A Wet Weather Walk

And guess where we walked to... We knew we wouldn't be able to do any work on the plot on such a rainy day but it's nice to see it in all weathers and all seasons.

We did manage to pick the last few ripe Sungold tomatoes from the plants in the greenhouse. I may make some green tomato chutney with the remaining fruits but will see if I have the time and inclination.

Geese flying West for Winter(?)

The site and surroundings are looking good in their autumn colours even though it was such a grey day. The strawberries have flowers on but it's the leaves that are stunning red now!

The chard is still making a good display and the marigolds are still looking good (from a distance!)

The birds have been making the most of few visitors to the site and are enjoying eating our sunflower seeds. We saw blue tits, great tits and long-tailed tits flying from the hedge to the plants when we first turned up.

Squashes and Compost

We had a few hours of clearing on the plot this afternoon. We haven't had any proper rain for a week and it was reasonably warm so there were quite a few other plotholders with the same idea. We started by picking all the suitable Cornells Bush Delicata squash from Plot 3 - that lot was from 2 plants.

We cleared all the remains of the squashes and pumpkins on Plot 3. The large leaf cover had done well to prevent too much weed growth so it wasn't too strenuous to dig up the remaining weeds and give the area a bit of a dig over. We've now put all that green waste, plus some rotted manure and straw in a pile along the weed-free section - we're intending to plant our runner beans there next year, so that compost can form the bean trench. We're hoping that leaving it like this will help it to rot down over winter and let the birds deal with any pests that may be harboured in there..

We left as the birds were going to roost and we'd done what we planned to do. I pulled some carrots and took some onions to make soup - I'm adding a bit of rosemary and it smells lovely as it's cooking at the moment.
Jamie pulled one of the Tenerife potatoes but they've been in the ground too long and aren't edible :-( Luckily we still have some lovely Kestrels which are serving us well. We had some baked last week and they were delicious.

Our Brussels Sprouts (Revenge) are looking ok on Plot 7 but the plants on Plot 3 are pathetic - that's what happens when you don't prepare the ground properly!

Autumn on the Plot

I had to scrape the windscreen last week and the nights are creeping down so we moved the pumpkins into the greenhouse. We had to do a bit more clearing in there first. The cornichons are all picked but we're not sure if they'll be very tasty as they've got so huge. We're still waiting for the tomatillos to go purple and they still seem to be growing. I found this lovely dried husk, but the ones on the plant are still green.

 We read today that the husk is meant to go brown when the fruit is ripe... Hmmm.

We got 11 good-sized pumpkins from our 6 plants on Plot3. We were pleased to see that the slugs hadn't got to them.

September wasn't a good time to go away for two weeks as we missed out on so much harvest - look at that waste of lovely tomatoes and we composted lots of cucumbers today. These are our Radish Rat Tails, they're pretty hot. The photo on the seeds showed the seedpods should go red but I can't see that happening.

This photo is evidence for my sister Joanne that I've used the drink jar she gave me!

The tomatoes are blighted so they won't be going into the compost bins - we'll clear them off site very soon.

I was pleased to see we have one (only one) swede that has actually formed properly and we found a courgette that is still edible, though rather big! We pulled a Kestrel potato and have a good supply of spuds for the next week or so - there should be a couple of good ones there for baking - yum!

We're storing manure in the compost bins while we plan what we're doing next year. We haven't got a lease extension beyond April yet!! :-(

Hungerford Food Festival 2015

A lovely day on the plot yesterday in the sunshine and there was a real buzz on site. I'm not sure if it was the weather or because plotholders were harvesting for the HAHA stand at the Food Festival. Everyone was so generous, providing bagfuls of produce for the display.

Jamie spent the afternoon carving the HAHA pumpkin and it looked great, as you can see.

We had a slideshow of photos and the site video, which is so pleasing a year after seeing it for the first time. As well as the displays we had a side stall with tasters of home-made savoury scones, fruit cordials and fruit - along with these pumpkin seeds.

I roasted the pumpkin seeds - mixed with olive oil, smoked rapeseed oil, paprika, salt and pepper - for about 50mins at 150C. They were delicious and so more-ish.

I'm glad we have more pumpkins for Halloween!

The food festival was a great success. So lovely to talk about growing your own with so many people and to see Hungerford bustling. It seems we may have gained a couple of new allotment recruits through the stall too.

What a lovely weekend! Thanks to all involved!

Home Again...

From our two week holiday in lovely Puerto de la Cruz in the north of Tenerife. It's such a beautiful part of the island and we feel so at home at the Casablanca Apartments.

With the fantastic El Limón vegetarian restaurant nearby in the old town and the bus stop just up the road it's the ideal location for us. The bus journeys are an adventure in themselves and you get to see great views and can peep into the lives and gardens of the locals! It was extremely hot and the hills and heat took their toll so we were quite relieved when the clouds were drawn down from the mountains - still sweltering but you didn't feel the burn quite so much!

Anyway, we're home now so we popped up to the allotment to see how it's looking. I'm pleased to say the sun was shining and though about 10 degrees down on what we've been used to it was lovely to sit for a while. The plots are not so overgrown as we'd expected - the clearing we did before we left was obviously very timely.

Some of the pumpkins are ready - a bit early but they'll keep and we need some for the Hungerford Food Festival next week. And the Cornells Bush Delicata squash are looking good.

The Lizzano and Sungold tomatoes have trusses of lovely ripe toms for us. Some of the tomatillos are huge and have burst through their lantern sheaths.  Thanks to our plot buddies (Neal & Ted) for keeping the greenhouse watered!

The gherkins haven't quite grown as intended - they were meant to be tiny cocktails gherkins...

An unexpected bonus is the radish rats tails. The plants appeared to be devastated by weevils but they had a new lease of life and they're now covered in flowers, bees and tiny radish-flavoured 'chillies'.

While we were away the local newspapers had photos from the Hungerford in Bloom awards. I don't actually call nyself 'Belinda Thompson' but it's all good publicity for the allotments!

Celery Soup

We may not grow celery again as it's a bit hit and miss. Some of the bunches are really well-formed, others papery. However, this soup makes me think it is worth growing some - thanks to the 'Goodness Green' website.

Desk buddies looking on

Everything in the pot (except oil and pepper) was home-grown.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, chopped roughly
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon thyme (optional)
1 head of celery, cleaned & chopped roughly
1 white potato chopped
1 litre of vegetable stock
pepper & salt

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a non stick pot and add the onion and garlic. Cook until softened.
2. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Puree the soup using a blender. Hand held works fine.
4. Return to the pan, check seasoning and serve.

I do love a straightforward recipe and the result was delicious!

Composting and Clearing

The weather was reasonable at the weekend so we managed to spend about 6 hours on the plot. Jamie was clearing a section on plot 3; digging out raspberries and couch grass to have a new position for compost bins on that plot - just to store manure in for a bit.

I was dealing with the compost bins on plot 7. I emptied them both out onto a tarpaulin and then layered the contents, along with straw and some manure, into the new bins. The 'wet' bin was full of worms - lovely fresh looking red ones. They do such a good job turning all that waste into new soil!

'Dry' Compost which has been left alone since April

'Wet' Bin we've been filling since April

Someone dropped off two unwanted compost bins on the site a couple of weeks ago so we swapped one of our smaller ones for a nice big one; we now have two matching ones on Plot 7. I dug them down a bit and they're more level than they were previously. The stones round the edge are a haven for snails but they're also a vain hope to stop mice making a winter home in them.
Both of the bins are pretty much full but they won't take long to decompose and the compost will probably be usable in the Spring.

I cleared all the overgrown lettuce, chinese radish (which went to seed) along with the dried remains of the mangetout. I also cleared the cucumber and pepper plant from the greenhouse and chopped back lots of the tomatillo, which was trying to take over half the greenhouse! That all got chopped up and added to the compost bins so we can actually see the bottom of the gherkin plants again now.
The chilli pepper plant is now outside to see if that can be shocked into going red, some appear to be going black (not in a bad way) - perhaps the label is wrong and that's the colour they'll end up as.

This was part of Saturday's harvest. All those tomatillos came from the branches I chopped off. Some of the fruits are quite large. They taste quite nice as part of a salad, but will be interesting to see if any go purple and then taste them.

The fruit is really sticky inside the papery lantern. It doesn't taste like a raw tomato. If I get a chance I'll see about making some salsa with them - which apparently is what they're used for generally in South America. (They aren't Cape Gooseberries, although their lanterns look similar).

September Means Soup

I figure it's now ok to move on to soup lunches rather than salads and so the first of this year's soups has now been made and I'm having a little taster while I type.
I don't think I've made carrot and fennel soup before but I love the aniseed-licorique flavour of the florence fennel when it mingles with other flavours. I've decided I'm not so keen on roasted or pan-fried fennel, but maybe I just didn't cook it very well this year.

As usual I've made enough for a family of eight rather than just me for 3 lunches, so I may have to freeze some. I left one of the carrots out and only put 2 cloves of garlic in and to cook I added ½ litre of vegetable stock but after blending it needed a bit more water adding. I also needed to add more salt and pepper - I do love a peppery soup!

We had a busy day today but managed to get to the allotment just in time for a heavy shower so we waited in the car and didn't get any weeding done (again). Jamie was harvesting a Kestrel potato while I pulled all the onions whose tops had folded down naturally. A few still have upright stems so I've left them in the ground, but I'm not sure that they'll grow any more - or if we want them to!

Here they are in the greenhouse to dry out. I found enough space on the shelving by hanging some more of the garlic from the roof.

It looks like I may need to make some onion soup sometime soon...

Not Quite September, Definitely Not October!

We didn't stay on the plot long, too cold, maybe that's why some of the pumpkins appear to be a month ahead of where we want them to be...

The rain barely stopped so we didn't get any clearing or weeding done. Maybe tomorrow as I've gone an extra day off for the bank holiday. We picked one of our two peppers and another stalk of celery, but this one hasn't grown properly; the stems are hollow, but still full of flavour so okay for cooking with but not for a salad. We were hoping to have a courgette but the one which was big enough was covered in a jelly-like substance - probably slug eggs. Yuk! That went in the compost bin :-(

The marigolds are still growing and looking beautiful even in the rain. The wildflowers have been flattened so aren't looking so good.

The Start of a Bank Holiday Weekend

Another grey day (weather-wise) but on this long holiday weekend there's plenty of catching up to do on the plots. Chinese radish, swede, lettuce, asparagus pea and some beetroot need to be cleared and composted as they've either gone to seed or simply given up. None of the swede has bulbed up for some reason. I pulled all the silverskin onions from the raised bed and put them on mesh to dry - thank goodness for the greenhouse! We'd struggle to get them dry outside at the moment and don't want to fill the flat up with them!

We need to get pickling! We have quite a few onions....

And of course, we have another load of BIG onions too, so we need to get things sorted!

However, on Saturday I left Jamie working on the allotment while I spent a few hours at my sister's farm for her birthday. Joanne and I had a lovely time, chatting, wandering round the garden, eating cake then feeding the chickens and geese. 

The chickens came into the back door when they thought it was tea-time

They have a Caravan Club site on the farm and a couple of caravanners turned up while I was visiting. What a lovely peaceful spot to spend a few days!

Barney & Big Boy - the alpaca

Jonathan and George were busy harvesting so we took a cuppa and cake down to them at the dryer. Jonathan explained the system, from the wheat being dropped in one end, along the conveyor belt system, through the heated section and fired out at the other end as clean, dry wheat.

That's a photo from Joanne's blogpost during last year's harvest:
http://lornehillquilts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/harvest-chicksand-quilt.html

Lovely to delve your hands into the huge pile of grain.

Taken from Joanne's blog from Saturday:
http://lornehillquilts.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/a-bit-of-colour.html

When I got back to the allotment Jamie was just about ready to leave. He'd trimmed all the grass edges and mowed the remainder of our paths as well as doing some weeding so the plots were looking tidier again, but still loads more to do...

The Tenerife potatoes are getting big in the ground (they're only meant to be tiny) and are beginning to re-grow so we need to pull them really, but there's only so many spuds two people can eat in one week!
Those are our Lizzano tomatoes in the photo above. They are grafted plants and it's clear how much more prolific they are than the grown-from-seed Sungold variety that we have in the greenhouse. The Lizzano are really sweet and tasty until you taste a Sungold - WOW! They are amazing. We're looking at getting some grafted Sungold plants for next year (if we get to keep the allotment - we should find out next month).

Sungold

The Cornells Bush Delicata squash are looking good - trailing off just like you'd expect of a bush variety - not!

I made dinner - it gets a mention as I don't do it very often and it was delicious. A layered oven bake of par-boiled Tenerife potatoes, courgette sliced longways, tomatoes, silverskin onions (which I needn't have bothered caramelising), garlic and cheese topped with filo pastry. Mmmmm, so tasty and pretty, wish I'd got a photo!

The Russian Giant Sunflowers are about 3 metres tall!