Good Day Sunshine

Look at those feathers! Interesting aren’t they? I never realised that greater (probably) spotted woodpeckers literally have polka dot feathers! Unfortunately there was a pile of them. We have a sparrow hawk which leaves piles of feathers around the site every few days.

Photo courtesy of Ted

Our HAHA chair, Ted, was lucky enough to get this photo of the sparrowhawk with some prey. It was busy protecting its dinner from a red kite overhead so Ted was able to get pretty close. Amazing. We wish it would take out rats rather than our bird life though.

We’ve been enjoying broad beans over the last couple of weeks. They’re so delicious; hot or cold. We’ve had them in these dishes: broad bean & tofu sweet chilli noodles, broad bean & ‘Vivera bacon’ gnocchi, with seitan fillets & mash, covered in parsley sauce and in allotment salads for lunch.

I actually made a cake too - I know, twice in two years - unbelievable! This one was just as a topping on strawberry & rhubarb, instead of doing a crumble. I used this recipe and it was really delicious. We don’t have any vanilla essence so I used a splosh of honey rum instead.

We had a lovely day on the allotment last Saturday. It’s our Hungerford in Bloom judging this weekend so we were doing a lot of weeding. We’re only entering Plot7 and Plot3; Plot8 is still a bit out of control 🙄

Plot3

I made another bottle waterer for the patty pan on Plot7, all the squashes and courgettes have one now, so watering is directed straight to the roots. We chop the base off the bottle, Leave the lid on and burn holes in the lid and in the cone part of the bottle so the water doesn’t pour through too quickly once it’s pushed into the ground. With trailing squash it also helps you remember where the plant’s roots are!

And can you guess what’s going to be appearing on our meal lists quite soon..?

I’m unusually writing this on a Thursday as I have 2 days off work - yay and the sky is blue-ish! We’ve been enjoying the year-late Euros, especially when England beat Germany so we’re on to the quarter finals this weekend.

So, a happy song for you to enjoy, provided by…Paul McCartney. Sing along now 🥳

Disappointed

The squashes for the tunnel are released to the elements now, and have been joined by an eleventh member, a spaghetti squash from Plot neighbour, Kate. I also took a patty pan plant off her hands and that’s planted on Plot7. Kate had the last spare Boston squash and all the others were re-homed too.

The Rocky cucumbers are planted out in their pots with a bit of enviromesh protection until they’ve settled in. The brassica cage is a nursery for the bean seedlings now that the polytunnel is home for the Aviditas tomatoes and peppers.

We didn’t get the torrential rain, but persistent drizzle has helped everything grow and the plots (and weeds) look happier as a result.

The pumpkins have started to spread, naturally in the opposite direction than we wanted so we’ll try to encourage a detour..

Yesterday Kerry called us over to see this beautiful Scarlet Tiger moth - it’s lower wings are scarlet. It’s on a nettle which is the preferred food of its caterpillar. 

Talking of wildlife…The wildlife plot is well on its way with a few flowers appearing. This is the bog patch, no flowers yet, but plenty of growth.

I’ll do a separate post when there are a few more flowers, but here’s a taster - needed the macro camera for these mini-blooms.

I’ve been pulling some of the over-zealous red shank (Persicaria maculosa) and a lot of the thistles but today we were watching a male and female bullfinch eating thistles on another plot on-site, so it pays to keep some growing there. Mares-tail is one that we’ll pull whenever we can access it, but this stem does look pretty with the raindrop decorations, don’t you think?

Today Jamie direct-sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans and I planted out the Gigantes runner beans. I planted all eight seedlings, even the one that was growing upside-down in its pot 🙄

Jamie earthed-up the potatoes during the week and added sulphur (brimstone) today to avoid scab which seems to offer an easy route in for slugs. The Nicola variety have just started producing their first flowers.

It’s been a dull weekend, weather wise, and not very warm but ok when we were busy and I made a rhubarb and strawberry crumble this morning so I’ve almost forgotten about the nil-nil match between England and Scotland on Friday evening…

The song is provided by Electronic..

World in Motion

Another bonus for home-working. We visited the allotment for an early lunch and, although it was mostly cloudy, we saw the partial solar eclipse. In fact, the cloud helped with the photo.

I do enjoy an astronomical phenomenon!

It’s been a warm, moving on to hot, week and the weekend has been positively sweltering. We’ve spent lots of hours on the allotment and our runner beans are finally in the ground.

Those are Borlotti. Jamie has added wind protection round the Scarlet Empire as they’re a bit susceptible at the front of the plot, at least until they’ve got a hold on the poles.

The courgettes are freed from their mesh protection and seem to be happy. And, so far, all my squashes are intact. The plots are needing a lot of water at the moment, with no rain for a while.

It’s too hot for some of the seeds we sowed last week. The purple sprouting broccoli germinated, but succumbed to the heat yesterday and had collapsed. We’ll re-sow at home. Our peppers have been growing on at home for a while but they’re in the (tidy) polytunnel now in growing bags: Chelsea, Milena and Denver grafted plants.

Harvests are just starting - pretty meagre helpings but for lunch I had a nice salad with cold blanched broad beans, mangetout, salad leaf and chives and we’ve had a few strawberries. We’re hoping for more broad beans later this week. There they are… nearly ready.

The rhubarb has rather collapsed, not sure whether it’s the heat or because it’s so huge. We’re looking forward to this rhubarb and strawberry mixture with ice cream for puddings - it looks prettier before it’s fully cooked and smells amazing.

You may have noticed the England flag is in position - for Euro2020, postponed from last year. We do love a footie tournament and England won against Croatia this afternoon so we’re off to a good start 👏. So the song is one of the best football songs ever, by New Order and has a spurious link to the eclipse too 😊

Cuckoo

Yesterday was my last day of freedom - back to work today (it's too early for work at the moment, if you're wondering!!), still full-time from home so that’s not so bad, but I have so enjoyed the last week that I’m sorry it’s over already. Morning and afternoon visits to a warm, often sunny plot - perfect.

Pink, flavoured vinegar in-progress

The weather for the last two days was very warm, but not too much sunshine which (I hate to say) was a good thing otherwise we wouldn’t have achieved as much as we wanted. Like (drumroll please) my 10 squashes are planted. 

They’re being protected under netting, with slug pellets, until they get established, they look so vulnerable at the moment! The cut-off plastic bottles are for ease of watering when the tunnel has become a jungle (fingers crossed).

Regular visitors may remember that I bought celeriac plants because my seedlings were stuck at the ‘cress’ stage for so long. Well, I'm glad we didn't consign them to the compost as they eventually grew and so I made a trench for them on Plot3.

Neal gave us some Early Bird sweetcorn plants so Jamie dug the area on Plot3 where the manure pile was - clearing the many weeds and tree roots and they're protected by bottle cloches for the timebeing. I intend to try some Glass Gem sweetcorn (again) on Plot7 - I'm going to sow them direct one day this week, well that's the plan.

Plot3 is really looking like a worked-plot now!

But Plot 7 (and 8) will always be the favourites because they were our first. The polytunnel has been re-stocked with the following sown into modules or pots yesterday:

• Borlotto Firetongue (dwarf beans)
• Gaia (dwarf soya beans)
• Speedy (dwarf french beans)
• Gigantes (Greek runner beans)

• Purple Sprouting broccoli - these have been brought home under the grow light
• Moreton's Secret mix - "very mixed lettuces" from RealSeeds. I've sowed these in a tray and put them under the enviromesh with the carrots. The polytunnel would be too hot for them

The Scarlet Empire and Borlotto runner beans have a bit more growing to do before we'll plant them outside. And look at that big strawberry. Jamie assures me that if we wait till today we'll have a handful to eat rather than just one...

The flowers are enjoying the sunshine as much as us.

Aquilegia

Geum

The song title is an aide memoire, because I thought this was interesting but forgot to add to my earlier post. We've been hearing the cuckoo for weeks - it's somewhere over the marsh but the sound has been getting louder and closer over the last week.

Not a cuckoo

We commented that we'd never seen a cuckoo, but then last week the cuckoo and its mate were flying overhead across the allotment from North to South. The male was 'cuckoo-ing' all the way across and as it passed over you could see plotholders look up like some sort of mexican wave! It was quite a sight (and sound)! I'd certainly assumed that they only cuckoo when sitting and looking for a mate.

So here is Rising Appalachia to provide the song.

Daisies are our Silver

What a beautiful week off work - proper June weather for much of it. We were working on Plot3 and had to move our bench to this lovely spot under the trees in order to cool down a bit.

We’ve spent many hours on the plot since last Wednesday. I managed to finish digging the manure trenches for the squashes (nearly killed me). There are so many hedge/tree roots in Plot3 it’s really hard work.

Jamie’s planted up the two courgettes and two pumpkin plants, with plenty of slug protection. It rained one day so we sheltered in the polytunnel but the amount of slugs and snails that emerged was horrendous!   I’m a bit worried about my squashes because of the placement of the compost bins, but too late to change that now.

Molluscs aren’t the only problem. Not satisfied with eating much of my mangetout, the pigeons have taken a fancy to chard and beetroot leaves this year - I’ve netted the chard now, I’m sure we haven’t needed to do that in previous years.

This is my chive flower vinegar - I managed to get a few flowers so it’ll make nice a pink and flavoured addition to salads. Although currently my salad crops are rather sparse...

Back on Plot7 I filled two holes with manure and put up two wigwams: one for Gigantes beans, which I’ll sow direct, and the other for the Borlotti beans which have germinated and are currently growing on in modules. I’m hoping to get some things planted out on Monday - last day of holiday, boohoo.

The daisies, buttercups, speedwell and other wildflowers are beautiful this year (not the ones we sowed, yet). The Spring weather was perfect for them, if not for our needs. My cousin quoted “Daises are our silver” on a post and it brought back so many childhood memories I had to share it here.

I have to say, it had completely disappeared from my memory, but now I can’t shake it off - such pretty words (it’s a hymn, but I wouldn’t have realised it when singing it at infants school). So, here it is - pardon the nostalgia, but it’s so sweet.

Wings

Phew! That was a hot Bank Holiday weekend - how lovely to spend hours in the sunshine on the allotment again. I was pleased with this photo of a recently hatched Cinnabar moth. I particularly like the cape-like wings on this specimen.

I’d normally post this to my Allotment Wildlife Blog, but Cinnabar moths have been posted on there at least twice before; they’re a regular visitor. It’s the first one I’ve seen this year, but I'm sure many more will follow. My camera’s macro was really behaving this weekend.

These are the baby strawberries in the polytunnel - as a result of Jamie's paintbrush pollination (or maybe the abundance of flying insects in there).

And this is a Cardinal beetle - another regular on the wildlife blog as they’re so impressive. They’re not a plot enemy either.

Ok, that’s it for the macro shots. Here’s a sunny shot of our irises by the pond. Notice the may in the hedgerow, a bit later than usual this year, but still May.

I’m pleased that all the squash germinated. I started digging the trenches in the squash tunnel but only got 1metre done as this weekend was too hot for digging like that! 5 more metres to go... well, the plants have more growing to do - I'll just need to feed them prior to planting out as their modules are a bit small.

Our two Rocky cucumbers germinated too. We’re protecting them for the timebeing, we know how slugs enjoy a cucumber seedling!

I earthed-up the potatoes in bags yesterday and added a bit of potato fertiliser for good measure. We were both doing a lot of weeding and tidying - getting rid of the crazy grass edges, it makes such a difference and reduces the slug protection. I dug out some of the thistles from the HAHA wildlife plot, I know they’re good for birds and insects but we need to consider the neighbouring plots and they are rather invasive. It’s definitely greening up and the plants in the bog garden are slowly spreading.

We sowed the Scarlet Empire runner beans and Lingua di Fuoco 2 climbing borlotto beans into modules. The runner bean poles are up and I’m going to use wigwams for the borlotto and Gigantes.

The earth looks very dry, but it’s still wet under the surface. We’re still surviving on rhubarb, but look at this added luxury we had from Ivan on Sunday - it was so delicious! Thanks Ivan!

So that’s the end of the month of May. I'm looking forward to a few days off work this week - allotment all the way, hopefully. The song is by Birdy, because of the cinnabar moth.