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'm on my final lunchbreak of 2023 - breaking up for Christmas in a couple of hours!
It's not like it used to be - no driving home for Christmas (no, not that song) because I'm already home.
I just need to pack away my laptop and sit back down. With 3 days to go I must admit that I'm not feeling very Christmassy. Maybe it's the weather - it's been a very damp December so far and it's rather warm and windy today.
We've had a few December visits to the allotment - it's not very inviting, but we've pulled some great parsnips and we bought 3 tiny fruit trees - here's the Thompson & Morgan photo.
And here's the real thing 😆 I'm sure they'll be fine in a few months! They have buds already but they're waiting in the polytunnel.
The broad beans and garlic have sprouted which are welcome signs for next year. Yesterday marked the Winter Solstice so we're on our way to Spring now 😏
At each plot visit recently we've seen flocks of (probably) redwings - a regular Winter migrant. They don't stay still for long and have proved tricky to photograph.
Anyway, back to work (I think everyone else has already gone!). Have a Happy Christmas!
This jolly song is brought to you by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros!
It’s been a wet month, I’ve not been inclined to move very far and work has been keeping me very busy but yesterday we had a long walk in the chilly countryside. It had been a very frosty morning and the temperature remained close to zero, but we were dressed up warm and it felt ok in the sunshine.
We walked a 6-mile circuit to Chilton Foliat, which is a neighbouring village.
It was very beautiful and near the River Kennet much of the time. This was looking West from the Fairy Bridge. The river is swollen and very fast-flowing at the moment after all the rain.
Rather strange to see a lone cygnet but he was enjoying eating the watercress.
We saw some excellent clouds during the walk - I think these are cirrostratus.Edit: Turns out they're cirrocumulus clouds.
And this photo is showing a Sundog (like two small rainbows either side of the Sun) they occur in cold weather and under the right circumstances. This parhelion effect is produced by the Sun’s rays being diffracted through ice crystals and ‘diamond dust’, described by the Met Office here.
Part of the walk is up this hidden footpath which runs alongside that huge field. One of our previous plotholders has a dedicated bench along there, over-looking the fields surrounding Hungerford.
We’ve seen hares in that field before but yesterday the most interesting wildlife we saw was at the start of our walk - this little muntjac deer.
It was a very cold day, but so pleased that the Sun was shining to show off the Autumn colours in all their glory.
The allotment is looking far less picturesque, this was 2 weeks ago and today has been very dank.
We have had short plot visits each week and the broad beans have germinated. I pulled a parsnip, which had no canker, that’s a rare feat for us! I brought the squashes and parsley home to avoid the frost, but the parsnips should only improve with a bit of frosting.
I had two meals of this mushroom and chestnut casserole - so delicious! Mmm, and look at that roast parsnip - yum yum! And the other meal included a couple of the tiny pumpkins cut into slices and roasted.
I expect my next post will be in December and the Christmas lights are being switched on tonight in Hungerford. It has certainly felt Wintry this week, but definitely still looked like Autumn for our lovely walk.
Looks like an aerial photo of a desert landscape doesn’t it? Oh, just me? It’s been quite the opposite, so much rainfall over the last week. Our 50mm raingauge had over-flowed, but I appreciate that we’ve been lucky compared to some parts of the country which are still flooded as the ground is so saturated.
We had some lovely blue sky yesterday (Sunday). Some tiny showers threatened more rain, but the wind blew the clouds away and we had a pleasant couple of hours clearing the sweetcorn patch. If the weather stays mild the weeds will love that patch of bare soil! You can see how much the grass is growing and the Calendula are still providing spots of colour.
Most of the other flowers are just seedheads now, although the verbena bonariensis still have a purple tinge and the Nicotiana has a few flowers protected under the glass table.
This seems rather unexpected in November - we’re still eating our tomatoes! They eventually turned red after being at home for a few weeks and are so tasty providing bruschetta lunches. There's home-grown basil on there but the Spring Onions are shop-bought - we simply can't grow them without slugs demolishing them. I sowed 2 long rows this year, but not one was fit to eat 😞 Any ideas?
Anyway, as you can tell, there’s not really much going on. Which is why I was staring at a plank for much of the time.
But what a plank! The moss is certainly enjoying the decaying wood. There are at least 4 different species that I can see on there.
So, here are a few moss facts: moss is a type of bryophyte (along with liverworts and hornworts) and there are over 1000 species in Britain and Ireland! The British Bryological Society (formerly known as The Moss Exchange Club) is celebrating its 100th Anniversary this year.
Mosses can be found almost anywhere in the World, from deserts to the arctic but Britain's warm-ish, wet (getting wetter) climate is perfect for lots of species. This is the only one that I think I can recognise and name at the moment - Grymmia Pulvinata. The little things that look like flower buds, setae, turning back into the pincushion are the defining feature. Cute.
So that provided the song title - sung by The Charlatans. Sing along - marvellous.
It’s that time of year again Halloweeeeen, ooh spooky 👻
Our mini pumpkin was included in the meal, decorated our dinner table and Jamie even managed to carve one, but it was a bit fiddly.
The scary monster is a yellow dung fly - we’ve had another manure delivery to site. Hooray! We had a 10 tonne delivery and nearly half had been carted off to plots by the end of the weekend - we had a few barrow loads.
Behind the manure are our broad beans Aquadulce Claudia which we sowed at the weekend. As usual, they’re protected by plastic bottle cloches and netting. The netting doesn’t protect from everything though 🙄
Our little visitor is back to his friendly self and he joined us in the polytunnel during a sharp shower.
The showers were torrential at the weekend but it was reasonably warm and very pleasant when the Sun came out. We noticed that that the wasps were making the most of Ivan’s grapes, which have sadly gone to waste this year.
They were definitely drunk on them. All binging together - we’ve all been there 😀
It seems that we’re well into Autumn now - November today, unbelievable! The leaves finally changed colour. This is a Creeping cinquefoil leaf, so pretty throughout the year, but it does take over.
Even my little hazel tree looked autumnal.
The pot has some excellent moss forming the ‘forest floor’ for the little tree.
But Storm Ciaran is clearing the remaining leaves off the trees today. I have a day off work, so we’ll go up the plot and batten down the hatches later. First I’m having a toasted cheese and beetroot sandwich for lunch. I’ve always liked cheese and beetroot together, but toasted is even better - totally delicious! Talking of delicious, I made this pumpkin and bean curry the other night - mmm, coconut tastiness but unfortunately I didn’t cook the beans for long enough; even though they’d been soaked overnight they would have needed cooking for 30mins I think, not the 15mins I gave them - they were rather hard still.
I had a bit of good news recently - I wrote a poem (I know! Me!?) and WON a £50 voucher from Nomads Clothing. I love their clothes so I was very pleased 😊 Here’s the poem and the coat it’s written about.
We’ve had lots of rain (though thank goodness, nothing like the catastrophic deluge that Storm Babet brought down on some parts of the UK) and a couple of frosts which have turned the plot into the usual Autumn coloured scene. I had two visits to the plot yesterday. The first just to collect some of the mini pumpkins for the nursery school and to get some for my sister. I gave her some beetroot and parsley too.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that the parsley plants had survived the frost but I don't think they'll last much longer. I had 5 plants all taken from one Tescos parsley plant - definitely worth splitting and planting out and easier than sowing seeds. Even the one that the slugs ate down to one stem back in May recovered to produce a bushy plant.
The Love lies bleeding has been properly frost-scorched, as has the courgette (small cheer).
The beans from the tunnel really need clearing, but there are a few flowers left unscathed lower down on the Spanish Flag.
Yesterday we were concentrating on clearing the tomatoes and aubergine from the actual polytunnel. The robin flew in there in the morning because I dared to visit the plot with no mealworms for him - he was quite miffed!
I didn't visit that early but the Sun was so low it was casting a beautiful light over the site.
The temperature in the polytunnel had fallen to 3.4° overnight but it felt reasonably warm in the sunshine and with my thick jumper on. The scabious stellata seedheads are still looking interesting.
The second trug of the day after Jamie and I spent the afternoon chatting and clearing is for me. I’m making a leek, carrot and parsley soup for lunches. And the pumpkins are going to be in a version of this bean and pumpkin curry; I'm going to use some of my dried borlotti beans.
The carrots are crazy; mostly multi-legged and some monstrous ones! And there are snails absolutely everywhere - loads of tiny baby ones looking for somewhere to over-Winter and then come out in Spring to eat all our seedlings 😖
