful, huh?
I've cited poetic licence with the title song: Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me) by Cockney Rebel is to encourage you to visit the Marsh Lane Allotment site next Saturday! I wonder if there will be any lavender flavoured goodies there?!
A little off-topic but I had a day off work so we took a trip to Somerset to visit a lavender farm.
There were two large fields of lavender and a garden with many different varieties. It was interesting to see that the bees seemed to prefer the pinky coloured varieties (I preferred the purple).
The cream tea with a lavender scone was delicious! I feel inspired!
Apart from the scones I like the sound of chocolate and lavender brownies or how about leek, potato and lavender soup? Yum!
I would have liked to buy one (or more) of their little plants to grow my own for culinary use next year, but didn't think the plants would appreciate the extreme heat of the car journey yesterday.
As you can see the farm had a lovely vegetable patch and look at those calendula, what a display!
After that lovely visit we made our way home via Farleigh Hungerford Castle - amazing remains of the 14th Century castle.
Thomas Hungerford who bought the original manor in 1369 was the son of Sir Robert de Hungerford who was buried in our Hungerford's St Lawrence Church in 1352. He was an MP and general bigwig in Berkshire. Interesting to know the link to our town and to wander through the castle remains, chapel and priest house.
It was such an amazing sky yesterday evening, I had to put this photo on the blog, but this post is mostly about pumpkins.
I'm preparing for the Pumpkin Competition at Hungerford Food Festival in October. I managed to get some Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds but none of them germinated. Fellow plotholder Jonathan left four pumpkin plants on our plot for us. I was so close to planting them on the empty plot that HAHA have commandeered for the competition when I remembered that they aren't pumpkins, they're Tromboncini squash plants! My "pumpkins" would have looked a bit strange compared to the others on that plot!!
So now the Tromboncini are on Plot 46A in the barrels and we're attempting to quickly germinate 2 more Atlantic Giants and 2 Jack of All Trades... We've got 3 months so hopefully we'll have something to show for it!
We've put two cucumber Mini Munch on that plot too, along with a row of swede under the netting.
At least I'm fairing a bit better with the flowers this year. We're having to water a lot as there's been no rain (apart from a few drops) for weeks. But the sunflowers and sweetpeas are doing ok. Also, I'm pleased to say that the asters got over their problem after I removed the crinkled leaves and I'm hoping the flowers will develop quite soon...
The tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing what they always do - but this year we're really trying to remove the side shoots! Flowers and a few tomatoes are appearing on the Aviditas plants and the Redcurrant, but nothing on the Tigerella yet.
My lunchtime salads will be more interesting when they have tomatoes on them, but the rogue potatoes from last week made fabulous potato salad!
So, we just have to wait for all these little plants to get bigger.. And I'm going to sow some more salady bits and beetroot to see if I can keep the production going for a bit longer this year.
Dwarf beans and sweetcorn
This song by Birdy seems appropriate at this point - enjoy!
In May I started soaking chive flowers in white wine vinegar and now it's looking pretty in 5 small bottles with the remainder in our vinegar bottle.
It has a lovely mild onion flavour, much less over-powering than pickled onion vinegar, which makes it perfect for adding to salads. The chive flowers had faded completely in the bottle.
I strained the liquid into a jug to get rid of any loose bits of flower and dusty pollen.
And voila - looks like an apothecary! It needs to be kept out of sunlight though, otherwise the colour will fade. The Psychedelic Furs provide the title song ...
We spent several hours yesterday weeding one of the mini-plots, which had to be given up by the tenant. We should have got in touch earlier and then the weeds wouldn't have been so high and the ground not so solid - it was hard work. But, we managed to clear the whole plot and cover it to avoid some future weeds appearing. So, we didn't get to work on any of our plots, but there was a reward..
That is a lot of new potatoes - at least 4 meals worth. They weren't planted by the latest plotholder, but were 'rogue potatoes' which were leftover and re-grew from potatoes growing at least two years ago!
The lettuce is lasting well as I always add chard to the salad too. As well as the mangetout which I'm barely managing to keep up with. And, look what we've got for dessert tonight...
Hooray! Our original strawberries have paid out so they can stay for a bit longer. The raspberries aren't quite so good yet - I thought I was going to find more ripe ones when I started picking them!
So, Roger Sanchez's song is for the mini-plot which gets another chance at having a growing season this year.. If we can find an interested person...
Four full days (so far) of scorching temperatures (high 20s) and sunshine. Of course, we're now moaning that "it's just too hot"! Particularly in the greenhouse where it was 49.1! It also means that the watering each evening is a very busy time on the site, you've got to love a sunny evening on the plot with fellow plotholders.
Potatoes have such pretty flowers, these are on our Desiree.
On Saturday we had another go at clearing our new plot (46a). It looked like this and our chairman thought it was abandoned and needed spraying - oops! It was just that the other plots took priority - honest!
So after a few hours in the heat on Saturday we had cleared a lot of the most bothersome weeds with seed heads. And Jamie found two blueberry bushes - bonus - and part of the plot now looks like this... Plenty more to do on there though...
I also showed two new plotholders around and they are both happily joining us along with their children, so that's a bonus - we like to see new plotholders!
I'm leaving the cage
around the sunflowers, on as the stems will need some support when they reach their full
height.
We've let ourselves down with the strawberries. We should have taken runners last Autumn and planted another row. We didn't and our remaining row is producing a pretty poor crop - delicious, but small fruits and ants/woodlice are tasting more than we are at the moment 🙁. Luckily there are also some strawberry plants on the new plot, so perhaps we'll get a few fruits from there...
I pulled one garlic, but it's a bit too early. I've hung it to dry out, as it'll still taste of garlic, but will leave the rest for a few more weeks.
Our Rocky cucumbers and pumpkins haven't germinated! But we bought some Mini Munch little cucumber seeds and two of those are now growing on a bit before they're ready to plant out. We're actually away for Halloween so don't really need pumpkins, but they always look nice and I'll miss the soup!
EMF singing It's Unbelievable, which is a phrase I heard on the plot about the current weather.
What's up with my asters? They really don't look happy. Are they diseased? Will they recover? Nearly every plant has these horrible screwed up leaves :-(
Also, what's up with this annoying windy weather? It's causing irritation all round. Here's our attempt at keeping our Valerian upright - certainly not pretty but it's better than crushed flat like it was during the week.
We've been doing a lot of planting up over the last week. All the sweetcorn (the Lark and the Glass Gem) are planted, with protective bottle cloches. Not sure why this one Glass Gem seedling appears to be albino - I wonder what difference it will make to the cobs...
Jamie sowed two rows each of Speedy dwarf beans and Purple TeePee. He also sowed two more rows of Eskimo carrot as the original rows didn't germinate. On the plus side, my florence fennel seems quite happy in the recycle bins, but they've grown tall quickly so I've had to remove their protective netting - I hope they are ok and not too tempting for slugs.
We've planted up our tomatoes - 3 x Aviditas down one side of the greenhouse; 1 x Tigerella on the other side of the greenhouse and 1 x Redcurrant tomato at the end - this is a "sprawling" variety apparently, so I'm hoping we can use the shelving skeleton as a method of control...
Our greenhouse looking tidier than our flat!
I gave my sister one of the redcurrant tomato plants and the other is braving it outside - albeit with some protection from the wind at the moment... That should be enough sprawling space!
I'm pleased to see that the beetroot is looking healthy - a few nibbles, but not too many.
And I'm also pleased that I'm eating salad lunches from the allotment although I wish I had a few more lettuces growing.. I've added a bit of herb fennel and pak choi.
So, '"what's up" is an appropriate title, with the song provided by 4 Non Blondes.
