Ugly

The weather has been rather changeable. When the sun shone it was lovely but not so good when the cloud took over and that mass brought about 5 spots of rain with it, so the earth is still really dry.

This weekend we had two days of clearing away the three bean wigwams and then we dug the area for our broad beans. We've also managed to do a lot of weeding; it still amazes me how well the weeds grow with so little rain. The nigella have spread seeds and seedlings everywhere - beautiful, but rather a nuisance!

The remaining borlotti beans are drying on netting attached in the top of the polytunnel. The smaller squashes may go up there later when we need to use the chair!

More of the tomatoes are finally ripening but the peppers are remaining obstinately green. With the temperatures dropping to about 4° most nights I wonder if they’ll ever ripen…but you know some good things do come to those who wait. This Chinese Dragon radish was sown months ago, did nothing during the heatwave and finally started to appear a few weeks ago. I thought it would be woody, but no.

It’s hot fresh flavour was a great addition to this lunchtime potato salad with raw beetroot and Chinese cabbage thinnings.

I bought a julienne peeler recently and it’s perfect for carrots and radish but the beetroot was a bit too tricky and messy, so I just sliced that really thin. We’ve been enjoying carrots and pak choi in a couple of stir fries recently too, the Blue Dragon sauces make life easy. But as I’m mentioning brands, if you see these Itsu Bao buns for sale, buy them! They’re so delicious! Talking of delicious..Here’s the bean, carrot and courgette meal I made the other day with last years beans, a can of chopped tomatoes flavoured with smoked paprika, garlic and a little rose harissa.

Someone had cut back overgrown sections of the allotment hedge, so I thought I'd pick the rosehips if the birds aren't going to get to eat them - there are still plenty in the hedge for them. This is the recipe I intend to use to make rosehip jelly which I've never made before. The author of that recipe is quite funny and she is so right - the thorns are so nasty!! I'm a bit concerned that the irritable seed hairs get mentioned quite often in recipes, I hope my draining bag is fine enough to capture them...

The zinnia flowers are still creating a buzz - sorry 🤭 - with bees and hoverflies. I think this is a Common Carder bee (David, please correct me if I’m wrong!) and the hedge is alive with buzzing insects on the ivy flowers. We've also seen a dragon fly zipping about recently - such a huge insect but it never sits still for a photo.

So, you may be wondering, why the title song by the Sugababes? Well, Jamie dug up our single Desiree potato plant and …

Oh dear they're really not pretty and though a little scab on a baked spud can add to the flavour I wouldn't want to risk one of them! That’s what a dry Summer can give you. I just hope they taste okay once they are peeled and mashed. And here are the Sugababes.

Across the Universe

How amazing are the Yin Yang beans! The patterns are great. Unfortunately only three of my seeds germinated this year, so the beans I harvested this week are being saved to try again next year.

They’re also known as Orca beans. That is all the beans I got from the three dwarf plants; I was expecting more but either they aren’t as prolific as Speedy dwarf French beans that we usually grow or the hot weather had an impact.

The  Borlotti beans and a few Gigantes are a bit more colourful and are in the jar for eating over the next year. In fact, I still have some left from last year and will be using them in a meal this week.

These pods had all dried on the plants but there are plenty more which I’ll dry off in the polytunnel if rain threatens. I prefer to let beans and squashes ripen entirely on the vine, but last week we had a frost warning - I know! In mid-September! So, I picked most of the squashes that look ripe and stored them in the polytunnel.

That’s two Festival, two Sunshine, three Butternut, two Winter Celebration and two Spaghetti. You can see how lovely and sunny that day was and the night stayed clear too. The temperature in the zipped-up polytunnel plunged to 1.1°.  At the top of site some plants show signs of frost damage - did I mention? It's mid-September!

Talking of the top of site (actually the southern end) I mowed the central aisle yesterday and this is the view - with lines that <ahem> straight they may ask me not to do it again 🤭

Apart from that, the only jobs we’ve had are watering the polytunnel and pots, dead-heading - a never ending task, until the frost hits our plot - and harvesting. 

Lovely tasty sweetcorn is arriving and, as you can see courgettes haven’t quite stopped yet…

Those three courgettes were nice with carrot and cheese on top of Smokey beans (not home-grown). 

This orzo, marinated tofu, tomato and courgette was delicious, with chilli-oiled chard cooked like crispy seaweed. I even did some baking, well, an apple crumble with forayed cob nuts provided by Ivan and apples from Alfie.

And today, with an extra Bank Holiday Monday due to the Queen’s funeral, Jamie and I enjoyed a barbecue on the warmish-sunnyish allotment with occasional chats with Ivan and other visitors. The birds were busy, including a very noisy duck over the hedge, and the road was quiet so a very pleasant afternoon while it would appear most other people were watching the Queen’s state funeral.

The song title is a dubious association with Yin and Yang - Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts. And it’s a lovely Beatles song by Fiona Apple with a pleasing video, from the film Pleasantville.

Changes

During the week we had our first Pak Choi harvest, I thought it was quite tasty, we had it steamed with dauphinois potatoes and a Quorn fillet. And we harvested our first EVER melon! 

We knew the mangomel was ripe because the skin had turned yellow. And, as you can see, a bird (probably) had also decided it was ripe enough to sample. So the remaining growing fruit now has a protective cage round it.

It weighed over 1.6kg and served us for two breakfasts. It was so deliciously sweet, well worth growing. I wonder if it grew particularly well because of the heatwave and perhaps that’s also why we only got two fruits - apparently it can produce up to five.

Looking back at my blog from last year I was reminded of the carrot and beetroot fritters. So I picked the main ingredients in the morning and cooked them up in the evening. Unfortunately they’re shop-bought shallots.

It’s such a straightforward recipe. Saying that, I probably added a little too much water so it was more sticky than intended but the fritters are so tasty and served me for two dinners. I used the thinnings of Chinese cabbage in the salad.

Last week I commented on it being Autumn and it’s most obvious in the mornings, with mist/fog and condensation in windows. 

The hedgerow is full of berries.

The Love Lies Bleeding is getting redder. This is the biggest of the plants; it’s certainly taken advantage of the space on that patch!

The cucurbits are starting to succumb to mildew, so we’ve nearly (but not quite) reached the end of courgette season.

Temperatures have remained warm and we’ve had some significant rainfall, mostly at night. Early morning plot visits are more relaxed as we only need to water in the polytunnel, but (every silver lining) the rain is really bringing the weeds on well 😣

Talking of the polytunnel, we cleared most of the excess growth and new shoots from the tomato plants. We hope that will provide more light for a few more of those lovely looking Crimson Plum tomatoes to ripen and keep mildew at bay…

The Cleor pepper has lots of long peppers which we also need to turn red… waiting, waiting…

Allotment-time this weekend has mostly been about weeding, clearing and dead-heading but I did plant up some Crocosmia bulbs which fellow plotholder, Martine, put on the freebies shelf. I’ve put some in our flower plot and some on the wildlife plot. We sowed some radish in the potato bag that we emptied today - they’ll go into the polytunnel once the tomatoes are cleared. 

And here’s a photo of the ‘allotment cat’. He’s such a friendly chap, we all like it when he turns up - well, everyone I speak to does ☺️

The song title is provided by Will Young (I’ve used David Bowie before) and what a lot of changes; not just the season and the weather, but with the death of the Queen - I wonder how long before it sounds normal saying ‘King’ - not a personal impact on my life but certainly the loss of a constant. Boris Johnson is no longer our Prime Minister - thank goodness - but time will tell how much of a change Liz Truss offers. Changes are afoot…

Sunflower

Oh, it seems to be Autumn!

We've had some rain in the night and the sunshine was beautiful on the cobwebs early this morning. Actually, it's getting darker as the day progresses. The weekend was a mix of weather and the ground was perfect for getting our leeks planted up - well, Neal's leeks (thanks as always Neal!). 20 leeks, with plenty of room for hoeing in between.

I'm going to plant the garlic at the end of that patch, in front of the squash tunnel. I'm leaving the squashes on the plants until the necks dry off and the Honeyboat are finally beginning to produce a few fruits - I hope the weather stays reasonable so that they mature.

The brassica are a bit weird. We have two sprout plants and one has a problem, probably whitefly, but the other one has so far escaped damage.

And one of the three purple sprouting broccoli plants is decidedly weaker than the other two.

The single cavolo nero is small, but will hopefully produce enough leaves for a few meals.

I cleared a mass of overgrown plants from in front of our little pond on Plot7. Looks much better now  and the newly planted perennials should be a bit happier without being crowded out, but I'm sure the nigella and other plants have self-seeded everywhere and then there's the bindweed - ugh, what a horrible weed that is!

We had a salad last night which had potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, patty pan, carrot and spring onion from our plots. And these were the last of Iulia's plum tomatoes. I cooked them in garlic oil with grated horseradish, but it seems that cooking horseradish completely destroys the heat - not even a hint remained. I'll try again and grate the horseradish over the top after I've cooked the tomatoes.

I couldn't resist planting some horseradish in a pot, in case I decide it's worth growing. It's certainly hot when you nibble it raw, but it's a short-lived heat rather than like chilli so I quite like it.

That pot is in our 'nursery patch' behind the polytunnel. The hazel tree likes it there, as does this lovely fuchsia which was unhappy in the sunshine.

I was so pleased to finally get some reasonably decent shots of a hummingbird hawkmoth at the allotment on Saturday! Such a fascinating moth to watch and so nippy. I updated my Allotment Wildlife Blog.

And this morning we found that the little self-seeded sunflower had decided to open - what a cheery sight :-)

So this blogpost has moved from Autumn back to Summer, though it's raining outside and I now need to get back to work. Enjoy the ditty, provided by Vampire Weekend, though the video will make you dizzy!

Day of the Sunflowers

This is the veggie bake I made at the weekend - so pretty, but it took a long time to cook even though I’d thinly sliced the veg. The veg (potato, courgette and tomato on top of fried onions and garlic) was covered in a cheese sauce and baked.

The tomatoes were kindly given to us by fellow plotholder, Iulia. She gave us a bagful of different varieties, which was a real treat. She has said that I can dig some of her abundant horseradish. I saw a Nigella recipe with tomatoes so will have a go at that. When (when!) it rains, the horseradish smells so lovely but I don’t want the meal to be too spicy hot.

Some of those split tomatoes were boiled down with garlic and smoked paprika, which we had with gnocchi (and courgette) last night.

As you can tell, courgettes are still playing a major role in our diets! We thought the plant was dying back a couple of weeks ago but it (and the patty pan) have had a new lease of life. So... we made patty pan and carrot chutney at the weekend. It looks rather like marmalade, but I’m sure it’ll be tasty. It’s using our go-to recipe where we just change the veg for what we have available. We only made one and a half jars this year.

We had a most enjoyable HAHA picnic on Bank Holiday Monday. It’s so nice to sit and chat with our fellow plotholders. I made a colourful purple potato salad for the picnic and we’ve bean eating a few more of our super-sweet Lizzano cherry tomatoes and cucumbers.

And the prizes were awarded by Ted for the Plotholders Choice award (well done to Jenny) and the Tallest Sunflower (well done to Zoe).

Zoe’s sunflower measured a towering 3.51m! Somewhat surprisingly, the first and third tallest on site are both multi-headed sunflowers. They’ve made an impressive display around the site, so I’m sure we’ll run the competition again next year.

Here we are measuring Zoe’s earlier in the day. Jamie’s job was up the ladder (I realise he's not in the photo!). This year’s top two heights were taller than last year’s winner - which was 3.21m.

No ladder required for measuring ours the day before, which now seems a paltry 2.49m.

I bought some potted perennials at the market yesterday (Jacob’s ladder, Coreopsis, Leucanthemum and Scabiosa). I’ve planted them in front of the bench for a more permanent display. I cleared some of the terrible bindweed round the pond and a golden frog appeared to see what was going on.

That was the last day of my long weekend; it was a welcome break from work. Yesterday afternoon we dug an area on Plot3 for planting some of Neal’s leeks. It was quite exhausting, the ground was hard in places and just dust in others, but it looks better now and perhaps we’ll get a bit of rain ahead of the leeks going in at the weekend. 

I peeked under the netting at the Chinese cabbage and pak choi that I sowed at the beginning of the month. I’ve left the enviromesh on to stop it being nibbled so much. I need to thin the cabbage but the pak Choi is probably ok.

And we've been having a few of the thinned baby carrots. Some are really tiny and so tasty.

Jamie sowed some Winter lettuce in the raised bed and then we played with the bubble machine 🤭

I'm eating chard and beetroot with other bits and pieces for lunches. The mornings are still beautiful but the sun is rising later and setting earlier, Autumn is definitely in the air at times.

The song title is provided by Basement Jaxx.