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!
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 :-)
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.
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.
Wow! The weather's been so fabulous over the last couple of weeks that I haven't had time to write a blog post! 34° in the shade today! Mrs B found it a bit hot too!
We've been going to the plot straight from work. These are the Summer evenings we missed last year.
We've been eating quite well from the allotment too - lots of salads, strawberries, a few raspberries today and the yellow Floridor squashes have started to pay out.
Our potato plan hasn't worked - the earlies are arriving later than we intended. We think they probably haven't bulked up because of the lack of rain. So we've been watering the plants a lot over the last week.
We pulled an Arran Pilot - only a very small amount of spuds (about 5 tubers) - lovely as potato salad for lunch! And we pulled a couple of the Pentland Javelins which were enough for two meals - very tasty, but in general we hope to get more than one meal per plant.
Here are some photos showing each quarter of Plot 7 - all growing nicely now!
And here's my one fennel which looks like it will actually get to grow to maturity - hope I haven't spoken too soon!
I have updated the wildlife blog as a few more insects are appearing on site.
We visited the plot after work to pick some broad beans, strawberries and a bit more salad. We watered everything and chatted a lot. This is the best time of year; lots of people on site, planting, watering and harvesting.
My Floridor yellow squash seems to be doing well - looks like the one plant (on our plot) will provide plenty of courgettes, perhaps Jamie will have to get a taste for them after all!
Since last week we haven't seen our Robbie; only Mrs B (blackbird) has been around feeding her chick. We were concerned that the cat had found him but Malcolm informed us that robins go into hiding for a few weeks after they've fed their chicks. They moult and go to ground while they are feeling vulnerable (and ugly - are robins that shallow? :-}). So, hopefully our little chap will be back again quite soon.
Here's an archive photo of him just because we miss him!
