In A Moment

Hands up who else was flagging like this yesterday!

Sagging Patty Pan plant

“When leaves show their undersides, be very sure rain betides” says the Farmer’s Almanac. Well, the rain reached Swindon but missed Hungerford, so I think it was wishful thinking for the beans, or perhaps they wanted us to do some more watering. 

Watering just isn’t the same as rainfall, so we had to water twice on the hottest day in Britain EVER. Such hard work 🤭 

The temperature in the shade on the allotment was 37° But look at the polytunnel temperature - Ugh! Didn’t stay in there long.

On Monday we got to the allotment for sunrise (05:10am). It felt really cold at 8° but it’s always interesting to see the site waking up and to see how much dew forms on the plants. The magpie family were flying about like they were playing in the squash tunnel and then we saw 3 squirrels frolicking. Perhaps they were dashing about to warm up, as I was.

The sun reached the top of site first.

Jamie took the haulms off one potato plant which had died back - just one Nicola out of the row. We firkled to see how the tubers were doing - no sign of blight, so perhaps the plant just died due to lack of water. Anyway, the potatoes were lovely.

That courgette was one of Neal’s. We had a larger one than that another day and I stuffed it with shallots, garlic, baby carrots and cheese. Really delicious.

They weren’t home-grown shallots, though I have pulled ours now. Not a very impressive haul again this year.

On one of the less-hot days I sowed my seed paper that my clever cousin Jen made - I’m making sure I keep the pot well-watered and look forward to seeing what appears.

Talking of emerging, I found this shiny golden chrysalis on a lettuce. I think it may be a small tortoiseshell. 

Rain is threatening again, but I wonder if it’ll actually fall today. We’re back to our average temperature for now which is rather a relief but I have enjoyed the blue skies.

It’s raining!! The song is provided by The Stereophonics. Good video but I don’t like the thought of crunching sand in that bread. 😣

I’m Free

I have more than a week off work - Yippee! And the weather is good - Hooray! 

Actually the weather has been beautiful continuously since my last post. The photo above was from last Sunday when the clouds put on a marvellous display throughout the day. And look at these beauties.

We spent most of the weekend on the plot, but needed the shade of the brolly at times. The daily watering continues.

Our one gladioli 

We spent much of the time potting up flower troughs and pots of begonia, lobelia and fuchsia - some of these will go on our shady doorstep, but we’ll let them enjoy a bit of sunshine for a while. Talking of flowers, our beans (runners, borlotti, French and Gigantes) are all on their way.

The Gigantes is winning (of course it’s a race) and there’s only one plant so I hope it produces a lot of beans!

The race is also on in the squash tunnel. The Butternut is definitely winning. In fact, some of the plants look more like bush varieties, but I hope that isn’t the case… Look how dry it gets between watering, but we have the bottle waterers so the roots are reaching water and the plants should be fine when there’s a bit more foliage.

A lesson learned this year: don’t write labels with stupid pink pen! They’ve all faded so I need to re-do them, or just wait and see what develops - Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

Ivan let me pick some of his blackcurrants so I made a sauce with added lavender. It was so delicious on ice cream or vanilla soya yogurt and look how pretty it was pre-cooking.

The broad beans are over now. I had the last, rather gnarly, ones fried into ‘falafel’ the other night. They were very tasty made of broad beans, mangetout, onion, garlic, cumin - all ground together and fried. I couldn’t get them to hold together so fried them in metal pastry cutters. I had them with a grain mix and a tiny courgette and tiny patty pan. And, I successfully microwaved a couple of beets ☺️ 

Neal gave us beets, turnip and lettuce yesterday. It made for a tasty lunch. The thinly-sliced raw turnip was nicely peppery. I had the remainder boiled with dinner, very tasty but no longer peppery. I must grow some again next year.

The wildlife plot is doing its job attracting pollinators. The bumblebees love the evening primrose flowers.

They also spend ages on the teasel flowers - the plants are over 8ft now!

This mallow is stunning, but doesn’t seem to attract as much wildlife as I thought it would. I’ll keep an eye on it over the next week as there are loads of butterflies about now.

So that’s me caught up before the holiday-on-the-plot begins. Great song by The Soup Dragons

Hot Hot Hot

 

Finally got round to filtering the chive flowers from the vinegar. It’s so pretty and the chive flavouring is a lovely addition to chips or a salad. I’m thinking I may make some lavender vinegar, though I’m not sure that would work on chips…

Lettuce is now joining the harvests. The beetroots are the perfect ‘golfball-size’ that I’ve read about. I thought I’d try microwaving them rather than using the hob or oven for an hour. I’m no cook or much of a microwave user, but I can confirm that 7 minutes for two freshly picked small beets is much too long. I took the lid off to find two deflated splodges! I’ll try again… 

I did make a delicious gooseberry crumble though; gooseberries courtesy of Ivan. It served for breakfasts and desserts for much of the week. Ivan also gave me some redcurrants which are so beautiful and made into a sauce provide a perfect topping for chocolate ice cream. Yum.

We got a lot done on the allotment last weekend. I sowed another row of Salad Onions and Chinese Dragon radish - 5 days on and the radish are already up. Jamie potted up the pepper in the polytunnel and I planted the two final squashes in the tunnel - Winter Celebration. The melon and pumpkin are released and are heading off sideways.

Mangomel Melon

The cucumbers are planted in their pots, they’re very small plants at the moment but hopefully will be as prolific as they usually are quite soon.

I pulled all the garlic, but the bulbs are a bit smaller than usual. Lucky there are plenty of them, now drying in the sun on an old saucepan stand.

We did get some rain, but not enough so have been watering every morning. It’s taking us more than an hour to water everything now so need to start getting up a bit earlier, or starting work later…

Nice to see these early morning altocumulus clouds and seeing our buddleia there reminds me that I saw my first ever Hummingbird Hawkmoth on there in the week - what an amazing little moth! Not a great photo, but it was so speedy.

Anyway, that was all last week. I’m looking forward to a hot, hot, hot weekend though am rather disappointed that the blue sky has turned grey in the last hour! Song title provided by Arrow. Have a lovely weekend all.

First of the Year

The last couple of weeks have been mostly warm, with much less rain than was threatened so we had to water every day. And there have been really windy days with sun-cloud-sun. Stupid weather doesn’t know what month it is!

I like this photo of a mallow flower on the wildlife plot, with its own little wildlife visitor. Talking of wildlife, I’ve uncovered two toads over the last few days. No wonder this one looks so fat with all the slugs that are emerging.

There’s evidence of a mole on Plot3, but it’s just circled the pumpkin for some reason. The young plant is being protected from slugs and wind damage, but we’ll have to release it to the elements soon.

The Wildlife plot has another not-so-wild visitor these days! Not very wildlife-friendly is it 🤭

Here’s Plot7 looking good after a shower, so much more effective than watering but the sun and wind soon dried the soil out. I’ve been weeding and thinning between the beetroots and the Florence fennel on that quarter. 

The thinnings make a good addition to salads and I’ve even had the first few small beets chopped up raw in a salad. I need to sow some more of the Chinese Dragon radish as the first sowing are just beginning to go a bit woody and going to seed.

The harvests are fairly meagre but it’s so nice to be eating fresh-picked again. Most of the meals involve broad beans and a handful of mangetout from every plot-visit.

I’ve really taken to the early-morning plot visits. I work from 7am for an hour then have an hour on the plot before working for the rest of the day. It feels less rushed than lunchtime visits and it’s so often sunnier than the rest of the day. Just look at that beautiful sky!

That’s our potato quarter. The salad blue have lovely flowers.

Of course, not every morning visit is sunny…but things still need watering even if we are in raincoats 🤭

We’ve finally planted up our Crimson Plum tomatoes in the polytunnel- look how pathetic they are! Hope they grow quickly before blight strikes, though they are meant to be blight resistant..

And our Lizzano tomato is planted outside on Plot3 and the two Brussels sprout seedlings are in the cage - well-protected by slug pellets. The black-covered area is where our cucumbers will go, in pots.

A couple more meals on the menu this week. First a lovely salad for lunch with lovage leaves adding a delicious celery-flavour topping and Squeaky Bean pastrami-style slices.

And for dinner, I added rice to this tasty mix including What the Cluck chicken-style pieces fried in chilli and garlic oil. It’s so easy being vegetarian these days, even Hungerford sells these meat-alternatives.

And that pan contains our first courgette of the year - it was tiny and very tasty. It’s the first one that’s actually matured rather than dropping off. Plotholder, David, gave the plant to us and it’s growing in a tub. And that is why I chose this song title by Skrillex.

Sweet Harmony

What a month June has been. In the last week we’ve had beautiful blue skies and high temperatures (~30° on Friday) but night-time temperatures still fell to 3.4°! And now we’ve finally had some welcome rain. What a great growing-month.

So happy to have teasels on the wildlife plot

We had a couple of early morning visits to the plot in the week, to water and enjoy the sights and sounds of the waking allotment. So beautiful, but I only had an hour before returning home to start work 😔. A benefit of a morning visits is picking fresh veg to have for lunch. That scrummy salad included broad beans, radish and mangetout.

Other days we’ve had lunchtime plot visits. Aah, working from home definitely has benefits, but I have my fifth(!) COVID vaccination at the end of month so maybe things will change… we’ll see.

Those are some of the flower seedlings that I potted on a couple of weeks ago including lobelia, zinnia and love lies bleeding. In fact I planted some of them out yesterday and their roots had grown well in 2 weeks. I’m concerned for the zinnia as slugs apparently love the seedlings 😖 Will discover later whether they survived their first rainy night in the wild…

Okay, I agree, it doesn’t look much at the moment but I’m hoping that will be a riot of colour in front of our bench quite soon.. If you want colour you have to visit the wildlife plot which is looking lovely.

I’m pleased to say that the squash tunnel is now mostly planted: 2 x Honeyboat, 2 x Festival, 2 x Sunshine  and, thanks to plot-neighbour Kate, 1 x Butternut and 1 x Spaghetti.

I’ve left positions for the 2 x Winter Celebration squashes which have only just germinated, about 10 days after the other varieties. It seems that they may prefer the warmer temperatures.

The climbing beans (French, borlotti, runners and one Gigantes) are, well, climbing and yesterday I planted out the three Yin Yang dwarf French beans that managed to germinate. The mangetout have been providing small harvests for me, if they make it home, and I’ve been enjoying the Chinese Dragon radish. They’re peppery and crisp and, as you can see, much better than ‘normal’ radish.

The ‘normal’ radish have all been resigned to the compost bin as they’ve gone to seed - like they inevitably do. I don’t think I’ll bother in future; I’ll stick with the Chinese varieties.

Yesterday was a HAHA workday. We cleared the site of rubbish and surplus ‘junk’ followed by cake and a cuppa.

Which reminds me that I haven’t mentioned the HAHA stall at the jubilee picnic. I wasn’t interested in the party, but when I went along to help set-up I couldn’t resist staying to help with the stall. We made over £60 and gained three new members on the waiting list, so it was very worthwhile. Our site is currently full again, which is great.

And our plots are almost full too! We’ve planted 15 Lark sweetcorn, chard, a love lies bleeding and 2 sunflowers on the last quarter of Plot7.

So it’s been a busy month so far. I hope we get outside in some sunshine today so I’d better get off my butt!

We’ve been watching TOTP from the 1990s on BBC4, which is why the song is provided by Beloved and it refers to the DELICIOUS pairing of rhubarb and strawberries - mmmmm, that smell ❤️