Lettuce Soup...hmmm

Yesterday was cloudy! And not so sweltering. We went for a lovely walk along part of the Wayfarers Walk; from Combe Gibbet to Buttermere near Shalbourne. There were so many butterflies - mostly meadow browns, tortoiseshells and peacocks flitting along the ancient chalky path ahead of us. Just beautiful.

In the evening we popped up the plot to pick some lettuce to make lettuce soup. I added an onion, veg stock and garlic. It wasn't that tasty but with some marmite added it was ok - probably won't bother again though!

Today we just had another quick visit to pick some Orla potatoes and courgettes. The potatoes are a bit slug damaged - Jamie's really wishing he had bought the nematodes we talked about last year.  I'm making a layered bake thing with potatoes, onions, Quorn pepperoni slices with a pre-fried cheesy courgette topping.

Our peppers are growing well but not going red yet. Well, perhaps they're timed to be ready with the tomatoes...

 

Heatwave - it's official!

Southern England has just moved into Level 3 Amber alert heatwave, according to the Met Office. This is because we've exceeded the threshold temperature of 30° by day and 15° overnight for at least 2 days - feels like 14 days to us!

The courgettes are making the most of all the watering we're doing - I had to put 2 big ones on the shares table today. We picked some more strawberries and I got a handful of mangetout - Malcolm provided a few more so that I've enough for my dinner tonight.

We've found more evidence of dust baths and today I found feathers - pretty sure these are pheasant feathers.

Talking of birds - take a look at the wildlife blog entry for today! Here's a teaser...the video is gruesome...



First Garlic

Another scorcher so just a couple of hours on the plot this afternoon. We walked there via Freemans Marsh and saw this lovely family of swans on the River Dun.

Whilst on the allotment we pulled our first garlic. It's still a bit green but we just had it with courgette,  tomatoes and peppers topped with cheese and pine nuts - delish!

The peppers and toms were shop-bought but we did eat our first red tomato yesterday. It didn't last long enough for a photo :-)

 

Pretty Clouds and Pretty Plants!

More sunshine and extreme temperatures over the last couple of days. It's so exhausting to move! Thank goodness for annual leave. The wildlife blog has been updated as there's so much more activity at the moment - nature seems pretty happy with the heat.

Beautiful Cirrus cloud formations on Monday when we were having a BBQ.
The asparagus pea on the HAHA plot has had a few flowers for a while and it's produced its first pod now. It's tiny at the moment; you're meant to eat them whole and raw but we're sure it should get a bit bigger first. The flowers are very pretty.

The clouds produced a nice effect with the sun - the photo doesn't quite do it justice. The evenings are warm and nights are staying in the high-teens.

 

Salad and Accent Potatoes for Dinner

Another boiling hot day meant an early morning visit, for watering the HAHA plot and Neal's plot (while he's on his hols) and then a late afternoon visit for watering our plots. It was beginning to get a bit cloudy in the afternoon but still sweltering and gorgeous!

We picked for our dinner - the first of our carrots - very skinny at the moment and super-sweet. Perfect for salad. The potato plant we pulled is Accent. Extremely tasty potatoes, but again not many tubers - though enough to cover a dinner and a lunch, so not too bad. The Atlantic turnips are delicious - they're the ones that are meant to taste of melon. We don't cook them, just have them sliced; they're peppery and so fresh tasting. Lovely.