4.5mm of rain

That was quite a lot of rain in one night but it didn't make much difference to the earth at Marsh Lane - hopefully the veggie roots are enjoying the benefits.

It was another humid day and very hot whenever the clouds cleared. We had a couple of visits to the plot, one with my sister, Joanne and nephew, George.

This is one of our little Rocky cucumber plants - we're growing one over this mesh (an old fireguard) in the hope that the little cucumbers will hang through. There are lots of cucumbers appearing but we're still only supplying Floridor Yellow courgettes for the spares table at the moment - Joanne asked why my courgettes had grown into bubbles :-)

We left having picked some salad to have for lunch, along with potato salad made with some of the International Kidneys we pulled yesterday. That's our first red spring onions Apache and some of the lovely little turnips which are so good raw.

I've bought a new camera; an Olympus SZ-31MR compact. It's not that fancy; it's the update to my previous one which I loved so much but the zoom went wrong - it gets rather abused by being taken to the plot in all weathers. I love the super macro option, but it needs a bit of getting used to as it's slightly different. Here's one of my first pics:

I'm pleased so far - look at the detail in the hairs!

 

Rain!

We went to the site in the morning and did a bit of labelling on the HAHA Plot. As it's meant to be 'unusual veg' we thought it would be sensible to let people know exactly what is growing there. The squashes are doing well, as are the asparagus peas but I don't think the globe artichoke liked being transplanted - it doesn't seem to have grown at all since the move..

It was so humid we couldn't do anything energetic and only did a bit of watering because we have the promise of rain later.
I could have done the butterfly count today,  though it wouldn't be a particularly average day (see wildlife blog)!
 

In the evening we walked up again to pick potatoes (International Kidney) for dinner. We got a healthy haul from the one plant and they were very tasty but did fall apart in the pan after just 17mins of cooking. I had a few mangetout too and the strawbs are for tomorrow's breakfast. 

Juat as we got close to home it started to rain but we got indoors before we had the most tremendous thunderstorm - very exciting! Haven't heard thunder that loud for years! And with it came the RAIN.

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 :-)