Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention.
Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire.
A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me.
From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
I remembered we have cucumber moulds, so the continuous supply of Baby cucumbers are now looking different.
As long as they’re sealed in a plastic bag in the fridge they are still perfect after 3 days. I’ve seen some tasty recipes for them, but we’ve mostly been having them in sandwiches or with hummus dips. Jamie has made this soured cream salad with added tomatoes and salad onions a couple of times which we’ve enjoyed.
The big news this week is, of course, the weather. After the super extreme heat it actually rained - proper rain, with thunder and lightning two evenings in a row! The plots looked much healthier as a result.
On Tuesday morning we were greeted on site by a ‘flight’ of swallows (I prefer the collective noun ‘gulp’ actually) on the overhead cables and it was marvellous when they all swooped off together. And there was also a flock (a ‘charm’) of goldfinches. It was a beautiful morning actually, shame I only had an hour. The birds were clearly relieved that the rain had arrived and the extreme heat had past (thought it was still very warm).
Tuesday evening we had the most torrential downpour. We opened the windows to enjoy that welcome sound and smell.
The next morning the rain gauge showed it to have been a proper drenching - 25mm in one night.
Too late for the French beans (right) which seem to have gone over very quickly but the runners (left) are still producing flowers at the top and the borlotti/gigantes wigwam (centre) is looking bushy and healthy.
I needn’t have fretted last week. As Flighty pointed out, the cob tassels will soon arrive after the flowers start providing the pollen. And here they come on the Lark sweetcorn.
And look! The Lizzano outdoor tomato has given it’s first fruits - what a feast 😁 Well, it’s quality not quantity that counts! And you can see, there should soon be more…
Trugs are colourful at the moment with the chard and more of the Salad Blue potatoes.
Also a Nicola potato and I podded those French beans to have with orzo (a pasta, which rather seemed like slippery rice on eating), What the Cluck and a sun-dried tomato pasta sauce.
Last night I used chard to make a sort of colcannon with the Nicola potatoes. It was very tasty, but I think I should have made sure there was less water in the chard before mixing with the spuds. Although it wasn’t sloppy, it didn’t quite mash properly. It’s served with What the Cluck and garlicky-shallots.
Today it’s feeding day for the plot, though it’s certainly beginning to feel a bit Autumnal which is sad. It’s still a lovely temperature and no rain expected today. Even the clouds in the photo below, from yesterday, didn’t produce rain. It’s probably just because we’ve got used to blue skies and sweltering heat. But there are plenty more flowers and veg on their way, lots of deadheading to do and surely more cucumbers and courgettes to pick!
Aah, this song will pretty much sum up today I think. And what a great song by the Small Faces! Can’t believe I haven’t used it before. For the rest of today, I shall be mostly speaking in cock-nay 😆
I must remember to sow lobelia into modules next year. It’ll make it far easier to pot them on. Zinnia seem to be the flower of the moment. And ours are appearing. They’re multi-coloured so some of the orange flowers are zinnia rather than marigolds.
I’m seeing them everywhere, but look closer and they’re even more fab. No wonder the bees were enjoying them today.
I’m really happy with the Love Lies Bleeding (Amaranthus Caudatus). There are 4 plants around our plots. This one on Plot7 is the most advanced and this lovely long tassel has started to turn the deeper red. Such an amazing plant from the tiniest of seeds. The birds will apparently enjoy those seeds in the Autumn and I may well try some myself, as explained here by the Laidback Gardener’s blog. I hope some will set seed to re-grow next year.
The harvests are continuing and are not very varied, but a bit of creativity means that meals don’t need to be boring. That said, I am missing the kitchen at work where I used to leave all the surplus for my colleagues to take home. I must admit that we left a large patty pan and over-grown courgette on the spares shelf at the allotment and I was pleased to see that someone actually wanted them! I’m also very pleased that the chalk addition to the patty pan watering has largely resolved the blossom end rot problem.
This Rose Harissa dish with sticky rice was tasty though a bit too spicy for my taste (I got carried away with adding the harissa paste!)
The only flavouring in this stuffing, with added pine nuts, was the garlic, shallots and garlic oil. We had this in stuffed courgettes, with some left over for lunch the next day.
This weekend has been so sweltering that cold salads have been best for lunches.
The temperature has reached 33° in the shade but it's been lovely sitting under the sun umbrella with a deskfan run on a Jackery power station, which we’ve bought for heating the polytunnel in Winter really!
The weather is what everyone is talking about. We even had to postpone our HAHA picnic; not due to rain, but because we’re in the amber extreme heat warning area.
It’s just beginning to cloud over - watch the clouds.
It’s still sweltering and some of us aren’t convinced that the rain/thunderstorms will hit Hungerford over the next few days, but the temperatures are forecast to drop to a more average 23°. Too late for our pumpkin, which has gone into emergency mode and decided to skip a couple of months.
The other squashes don’t seem to have had the same idea, so hopefully more than one fruit per plant, though the ‘tunnel’ hasn’t quite developed this year.
My Florence fennel has sadly all gone to seed. It’s just not been possible to keep it wet enough.
At last the sweetcorn has developed tassels but no cobs are emerging yet, which seems rather slow. We’ll see…
Summing up the last week: Work, water, harvest, deadhead, work, water, eat, sleep and repeat. And, I must say how much I like it 😊 Song title provided by Riton.
It’s here! The new drone video of the site, courtesy of Colin de Fraine.
I hope you agree that the plots are looking amazing from all the different angles. How dry it is though! Still no rain, thank goodness for the borehole and generator to pump our water.
From Monday it’s National Allotment Week and we’re having a vote for the Plotholders Choice Award for the favourite plot. I hope lots of people join in and next Sunday we’re having a bring-your-own picnic for the prize-giving. We’re not quite ready for an open day with Covid cases still high, so this is the next best thing - also takes less organisation!
We haven’t had any rain all week and aren’t expecting any at least till Friday - hope it stays dry on Sunday for the picnic!
The dry earth makes digging the potatoes easy and they emerge clean, with no slug damage so far - it makes a nice change. These are Nicola potatoes. The tubers are mostly quite small. They’re tasty hot or cold. We’ve had them boiled, as roasted wedges and mashed.
I had the carrot, fennel and spring onion with mayonnaise in a roll for lunch - yum yum. Only one Florence fennel looks like it may bulb up quite big - nothing like you see in shops though. They are mostly going to seed but are still good as a flavouring.
I enjoyed the last of the pulled Salad Blue potatoes with French beans and these smoky not-chicken bites. They were a tasty snack and added a bit of extra protein to this colourful little lunch.
Green beans, whether runners or French beans, are well and truly on the menu now. The French beans are Blue Lake climbing French beans. And the cucumbers are just beginning to join most lunches.
Mmmm, cheese and cucumber sandwiches… we just bought some fancy cheddar cheeses from the monthly Hungerford Food market along with some more garlic oil. I also couldn’t resist buying a couple of pots on the plant stall, including a salvia for the flower patch by our bench. Talking of which, that’s where I’m going now.
It’s colourful-meal-time! No colour enhancement necessary for Salad Blue potatoes (they’re actually a maincrop). Fabulous looking and great flavour.
The one Salad Blue plant that we pulled provided enough potatoes for several meals and there are still a few little ones left.
These veggies were fried in chilli oil and included garlic so was totally delicious though only included home-grown potatoes, garlic and courgette. Our tomato plants are only just producing tiny fruits on the plants in the polytunnel and outside.
As more fresh veg becomes available I’m happy to eat very simple fair. Garlic and soy sauce was all that lovely veg needed for this rice dish.
Unfortunately our patty pan have started to develop Blossom End Rot - a result of too much nitrogen. I’ve removed the dodgy fruits and put chalk pellets in the watering bottle so hopefully subsequent fruits won’t be affected. There are loads of fruits developing.
The Sunshine, Butternut and Spaghetti squash plants have started to produce small fruits and the butternut in particular is starting to climb. Not as prolific as last year’s tromboncino,but hopefully more tasty!
We still haven’t had any rain so we’re watering daily. It has continued to be lovely and warm. Look how dry the earth is though! This is where we cut the potato haulms off as the foliage was dying off on this row of Nicola spuds. They’re a second early variety so it’s fine to stop them growing at this stage.
I’m thinking of sowing some Chinese leaf and Pak Choi where I cleared the mangetout yesterday. The mangetout had gone to seed during the hot weather and we considered harvesting them as peas but they were incubating pea moth, so we decided to compost them instead!
The brassica cage on Plot3 has 2 x Brussels sprouts, 3 x Purple sprouting broccoli and 1 x Cavolo Nero. They all look rather weak, especially as other plotholders are already harvesting their Cavolo Nero!
I’ve taken so long writing this that it’s now rained! So we’re off to see a wet plot for a welcome change. Need to be back in time for England versus Germany in the Women’s EUROS FINAL this evening! So exciting! Annoyingly we didn’t put the flag on the plot in time for the first match but we’re too superstitious to put it up now 🙄, hence the song title provided by Stevie Wonder!
And, because this is such a colourful post I have shared it with Dave's Harvest Monday blog, which I usually miss but enjoy reading.
Today we’re hoping to have another drone video filmed over the site by Colin. Thank goodness the wind has died down from the blustery days we’ve just had, would be nice if the sun shone a bit too. This is the film he produced 8 years ago, in April 2014.
The site is looking much more loved now, which I hope will be apparent from the air. It’s just a shame the ground and grass is so parched at present.
I pulled one of the Salad Blue potato plants yesterday. A good number of tubers and they’re certainly blue!
We finished off our first harvest of Nicola potatoes with roasted veg and halloumi last night. The halloumi is on fried courgette slabs (thick slices).
That meal and the cold roasted veg that I had for lunch turned out much better than the large stuffed patty pan I cooked the other day. The patty pan refused to cook through and I had even boiled the whole thing for 15 minutes prior to stuffing. I had to eat round all the hard bits which doesn’t make for an enjoyable meal.
My sister came to visit us on the plot at the weekend. It was lovely chatting in the warmth and showing her what’s growing and what’s not. Her zinnias at home are in flower but ours seem to be rather slow. However, this comparison from 4 weeks previous shows how far they’ve come on though not as much as the pot marigolds.
The chrysanthemum at the back are shorter than I thought they’d be, but they’re extremely pretty up close.
This River Lily on the wildlife bog garden (not so boggy at the moment) is rather beautiful too. While I was doing a bit of weeding there a small frog (about 2cm) bounced in front of me. I wonder if that is one of our home-grown ones.
Our pumpkin plant has grown one pumpkin, it’s already football-sized (“Come on England!” 🏴) but the plant seems to be stopping any other fruits from growing; they drop off very early. We think it may be due to the weather, or perhaps we’re going to have one GIANT pumpkin!
I attempted to plait my garlic, but couldn’t do it, so I have a knot of garlic instead - that’s fine 🙂 and it’s already been used in most of the meals I’ve mentioned.
The song title, provided by Kissing The Pink (loved this song) is obviously about the 2014 footage, which I’ll just watch again ☺️
