In the Meantime

These weekends are flying by; the weeks are too, but I don't mind that so much! The previous weekend was warm and dull, but last weekend was mostly sunny and very warm. That’s when we saw this interesting cloud formation (cirrus uncinus?)

We had some rain in the week but have still needed to water, but as crops are dying back we have less watering to do (thank goodness!)

All those pumpkins, plus at least two more which have crept into the tunnel, are all on one plant! They're New England Pie variety so I'll have to try making a pumpkin pie this year. 

Some of the other squash foliage is dying back and un-ripe fruits are beginning to shrivel. The Festival still has the greenest foliage and started to produce later than the others. There aren't as many fruits as I expected; I don't know whether the Tromboncino hogged the water or whether making the plants climb used more energy. Anyway, they have a few more weeks to do their thing before they get composted if they haven’t ripened. On Sunday I decided to measure the longest tromboncino (drum roll please)… 134.5cm! It’s not a record breaker; it’s 42cm shorter than the European record!

We’ve been harvesting the sweetcorn over the last few weeks.

They are so tasty, I think I prefer the cobs grilled rather than boiled. The pollination was a bit hit and miss, with probably half of the cobs not being fully pollinated. Still enough kernels to slather in butter though 😋 

We’ve also been enjoying the Nicola potatoes, which were grown in bags. They’re very versatile and have been good roasted, baked, mashed or boiled.

Cold or hot.

Finally a couple of peppers; one red, one orange, have ripened and we’re having them in a meal tonight. I hope we get more than two peppers from the plants, but the slugs have enjoyed them sooo much 🙄

Up till now I’ve had to make do with bought peppers for lovely dishes like this (with Naked Glory soya-based strips). There are still a few more french beans to eat, but the runners have gone over.

I’ve had the last of the patty pans and I think the courgettes, which are now marrow-sized are past their best. So the year is certainly moving swiftly on. I’ve updated my allotment wildlife blog as there are so many interesting creatures about at the moment. This weekend the Ivy hedge was full of life so I made use of the macro settings on our camera, still need a bit of practice but some shots I was pleased with.

I sadly missed out on the Horticultural & Handicrafts Show this weekend because I’m still basically shielding until I get my third COVID jab. Well done to all who joined in - especially plot neighbour, Neal, who won the Banksian medal. We’ll be back next year… (hope, hope hope!) but in the meantime Neal can wear the crown 😄 Only joking, but here’s the song title by Spacehog.

So Long

I'm so happy that September has brought the heat and sunshine with it - aah, it's so welcome!

The cosmos flowers are doing weird things, as you can see. They started out with normal petals, but now they have something like an angry frill-necked lizard! Still looking beautiful though.

We emptied one of the potato bags yesterday - the haulms were chopped down a few weeks ago because of the blight. These are Nicola potatoes (2 plants). A quick rummage in the top showed that it could be a good haul.

Look at that lovely lot! Delicious small potatoes. They're very good as salad potatoes but we've enjoyed them mashed and roasted too. A couple had a bit of blight so they won't keep, but we don't intend to store them for long anyway. Talking of blight, here are the tomatoes that we saved from the blighted crop.

Lizzano are such a tasty tomato, such a shame that the growth was cut short. We're pleased that all of these semi-ripe fruits reddened up under our grow-lamp at home. Unlike the peppers which just went rotten! Clearly a fruit will only ripen if it's ready to. I'm having to make do with purchased peppers while ours are being mostly eaten by slugs in the polytunnel 😔

This lovely dish is roasted peppers, garlic and onions with olive oil and a bit of chilly with basil to make it look pretty. It's so delicious with a salad or in sandwiches and lasts for 2-3 days. I'm having it with a potato salad for lunch today, mmm, I'm looking forward to it already and it's only breakfast time 😋

We have started our first sweetcorn now. We plucked two large cobs. One was rather better pollinated than the other but still plenty of tasty kernels covered in butter. These are Early Bird. I don't think they're as tasty as the Lark that we usually grow but they are still good.

I'm back working from home after a few days off. More of my colleagues are returning to the lab but still in fairly small numbers - so many of us have found working from home to be beneficial to our work and home-life, as well as reducing our carbon footprints. I'm expecting a 3rd COVID jab to be offered in the next few weeks which could improve the immunity for immunosuppressed people. For now we're relying on other people to have the jab and take the test every now and then. Thank goodness for the allotment so I'm not desperate to travel further afield.

There's me with our longest tromboncino squash and it's still growing! I may have to enter it into our Horticultural Show just because it's so amazing 😏 There were 4 of us standing around talking about it the other day, it certainly draws attention! And that's the reason for this song title by Maya Hawke.

Monster

Well, that’s August finished.

We took home this colourful selection of veggies yesterday. The yellow courgettes are from Neal’s plot (thanks Neal) and they’re now part of a very yellow soup, along with that carrot (Five for the price of one 😄), shallots, garlic and flavoured with turmeric and sweet smoked paprika. I remembered to remove the courgette cores this time so it’s thick and creamy.

The radish are the best we’ve grown for a long time. Jamie sowed them later than we normally would.

They’ve avoided the pest damage that they usually get, but…. that may change quite soon… as I found these 3 large white butterfly caterpillars in the cage 🙄

We picked the last of the tomatoes, as you can see the blight was well and truly into the stems. The red(ish) tomatoes are under the grow lamp at home to ripen (hopefully) and the remains of the plants have gone into the green bin at home.

And I’m sorry to report another crop fail - one of the Boston squashes has succumbed to blossom end rot. Probably because of the lack of rainfall during fruit development and, although we’ve been watering a lot, clearly not enough so the plant has suffered calcium deficiency. Some of the tromboncino have also suffered, but nobody minds cutting 20cm off the bottom of them! I’ll add some lime when preparing the plot for next year.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though the mood isn’t helped by the weather - look at the grey sky and there was a north-easterly wind chill.

The Borlotti beans are colouring up nicely. I don’t think I’d bother with the dwarf ones again which seem to be growing at the same speed as the climbers and aren’t so prolific.

I’ve also decided to keep them all for drying as we have plenty of runner beans and dwarf french beans to eat fresh, at least for the timebeing. Borlotti are my favourite dried beans but the Gigantes are also beginning to fatten up now.

The plants are still looking very much alive, with only the foliage on the squash (not all of them) dying back. You can see the courgette plants in the background.

So, that was the last day of August and the song title is provided by The Automatic. It’s mostly referring to the carrot but it also makes me think of Winter 😩

Living in the Past

With a few days off last week I was lucky enough for them to be the sunniest we’ve had in a while. We had a barbecue at the plot. The sunshine ripened up some of our tomatoes before blight got them. Not many, but happy to have had some!

The peppers are still green and we may not get any if the slugs have their way. Each visit to the plot we check the plants and invariable another healthy looking pepper has been ruined by slug or snail damage…and sometimes we catch them in the act 😖

Eurgh, so many slugs and they’re so big!! We don’t help ourselves really, with so many hiding places on our plots. At least we’ve finally cleared a rotten raised bed that was sheltering at least 15 big orange slugs and Jamie dug through the area. There, that looks better. Our broad beans will over-Winter there.

At least most of the beans are avoiding damage and runners or french beans are part of most meals at the moment.

And there’s plenty more to make a proper meal these days.

That green squash is a tromboncino. One of the plants has produced these green fruits. The flesh is slightly more yellow than the usual light green fruits; the taste is the same, pretty bland. Quite a few of the fruits are really long but are rotting at the flower end and aren’t forming the bulbous seed end; seemingly because they haven’t been pollinated.

Our carrots wouldn’t be winning any prizes in the Horticultural Show on 18th September! Sadly we won’t be joining in this year due to my shielding from COVID-19 but at least it means we don’t have to worry about “Don’t eat that! Keep it for the show” 😄

We’ve pulled our first Kestrel potato plant. They seem to have escaped slug damage too, which is quite unusual for our potato harvests.

The song title is specifically chosen for Neal who requested some Jethro Tull. As he won the ‘HAHA Tallest sunflower’ competition last week and he insists on using imperial (10ft 3 inches) rather than metric (3.12 metres) I opted for this song title.

😄 Well done Neal! This song will be with you for days!

When it Rains

 … Everyone gets wet!

Poor little bee, clinging on to his cosmos stalk. We know how he felt! It was the first time in months that we walked to the site because the roads were at a standstill due to the M4 being closed.

We knew it was raining but what rain! We were drenched before we were halfway to the site, but we needed to pick runner beans and it is nice to see the site in all weathers…

I thought I’d practice some macro shots. The Gigantes and Scarlet Empire runner beans are still full of flowers and beans. The weather makes it feel like September so I’m forgetting that we have (probably) another 2 months of growing time for the squashes and at least some of the beans.

The runners, garlic and shallots are key ingredients of our meals at the moment.

And the Nicola potatoes are a really tasty variety. 

They’re delicious hot or cold and we’re really enjoying them mashed too. This meal is based on my mum’s ‘yellow fish pie’, with plant-based This isn’t bacon rather than fish and it is SO DELICIOUS!

The pumpkin foliage has really died back, but the other squashes are still growing. I’ve been checking the squash tunnel for fruits. There are definitely two Boston squashes, two Spaghetti squashes and two Crown Prince squashes, plus quite a few Festivals and Honey Boats. 

There are no giants at the moment (apart from some ridiculous tromboncino!) but that suits me. I must say it’s pleasing standing in the tunnel looking up through the vines. A lot of the fruits seem happier forming closer to the ground, particularly the Festival squash and I gave up trying to get them to grow in the right direction so now the tunnel can only be accessed from one end.

The swifts were gathering on the power lines so perhaps they’re thinking they’ve had enough of our weather too!

Dare I say that the polytunnel tomatoes are still surviving blight and are beginning to go orange. The peppers are refusing to colour up but a branch has snapped off so I’m hoping they’ll ripen in the kitchen window.

So that was it for a day off work on Friday and a soggy Saturday.

The song is provided by Paramore.