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!
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...
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...
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!
Another scorching day so we went to the allotment in the morning and went back in the afternoon - just too hot to stay out in the sun over midday too.
We were working on the HAHA Plot all day. It was meant to be 'unusual vegetables - the kinds the supermarkets don't sell' but it's getting less unusual as the weeks have moved on!
Having said that, we've planted/sown the following on there now:
Uchiki Kuri - onion squash
Golden Hubbard - Winter squash (donated by Liz & Ken)
Jack-be-Little - small pumpkins
Floridor Yellow - round yellow courgette
Purple Haze - purple carrots
Globe Artichoke (donated by Jonathan)
With two sides planted up with french marigolds it should look pretty and once the squashes start spreading it'll fill out.
We've still got a few more things to sow and still have 3 months till the Hungerford Food Festival so hopefully we'll have something to show on our stall or at least to share with other plotholders.
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I decided we should pull one of our potato plants (one of the International Kidneys)- it's been 10 weeks since they were planted so we thought there may be something to show....
Unfortunately I jumped the gun and in fact there were only 4 tiny spuds :-( So, Jamie pulled a plant on one of the vacant plots - these had been in the ground for over a year but look pretty good, so we will have dinner tonight after all :-)
It was a really hot and lovely day on the allotment. Jamie and I spent about 6 hours there and we were actually on our plots so feel like we've achieved quite a lot.
I used this new app for the first time - this was just a freebie version so the quality isn't that great. However, I've now bought the Pro version so expect to see a few more timelapses on this blog in the future :-)
The hardest part was finding where to stand my phone hence the low-level view! This was filmed over about an hour and a half.
In the video I'm transplanting quite a few lettuces - lambs lettuce and lollo rosso. I also put some where my remaining three (yes, THREE!) florence fennel are. You'll see I've loaded the ground with slug pellets. I'm wondering whether the proximity to the sage is the problem - it's a bit of a slug/snail haven in there. Well, they've got plenty of lettuces to scoff now so maybe that'll keep them off the remaining fennel...
Jamie planted up the two Rocky cucumber plants. One in the ground and the other in a pot and that will hopefully trail across a framework. I planted up another sprout plant and some summer cabbage (Minicole) - protected under an enviromesh tunnel. I also planted up eleven Speedy french beans - the only ones that we've managed to germinate this year.
We did lots of weeding and Jamie cut the grass and did the edging. We fed the strawberries and tomatoes with Tomorite liquid feed. There are lots of flowers on the tomatoes and the strawberries are providing us with plenty of fruit for desserts.
The raspberry bushes have got bashed about by the wind (and Jamie's mowing) so I need to stake them up tomorrow. There are lots of flowers and fruits appearing and it's the most popular plant on the plot for bees at the moment.
I chopped all the chives back to ground level as the flowers had just about gone over and I didn't want them to seed everywhere - the chives will grow back quickly enough. We'll need them for our new potatoes soon :-)
The HAHA constitution includes a clause to: "Work with other groups in the Hungerford area to widen public support for allotments and seek opportunities to provide education to the community of Hungerford on gardening and allotment matters." I think we achieved that yesterday evening when the Marsh Lane site had never been so busy! The 1st Hungerford Guides worked their plot for the first time.
The plot had been weed killed and rotavated a few weeks ago so digging wasn't too painful and the 30-ish Guides, plus helpers, managed to dig enough of the plot to plant some well-grown sweetcorn and pumpkin plants (Thanks to Tony).
There will be a few weeding sessions and then in a few weeks we'll have a bbq and sweetcorn-eating session followed by a pumpkin carving event - that's the plan...
There was also plenty of wildlife spotting going on which is good to see - I had to step in when they were about to test the assumption that both ends of a worm survive if you chop one in half; Just got there before the spade did the evil deed!
While I was helping the girls Jamie planted up our sprouts and tidied up our plots. The runner beans are growing well and finally we have some french beans in the root trainers but they're not quite ready to go in the ground yet.
