Roast veggies

Had roast veggies last night - with lovely toasty buttered bread. Mmmm, so delicious. I didn't think I was going to finish it all but I managed to force it down :-)

This is a before photo - didn't get a chance to photograph it after it was cooked as I just needed to eat it! It's beetroot, parsnip, courgette, carrot, onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme - only the garlic and olive oil weren't grown by us. Nice.

Royal British Legion Horticultural Show

Hey! This is my 200th post!
For some of the time on the plot yesterday I was trying to find a funny-shaped vegetable for the Hungerford Royal British Legion horticultural show. Unfortunately, although the carrots I pulled didn't actually look like carrots - they were the original 'Early Nantes' and had all split - they weren't actually funny, so I couldn't enter that category.

The only thing I managed to enter from the plot was a runner bean that was as long as my forearm - but I got pipped to first place by Chris' which was about 1cm longer. Never mind :-) I got some 1st, 2nd and 3rd places for some of my photos.
These are my photos that got 1st place:



"Close-up" category

"Winter" category

"Any wildlife" category

There wasn't a very good turnout for the event which we're going to try to encourage allotment-holders to join in with next year. There were a few of us there from Marsh Lane and the competition between us made it quite fun.

Flowers and wildlife

We had a bit of time on the allotment today but although Jamie was digging I was just faffing about (as is so often the case!).


Aster - such a pretty colour!

I was, of course, dead-heading and weeding. We were a bit worried by the look of our parsnips so pulled one with the grottiest looking leaves, it was looooonng and looks ok so will be having that in tomorrow's dinner.
I managed to snap a Peacock butterfly - got to be one of my faves and this is the first one this year that was willing to sit still for me.

Peacock butterfly

I also took some photos of bumblebees as there are a lot around at the moment - we could have done with a few more at the beginning of the season - they've not got much to work on at this time of year.


Bumblebees love the marigolds

I also found this little chap - it's a common green shield bug nymph. According to this amazing website it shouldn't cause us any problems on the allotment - just seemed happy hanging round the raspberry bush.


Palomena prasina Common Green Shieldbug

Then we took this trug of goodies home with us.

More pickling and picking

Jamie pickled the silverskin onions this morning in 25g of Demerara sugar dissolved in 350ml of Aspall Classic white wine vinegar.

Later we visited the plot. We were the only ones there, it's a bit of a dull day with rain threatening.
We picked salad for lunches and today had those lovely tomatoes and silverskin onions for lunch on bruschetta - such a tasty snack. We got 3 cucumbers - I think one of them will be given away at work, along with one of the courgettes.

The cabbage should serve us for at least two meals. The beets are from the raised bed and were pickled in sweetened red wine vinegar when we got home. Luckily there are a few cut-offs which can be added to my salad tomorrow!

Planes, plans and potatoes

We spent a few hours working on the plot this afternoon, it actually got pretty warm. There were lots of fellow plot-holders on site today too so there were plenty of reasons for breaks :-)
We had our own air show while we were on the site. Didn't get any photos but it was great to see the red arrows, 2 spitfires and a hercules. It seems they were flying back from an airshow near Cambridge.

Jamie finished digging out the grass on Plot8. We've decided that we'll put our strawberry bed in there, near the rhubarb - straight across where we were going to move the seating. So the bench can (probably) stay where it is - unless we definitely get another (at least) 4 years on the site in which case I want a pond and then the bench will need to be near that - but that can be decided on next year...

Anyway, where was I? So, the strawberries... we only want 8 plants as we know Geoff's did brilliantly this year and grew big bushy plants which will fill the space we've planned for them. I potted 8 of Geoff's runners - they're still attached to his plants and secured with wire until they've rooted.

We're going to plant them like Geoff's done - on that weed suppressant that you can see in the picture above.

I cut off the tops of the original broad bean plants which have succombed badly to chocolate spot - we leave the roots in the ground to add nutrients to the soil - mainly nitrogen. There's also a chance that we may get a further crop from them, but it's a bit late now really.
We got a whole bagful of dead-heads from the calendula! And riddled a bagful of lovely compost from our green bin which is now half-full of all the broad bean tops - we'll add some cardboard to that tomorrow.

Jamie found these two snails mating. Didn't have the heart to split them up but sent them to do their love-making elsewhere!
We pulled some potatoes, one of each plant:

• Orla - top left. This was one of the few Orla plants which actually survived this year. Disappointing though as there were only 3 reasonable tubers.
• Kestrel - top right. This had quite a few tubers, including a giant but one of the tubers had either slug damage or blight on it. A couple have deep ridges where they've grown against stones, but the potato should be alright for cooking.
• Chopin - bottom. Produced 7 even-sized tubers. The chopins have definitely been my favourites this year. There are a few small holes in some of them but generally they come out of the ground looking lovely and smooth with few blemishes.

We also got some more french beans and the last few broad beans from the original plants - not sure if they'll be edible.