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!
The sun continues to shine, the temperatures are still fabulously high and the rain didn't amount to much, but after my grumpy post last week look what we saw today! It's very small and maybe not quite as Amazing as the variety name suggests, but still it's our first ever cauli!
This variety is meant to get large and be bright white - perhaps it has sunburn(!) so I've covered it with a leaf, which apparently should protect it and maybe it'll still grow a bit bigger and keep the florets tight.
So that was a turn-up for the books! And last week we had a nice meal with courgettes, garlic, aubergine and shallots (with some added paprika). I had to add some shop-bought tomatoes (criminal) but they added a bit of colour.
There's our first Summer Crookneck squash in there. And the spare courgettes went to work - always gratefully received.
The taste isn't that special, but there are plenty more to eat and they're getting quite big - the plant survived the gales I'm pleased to say.
The trailing squash on Plot 46 are growing well too - I keep trying to encourage the vines to grow over the frame but they really want to go the opposite way - which is rather typical. Still, there's so much growth that the ugly structure will soon be hidden!
There are several fruits on 3 of the plants but so far I've only seen one Festival.
The Borlotti beans have filled out nicely. We may end up drying them after all.
There's one plant which appears to be Borlotti but it's a little different...
And the Edamame beans are strange. They aren't filling out very quickly and are much smaller than other beans - I need to read up on them. I'm watering and watering to encourage them to fatten up.
The Aviditas tomatoes have begun to change colour. We were hoping to keep a truss for the Horticultural Show on 18th August - but I think the red ones will need eating before then and they're too delicious to waste!
Tonight we're having potatoes with caramelised shallots and green beans - from our one and only Speedy French bean which germinated! The potatoes (Kestrel) haven't got much of a skin, but we're attempting to bake them - they smell nice while they're cooking.
These Geum flowers are lovely. All the stems have been chopped back a couple of times and they re-grow with lovely blooms - we bought this as a small plant at last year's HAHA plant sale.
And these Rudbeckia were a present from my niece a few years ago. I transplanted a tiny part last year and it's very happy in a pot in this warm spot.
A colourful post deserves some Rainbow chard - I'm going to use it like spinach in a spanish omelette during the week - Jamie still refuses to eat chard :-) I'll use a big frying pan so that I can fit lots of courgette in there too and maybe that's what the tomatoes will be added to...
So it's the beginning of August and the hedgerow is already full of red berries, blackberries and even sloes. Harvests have certainly been a bit short-lived for us this year, but we've enjoyed it and there's still more to come...
Lark and Double Red Sweetcorn
So, with a lot of red, gold and lots of green in this post it deserves a bit of reggae, from Bob Marley - how many times I could have used this song this year?
I've started this post off with a pretty Cosmos flower, because I have a few things to whinge about...
Last night the expected wonder of the blood moon was hidden behind thick cloud, so we missed out on our view of the "longest lunar eclipse of the century".
The overnight storms entirely missed Hungerford - unbelievably, just look at the lightning map from last night! We're the little white dot in the South of England and we heard one rumble of thunder and had about 3mm of rain... (I appreciate that not everyone likes a storm, but really?!)
The weather yesterday was overcast and today it's blowing a gale, with an occasional shower, so the butterflies have hidden away and I haven't done my Big Butterfly Count yet. I should have started it when I spotted this lovely Common Blue butterfly in the greenhouse, but it seems like my stats from the allotment may be missing this year - unless we get a sunny weekend in the next two weeks :-(
These are our sprouts. Are they going to grow? They don't look at all happy, but even they look happier than our cauliflowers which are really
struggling with the heat and we think it's pollen beetles that are causing the problems with the leaves.
OK, whinging over. Look at our lovely harvest and the courgettes and aubergine were so tasty fried, chilled and added to a salad.
And the Chinese leaf is so delicious - it's a shame only 3 germinated and I had to chop a lot of the outside leaves off because of bug damage - but still, it is much tastier than the normal lettuce - I must sow/grow more next year.
Runner beans are setting on all the plants now and we'll probably be picking some tomorrow... in the meantime we have another supply from Ivan (swapped for an aubergine).
The squashes are growing okay- these are pumpkins, but the ones on my trellis are coming on too.We seem to be way behind a lot of people on site though, who have beachball-sized fruits already!
It's rather worrying that our Crookneck Summer squash is being severely beaten up by the wind today - revealing all the immature vegetables. I hope it doesn't snap off...we tried to secure it but the ground was too hard to do it properly.
We pulled all the shallots today as we don't want them getting wet. There are many more than we thought there were going to be from the 15 we planted. I think the variety is Longor.
The few onions are only just bulbing up so they can stay in the raised bed for as long as possible - but I don't think they'll be winning any 'largest onion' prizes!
The bell peppers in the greenhouse are a good size but aren't changing colour yet - they're all green. As are the tomatoes, but the huge trusses on the Aviditas are just starting to change.
The Lizzano are growing much larger fruits this year - presumably because it's been so hot in the greenhouse (~42°). They look standard size rather than cherries.
So, perhaps I'm just a bit grouchy because I'm going back to work next week and the temperature is about 10° lower today than it was yesterday. It's still been a beautiful Summer (so far) and anyway, I like this song by Everything But the Girl.
Last night Jamie and I had a bbq on the plot and were joined by lottie-buddy Kerry to do a bit of star-gazing and bat-watching. We'd preset the camera to try to capture the moon. This is probably the best one (with a little studio engineering).
Many others looked like this, but most were a lot more blurred. I've cropped this and changed the contrast otherwise the craters were barely visible. I need more practise, or a different camera.
I'm hoping that the Super moon - super BLOOD moon - super blood BLUE moon(!) will be visible on Friday night to try again... This week's lunar eclipse is meant to be a good one - but we're also forecast rain... hmm, which do we want to see more?! I know what the birds want - they've been queueing up for our birdbath - only Robbie is brave enough to drink from it while we are sitting nearby.
My Birthday week off work has been lovely so far. Sunshine all the way and scorching temperatures have meant that the watering regime continues, but that's fine when we can do it at our leisure.
Pimms and cake on the plot - nice
We harvested our first potato bag - Foremost. It produced a good crop of tasty perfect-sized tubers from just one seed potato (I forgot to weigh them before we ate some, but the remaining ones weigh 2kg).
And look how many more were waiting to grow!
So this post's title had to be moon-based.... so here's a bit REM to singalong to.
On Friday night we had some rain! It seemed like a lot when it was pouring down and we had to go out and revel in it, but by Saturday it wasn't clear that there had been any at all on the allotment.
So, there we were lugging watering can after watering can across the site to our plots - this was today (Sunday).
Jamie watered on Saturday while I showed a new plotholder around the site. Mari was lucky, what timing! As on Saturday we had another tapas and wine afternoon. Lots of fun and thank goodness for the sun umbrella for when the sun peeped through the clouds. Hours later we walked home through the warm streets - I love this weather, especially now that I have a week off work - yippee!
The usual suspects: Jamie, Kerry, Jane, Neal, David and Ivan
Today we had several hours on the site, with lots of sitting down in between the watering as it was even hotter today than yesterday. I had two leftover cucumber plants so I've planted them against the strings and canes to replace the mangetout. During last week I pulled up the mangetout plants which were no longer producing; the purple ones (Shiraz) had a bad year. For some reason the pigeons took a real liking to them, but didn't touch the golden pods. I don't actually know what the cucumbers are that I've planted - I think they're long ones. We have our favoured Rocky mini cucumbers growing on Plot46A - one of them is growing much stronger than the other.
My squash framework is definitely more grotty than grotto - but the plants are beginning to go crazy so hopefully my woeful structure won't be seen under all the growth!!
The Borlotti beans look good - I'm going to leave them on the plant for a bit longer and eat them fresh (out of the pods), I probably won't dry them - I don't think there will be enough to try more than two or three meals with them, but they do look great.
These are the edamame (soya) bean flowers - not like normal bean flowers are they? I saw a bee pollinating them today so I hope some beans will follow fairly soon... All the other runners and dwarf beans are beginning to set now.
And here come the courgettes... these Goldmine produced a huge yield last year and it looks like this year may be the same!
There we go - the first trug shot of the season!
Mostly full of lettuce, which I've made into soup. It's tasty, not lettuce-y at all, apart from the colour. I added a bit (too much) of the garlic salt I made the other day.
And I'm currently cooking the courgettes topped with mixed nuts, shallot and cheese - mmm it smells good. I'm trying to fry the aubergine to blacken the skin - you'd think I'd be good at that, but I don't want them to go too far...
And the song title is provided by The Gorillaz - great song.
It's been a busy July, what with Open Day preparations, the World Cup and such hot weather that it feels like I should be on holiday, not working. Lunches are getting more varied; the peppery turnips were a very tasty addition - I blanched them before adding to salads. But they, like the radishes, have not lasted well in the ground, I may try another sowing.
This has been our largest harvest so far, with our first courgette and the shallots, which have grown very well this year.
And we're very happy with our first aubergine! The plant in the greenhouse has plenty more fruits to come; the outdoor plants are slower, but I think we'll get something from them.
The ladybirds are making a show now, but too late for most of our broad beans - we've only managed a few meals from them this year because of the blackfly.
It seems that all the cabbage whites have emerged at the same time too. Everywhere you look they're flitting about or supping up the minerals where we've watered.
Another England win at the World Cup (this time 2-0 against Sweden) - AMAZING - meant another late night barbecue on the plot for Jamie and me last week. And we listened to Croatia beating Russia (on penalties) on the radio.
Kate's leek flowers are a fabulous display.
Now the World Cup is over and France won. The hot Summer weather continues to amaze - we're just not used to waking up to blue skies every morning! We had one afternoon with just about enough rain that we only needed to water the greenhouse...
... otherwise we're watering everything each evening as the ground is so dry.
We're leaving the lettuces under their cover as they seem happy under there.. these are the plants that looked so sad on 3rd July- great recovery ability!
And I found time to pickle some garlic in red wine vinegar, with mustard seeds, pepper, a little salt and a little sugar. I used these tiny Kilner jars which are so cute! It should be ready to eat in a couple of weeks and can keep for up to a year, apparently.
I used 3 remaining cloves to make garlic salt - the sea salt and garlic were ground together and then dried in the oven at 80° until it had formed a dry crust. I'm looking forward to having that on chips - it smells very strong so maybe not on a week-night!
Hmm, now what song to use for this summary of the last couple of weeks.... Ahh, The Killers - please think of it as 'things that we've done'!
This variety is meant to get large and be bright white - perhaps it has sunburn(!) so I've covered it with a leaf, which apparently should protect it and maybe it'll still grow a bit bigger and keep the florets tight.
So that was a turn-up for the books! And last week we had a nice meal with courgettes, garlic, aubergine and shallots (with some added paprika). I had to add some shop-bought tomatoes (criminal) but they added a bit of colour.
The taste isn't that special, but there are plenty more to eat and they're getting quite big - the plant survived the gales I'm pleased to say.
The trailing squash on Plot 46 are growing well too - I keep trying to encourage the vines to grow over the frame but they really want to go the opposite way - which is rather typical. Still, there's so much growth that the ugly structure will soon be hidden!
There are several fruits on 3 of the plants but so far I've only seen one Festival.
The Borlotti beans have filled out nicely. We may end up drying them after all.
There's one plant which appears to be Borlotti but it's a little different...
And the Edamame beans are strange. They aren't filling out very quickly and are much smaller than other beans - I need to read up on them. I'm watering and watering to encourage them to fatten up.
The Aviditas tomatoes have begun to change colour. We were hoping to keep a truss for the Horticultural Show on 18th August - but I think the red ones will need eating before then and they're too delicious to waste!
Tonight we're having potatoes with caramelised shallots and green beans - from our one and only Speedy French bean which germinated! The potatoes (Kestrel) haven't got much of a skin, but we're attempting to bake them - they smell nice while they're cooking.
These Geum flowers are lovely. All the stems have been chopped back a couple of times and they re-grow with lovely blooms - we bought this as a small plant at last year's HAHA plant sale.
And these Rudbeckia were a present from my niece a few years ago. I transplanted a tiny part last year and it's very happy in a pot in this warm spot.
A colourful post deserves some Rainbow chard - I'm going to use it like spinach in a spanish omelette during the week - Jamie still refuses to eat chard :-) I'll use a big frying pan so that I can fit lots of courgette in there too and maybe that's what the tomatoes will be added to...
So it's the beginning of August and the hedgerow is already full of red berries, blackberries and even sloes. Harvests have certainly been a bit short-lived for us this year, but we've enjoyed it and there's still more to come...
