Wildflower

Look at the beautiful blue sky. What you can’t see is how chilly the strong wind was yesterday! Though I’m pleased to say that we’re quite protected at our end of the site.

You can see how dry the ground is, so we're already having to do a lot of watering even though there isn't that much in the ground so far. We're encouraging the garlic to bulb up and have been weeding some of the flower pots to help the struggling plants that have been swamped in them for months!

I planted out the celeriac seedlings. I need to remember never to bother trying to grow my own celeriac from seed in future years - the tray I bought had more than double what I needed and cost less than the seed packet (and my home-grown seedlings are pathetic!). I made a wonky trench for them so that I can keep them wet (they need A LOT of water) and earth them up when they need it.

I’ve protected the celeriac with the fleece tunnel as our night-time temperatures are still low and it may prevent some evaporation. I planted the beetroot and that’s under the green tunnel, but it shouldn’t really need protection; it just looked a bit vulnerable in the middle of that plot. Talking of tunnels.... we think that’s a vole in our shallot patch...

I planted some rainbow chard seedlings in a raised bed. And Jamie planted up some strawberries in this hanging planter, these are in the polytunnel (and are also wonky), it’ll be nice to get some early strawbs and maybe the birds won't venture in there.

Our main job today was to sow the wildflower seeds on the HAHA wildlife plot. Lots of different seeds, as you can see; some we bought, most were gifted or freebies. Hope they beat the weeds to the surface! We may get some rain this week...
The bog garden isn’t worthy of a photo; a couple of plants died (maybe frost damage) but the irises and a couple of others look like they’ll survive - well, it’s early days.

And last of all today, here's one of the frogs in our little pond. There are at least two that we've seen - they're both small, not ours from last year. The water has a lot of algae so I've been clearing it and need to get some more weed. Oh, and we heard the first cuckoo from across the marsh in the week - I do love having lunch at the allotment, definitely a bonus point for working from home! Although there's a lot of sarcasm from all the retired plotholders when I have to go back to work for the afternoon :-}

The song title is provided by Smashing Pumpkins, perhaps I should have saved it for when we have a plot-ful of wildflowers... no, best not tempt fate ;-)

Out of the Blue

Here’s a colourful and tasty meal we had in the week - at home (we haven’t decided to join the throngs in freezing pub gardens!). Lovely fried gnocchi with Vivera ‘bacon’ and veg. Delicious.

I look forward to eating home-grown again but this year seems to be taking a long time getting started. This weekend has been beautiful weather, with blue sky, hot days but the nights are still dropping below zero. We woke up to these Altocumulus undulatus clouds this morning, rather impressive, aren’t they? 

They burnt off quite quickly and we spent several hours on the plot. I planted out the Shiraz mangetout and dug a hole filled with manure for a courgette in a few weeks time.

Our pepper plants were delivered this week: Denver, Milena and Chelsea. We potted them on and they look much happier. They’ll stay at home for a while until they’re a bit bigger.

We also received the plants for the bog garden which I planted up today.

Some look a bit dead, but I hope they recover and grow in the HAHA wildlife plot bog garden. We intend to sow the wildflower seeds over the rest of the plot in the next week or two, we really want it to rain but it’s been in very short supply so far this Spring. Attempting a bog garden in a dry year - that would be typical wouldn’t it? 🙄

Another delivery this week, and the reason for this blog title, was this lovely card from my cousin Jen. So nice to get something unexpected and interesting in the post!

And, the card is even more interesting, because look what’s on the back! What a fab gift. A collection of seeds for the wildlife plot. So thoughtful - thanks so much Jen! I’ve mentioned Jen before, she’s a very creative lady - visit her Freshwinds Garden blog here.

Aah, how lovely it is to be back on the allotment. We’ve had a few lunchtimes there just to sit in the sun. We’ve seen swifts/swallows/martens (not necessarily all three of those), Canada geese and a heron as well as the usual red kites and buzzards flying overhead. There were also lots of Brimstone, Peacock and Orange Tip butterflies today - I didn’t manage to photograph any of that! But I did photograph Diane’s lovely selection of tulips and a few daffs.

The song title is provided by Roxy Music.

Cheat

No, it’s not cress. That, believe it or not, is a celeriac seedling.

There are 3 or 4 like that. I'm not convinced they'll survive to planting stage but will keep them going, even though we nipped to a garden centre and they had these. Now they look a bit healthier and will be planted rather earlier than our home-germinated plants. Don't they look lovely and healthy?

Talking of healthy, our site is now 100% leased, with most plots looking prepped and ready for the year ahead - a bit different from this time in 2010, when the land developer had withdrawn the idea for allotments on Marsh Lane after 1 year of being set up. Thank goodness the Council were able to negotiate a 4-year lease for us - and that was 11 years ago :-)

We were on the site at the weekend. In between snow showers the sun would come out and it was really hot - as my boss pointed out, the sun is as high now as it is at the end of August! We sowed some teasel seeds on the wildflower plot and I'm pleased to say that our bog plants from Bakker are on their way so it'll be good to get them planted out. I moved the drainpipe of mangetout seedlings outside to a cold frame as I'll (hopefully) plant them out next weekend. The weather is still far more wintry than we want in April - look what we woke up to yesterday - snowy rooftops!

I thought it was going to feel like a soup week, so I soaked some of my home-grown dried beans - I added celery seeds to the water which smelled lovely.

To the stock, I added the few leaves of Cavolo Nero, that we'd grown, plus a few carrots and tomato puree, as per Shaheen's recent soup recipe. I have to admit that my soup doesn't look very pretty, but it tastes good. I wish I had mushed up some of the gigantes beans separately rather than blitzing the whole soup, though there are some whole beans at the bottom of the cup.

Remember our broad beans that got severely hit by the frost in February? They unexpectedly revitalised and now look! I hope the frosts we're having at the moment don't take them out at this stage in the game...

I have to start work now, but just one last thing... You must watch the BBC4 programme: A Year in an English Garden: Flicker & Pulse. It's so beautiful, with time-lapse and other fancy effects and just a little bit of talking - I really enjoyed it, in fact I may have to watch it again (and copy some of their ideas).

The song title is provided by The Clash and is because of buying seedlings from a shop. But, as I said to Forbes on site, "It's not cheating. It's common sense" ;-)