Saturday 29 September 2012

Fruits and Diseases

We had a lovely few hours on the plot today. When we first arrived there were a lot of butterflies around as it was sunny and pleasant. Jamie got down on his knees for some serious weeding around our leeks.
Whilst weeding he noticed that we have rust appearing on quite a few of the leaves. Rust (Puccinia allii) on leeks is apparently quite common and the fungus spreads due to poor air circulation (the usual humidity problem on our plots) and is often worse on nitrogen-rich soils with low potassium - not sure whether this would be the case with our potato quarter... It doesn't look very nice but shouldn't have a big impact on the actual leeks - we may remove some of the worst affected leaves.
Rust
I was dead-heading and ripping up cardboard to add to the compost - we have so much green going in there at the moment and not very much brown. I also cleared yellowing leaves from the sprouts - this helps with air circulation and prevents disease - though we're a bit late with one of the plants which has gone really mouldy, but luckily hasn't spread to the other plants. We'll be pulling that this week or next weekend.
Strawberries round Marsh Lane have been great this year - and they're still going for it!
Sadly I can't say the same for my raspberries which I transplanted this year - they're very sporadic. Hopefully next year they'll be better...

 We've had some lovely peppers though and took some home with the last of our onions - not sure how much we'll get to eat from them - and Red Duke of York and Chopin spuds.

 

 

Loads of interesting wildlife

There was a lot of wildlife around today. Mostly hoverflies and some lovely butterflies but I also saw a stoat (pretty sure it was a stoat). It ran really fast across one plot then made a flying leap into stingers on another plot!
The radish flowers and calendula are still attracting most of the insects. This noon fly probably arrived on site with someone's manure!

A noon fly - great gold face!
A colour-match hoverfly!
Jamie spotted a mass of these tiny caterpillars on the raspberries. I think they're Yellow Tail moth caterpillars but again I'm checking on the Wild About Britain forum. They're great looking though! Will check how much bigger they are tomorrow. Correction: This is a Dark Dagger moth caterpillar!
 Neal was working his plot next door to us  and found this hairy caterpillar.
It looks rather like a ruby tiger moth caterpillar we found before but it's a different colour. I'm checking this on the forum too to see if they agree with my identification. Correction: This is a Buff Ermine moth caterpillar!

Wild About Britain is a brilliant site. So full of knowledge and willing to share. It's brilliant to share pics and get beasties identified.

Lastly we found this common green shield bug. It's slightly more mature than the one we found on 1st September and is getting more green.

Thursday 27 September 2012

Good Housekeeping has arrived!

I was sent the Good Housekeeping magazine (Nov 2012 edition) today. My piece is in there (Page 31) - funny, I couldn't remember exactly what I'd been dressed in for the pic. I also don't quite remember saying some of the words but it's not too embarrassing! Luckily as everyone at work and beyond knows about it!!
Here's a sneak peek but I'd better not scan it just yet...
 

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Sussex Cousins & Seedy Onions

Here are the photos of my cousins (Jen & Steve, Paula, Jamie & Julia) visit to our plot on Sunday.
it really was extremely wet!

Thank Goodness for the Calendulas to provide brightness
Huddling for warmth


Our wet plot

Excellent photos courtesy of 'Cousin Jen' - thank you :-)

On a drier note, this is why you should pull your onions more quickly.
Or, if your onions go to seed just let them flower, after all they do have a pretty flower and the seeds can be used as flavouring if not for sowing.
These went in the bin as there wasn't enough onion flesh to use. Also, one side was full of stinky onion water :-(

Monday 24 September 2012

Admin and sweet, sweet, sweetcorn

I was on leave today so spent the morning doing allotment computing stuff. I'm back on the HAHA (Hungerford Allotment Holders Association) committee as communications officer so had some stuff to do following yesterday's event; I updated the HAHA website and waiting list - we had a new person to add to the list (we've got 13 waiting for a Marsh Lane plot now) and updated the Marsh Lane Facebook page.

I also needed to contact the plotholders and a couple of visitors to the HAHA stall.
Ellie Thompson, a wood turner from The Treen Workshop was interested in the paper pot maker. We always get a lot of interest in it at events. However, we've found that our pot maker is a bit too small so we were talking about a larger one and I asked her if she could make a longer one suitable for sweetpeas.

In the afternoon I joined Jamie at the rather cold plot. He'd been deadheading and watered the strawberries - which sounds rather odd given the amount of rain we've had, but they are newly planted so need a bit of help! He also picked as many orangey tomatoes as he could find and we're redding them up at home under our LED grow-light.

I took a load of cardboard up and added to the compost with kitchen waste. I picked some carrots and courgettes and a couple of onions to make some soup. The onions are ones that flowered. Although the tops were chopped off as soon as possible the stems are weird and bulbous - it gives the onions a hard centre (Steve's information from yesterday) but I can chop round that for my soup.
Finally, we picked the two biggest sweetcorn and rushed home to get them boiled as quickly as possible. They really are super-sweet and so delicious with butter - mmmm
There were a few missing kernels but not many!