True Colours

We've had a couple of rather dull, but warm days so I needed to inject a bit of colour into this blogpost. This is from my dead-heading a couple of days ago. I struggle to keep up with dead-heading but I know it's worth doing regularly to keep the flowers blooming. I'll try to keep up with the blooms this year!

We've sowed our Lark and some red sweetcorn - hopefully they'll germinate quickly so we can get them planted out as soon as possible - we seem a bit late compared to fellow gardeners. I re-sowed squash seeds (Honeyboat, Festival and Autumn Crown) and they've all germinated unlike the first lot I sowed...

Over the last few days we've also planted a lot.
Three aubergines Meatball, are planted up: one in a bag in the greenhouse, one in a bag outside and one in the ground - it's Jamie's scientific test...
We have three peppers in the greenhouse (which hasn't look this tidy since this time last year!) Milena, Chelsea and Britney. Also in there are two tomatoes: Lizzano and Aviditas.

We've planted runner beans, but only two of our Scarlet Empire germinated so I bought some Moonlight plants, from a doorstep in Newbury for 50p, and have planted them alongside - they look a bit straggly, but I expect they'll recover. And, that leads me nicely into the PLANT SALE that we have tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it - so many plotholders have already donated plants and I think the sun may shine for us.

Here's Cindi Lauper with the title track.

Changes

The sky has been white instead of blue for the last couple of days but it has meant that we could get some work done at home and then yesterday we managed to clear the other half of Plot 46A - just a little bit more to do. But this post is mostly about the tadpoles.

Or should I say 'froglets' - look at that little one, with another one looking on from the water. They're so tiny - smaller than a little fingernail.

There's still a bit of tail that needs to go.

And there are others at varying stages of their transformation. Here's a little timelapse video of pond action from yesterday - the water snail is a busy little thing!

While we were clearing Plot 46A we found lots of ladybird larvae and cocoons. Any adult ladybirds we found we took to Plot3 to deal with our broad beans' blackfly problem - they seemed happy to help :-)

Plot46A has a serious weed issue. My salad seedlings are taking shape now so I can just about tell the difference between them and the weedlings but I'm going to wait a bit longer before I pull the weeds - I think it going to have to be a manual job, rather than a hoe...

 

The sun's coming out so today (Wednesday) we should be able to have a barbecue on site - hooray, but I still need to work on some more growing/weeding/sowing...
A great title song by David Bowie - a stay-in-your-head-all-day song - enjoy.

All Together Now

Yum, yum. Most of the bloggers I follow seem to have been harvesting their first strawberries of the year, so I thought I'd share our first ones too. Mmm, they're a very sweet variety. Unfortunately we don't know what variety, but we'll be sure to take further runners for plotting on.

I have a week off work and a long sunny weekend meant we got quite a lot done and really feel we're ready for June to provide us with all that this lovely month promises! Though there's still a lot of empty space on the plots.

We've dug holes and put plenty of manure in them ready and waiting for various plants e.g, squashes and runner beans. We've earthed up the potatoes in the ground and in bags.
Jamie's planted and netted the Amazing cauliflower. I've planted out the Crookneck Summer squash, Asparagus pea and Borlotti beans. We're waiting for the other squash plants to get a bit bigger before they're planted out, but germination hasn't been that great.

Meanwhile the pond a wildlife area (aka raspberry bed) is looking cheerful with the addition of a houseleek pot (thanks Joanne) - I'm hoping the houseleeks will spread over the edge of the pond. The lily beetles returned to the lily flowers and have nibbled quite a few of the buds, so they may not be as impressive as they were last year.

Our sunny weekend wasn't all spent on the plot so here's a photo of the Carnival of Animals we enjoyed in Newbury - lots of people enjoying the evening sunshine and giant puppets.

I love this anthem by The Farm - join in :-) And it'll very soon be World Cup time again - yippee!

Seasons in the Sun

It's certainly growing weather (though those beautiful sweetpeas were grown by Ivan, ours are still small). I've chopped back a lot of the chive flowers to encourage more new growth, but the butterflies and bees love them, so I don't chop them all in one go.

Two days of this second Bank Holiday in May and they've both been beautiful, with heat, mostly sun and none of the threatened rain showers during the day - will it last for a third day??

The tadpoles have been hiding for much of the month but I was very pleased to see lots of them appear during some very heavy rain earlier in the week. And even more pleased to spot legs on these two today!

We had a not-very-productive afternoon on the allotment on Saturday - well, it started with a soiree. so it was a lot of fun, but digging in the sunshine after all that home-made wine and home-made scones (thanks to Ivan and Kerry) was hard work!

At least I got the one job done that I've been meaning to do for a couple of weeks - Epsom Salts for the garlic and shallots. It should help the leaves perk up - they're yellowing due to lack of magnesium.

Sunday was much more productive. I've sown the following in rows on Plot46A:
Boltardy beetroot
Chinese leaf
Radish Mirabeau
Sweet Marble turnip
White Lisbon salad onions
Oasis turnip
Lattuga Red Salad bowl

Some of the salad-y bits I sowed earlier are looking promising

We eventually finished clearing Plot3 of valerian, couch grass, thistles, nettles and every other type of weed you can think of - even a bit of horsetail for good measure. 4 big bags of weeds - that's what happens if you don't do the Autumn tidy-up like good plotholders!

There are many more insects about now - plenty of bees and we've seen various butterflies, caterpillars and interesting flies. I saw a huge hornet in the week and at the weekend Ivan found this dead in his greenhouse...

I really love these Thai silk flowers, they've done well so far this year - such stunning colours.

 

So now it's Bank Holiday Monday, it's rather grey outside but humid. Not too much digging to do today, but clearing and preparing the way for our pot-grown plants which are desperate to get out of the flat and up to the allotment. 

Aaah, Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks - this song makes me sad, but I do like it.

Busy Earnin

The weather took a bit of a turn since that lovely Bank Holiday weekend. We've had sunshine,  but a chilly wind and clear nights have brought us a few frosts. We've been fleecing the strawberries and shutting the tender plants in the greenhouse each evening.

We've been sprinkling earth over the potato leaves which keep appearing. We don't want them to get frost-bite at this stage in their growth. Jamie prepared the compost for the potato bags and we've put one seed potato in each bag:
Nicola
Pentland Javelin
Foremost
Catriona

We have courgettes germinating at home as well as our grafted pepper (Chelsea, Britney and Milena) and aubergine (Meatball!) plants. Jamie's potted them on twice since they were delivered. I potted on the Rainbow chard plants in the greenhouse. A few for me and mostly red-stemmed and yellow-stemmed plants for selling on. They look much happier a week on..

This flower has been in a pot all through the Winter and didn't do anything except grow a few extra leaves last year, but this year it's looking lovely - I can't remember what it is.

That was last weekend and yesterday, in sweltering sunshine, we weeded a large area of Plot3 and prepared a hole for our runner beans.

I sowed a few more salad leaf, radish and onions and, I'm very pleased to say, I planted my mangetout seedlings (Shiraz and Golden Sweet) and also my sweet peas along with a lot of excess plants from Ivan. So good to be getting more plants into the ground.

I've been a bit worried about the tadpoles as I've only spotted three recently, but I'm hoping it's because they've gone to the bottom of the pond, which is very green now. I replenished some of the water and have put a bit more shade over it. I hope they're not afraid of this little Indian addition to the garden :-)

The lily beetle has found the plants that are next to the pond... Aren't they pretty, but not welcome!

So the song title is because I've had a couple of very busy weeks at work. I'm hoping it'll calm down a bit next week so that I feel like doing a bit of work on the plot in the evenings, we'll see... Enjoy the video - Great dancing!

Hard to Beat

Three days of sunshine on a Bank Holiday weekend - just what we all wanted. We had several hours each day on the plots, but had to disappear under the brolly at regular intervals to re-hydrate.
And despite the heat we did manage to get quite a bit done.

These little violas have spread around the site over the years. Such beautiful colours. I've potted some on for the HAHA Plant Sale in June, along with some of the houseleeks, in the top photo, which I love.

I planted out the additional 16 broad bean plants which all germinated in the greenhouse. So we have 28 plants - that's quite a lot for us. I intend to use some of the beans for broad bean hummus and although all my salad leaf and spinach looks like cress at the moment I'm hoping there will some suitable leaves just in time for a fresh baby broad bean salad.
The broad beans that were planted out nearly 3 weeks ago have grown quite tall and have evidence of flower buds. They've had their leaves nibbled by weevils, but that doesn't seem to affect the beans.

As expected, we had a couple of frosts during the last week. We didn't have much in the ground which could be affected and we closed the greenhouse up to be on the safe side. The only victims were a few of the strawberry flowers, where the centres have gone black. This means they won't become fruit, but lots have survived ... so far.

We got most of our potatoes planted. This year we used a bulb planter to make a neat hole, dropped the potato in and refilled with the earth and a little potato fertiliser. Much quicker and less labour intensive than digging a long trench for them!

Here's a sketch of where we planted what, for our info. (Kestrel, Catriona, Nicola, Orla and Pentland Javelin), We still have a few to grow in bags but we're not planting masses this year as we find we just don't get round to eating them.

And, here's a lovely yellow/orange poppy just waiting to pop its bud.

There's so much activity and the hedgerow is alive with birds and bees. The robin is feeding its mate and the cuckoo is calling in the distance over the marsh. It's such a fabulous time of year, especially when the sun shines, and we're almost keeping up with nature, but although we took about ten bags of green waste home over the long weekend, we have a lot more to do!

Can you spot the blue tit upside down in the may?

So, how could we improve on such a beautiful sunny weekend? Ah yes! A spontaneous home-made wine tasting session, courtesy of Ivan - quince wine was my favourite, but the apple was good too. Most of us had to go home for a kip after that little session hic, but we did make it back to do some work later in the afternoon and to collect our car..

The unstoppable Ivan - puts all the younger plotholders to shame with his skills

Here's Hard-Fi with the great title song...

The Chain

Here's the reason for the title song. I've read before that worms tie themselves in knots (estivation) to keep hydrated in dry weather - which is certainly not how I'd describe 2018 so far!

But I was amazed to find how dry one part of Plot8 was. It was a weedy/grassy patch between the grass path and the mammoth rhubarb plant, so they must be taking all the water from the soil.

It was really cold today, and grey, with not a glimmer of sunshine. Luckily we had lots of digging to do, so that kept us warm-ish, but we still needed woolly hats and I had my big Winter coat on.

There's Plot 8 when we finished (ignore the bit on the right which still needs a lot of work). Jamie pulled all the old strawberry plants out, so we just have one row now - the flowerpots are for ease of watering once the plants have spread out.

Sadly all those flowers will probably get frosted this week, so we're unlikely to be getting an early harvest this year.

With aching backs and 4 bags of green waste we returned to the warmth of our flat. I wonder if the frost will strike over the next couple of nights.... But no matter if it feels like Winter, here's some beautiful evidence that it IS Spring.

Fleetwood Mac provide the song title.