Royal British Legion Show 2013

Yesterday was the Royal British Legion Show. We had tried to encourage more entrants from the allotment sites and there was a small group of us from Marsh Lane so it made for a fun evening. Between us we managed to get some good placings.

Our veg cleaned up and ready to go to the show

We tried to put entries in for as many categories as possible, but our onions, shallots and french beans weren't ready. And can't believe I couldn't find four suitable courgettes to make a grouping!

Fellow plot holder, Chris, won the overall category prize for his veg - he pipped me (AGAIN!) in the Longest Runner Bean category - just a few millimetres in it..
We also missed out on funniest veg. Ours is the tomato with a nose; beaten by John's many-legged carrot.

Funny Shaped Veg

We did win a couple of Firsts though: Five pickling onions (our little Silverskins) and Pair of matching cucumbers (our little Rockies). We also got a few Second and Third placings.

Our 'four veg' highlighted came 2nd

I was pleased to win the overall prize for the photography competition. We got first placings with these two pictures - and Jamie took one of them, so it was definitely a joint win!

Autumn

Domestic Pet

 And, to end a good evening, while we were walking home we saw two Hedgehogs. The first living ones I've seen for years!

Mostly Tassles and Squashes

There are so many insects around at the moment that I've been neglecting my duties on the plot and mostly photographing the visitors. There are so many interesting flying things around! Anyway, back to the veg...

We're not too convinced we're going to get much (or any) sweetcorn this year :-( We've got plenty of male flowers but we're only just seeing any female tassles and there are no cobs appearing yet. We're pretty sure there should be cobs under the tassles...

Male flower

Female tassles

Well, it's early days, maybe we're just being impatient...

Something we won't go short of is squashes! The Uchiki Kuri is looking good. In fact, this one looks like it's almost ready to harvest, but I'm going to give it a couple more weeks so the skin gets a bit harder.


The courgettes continue to pay out but unfortunately the Floridor Yellow on the HAHA plot appears to have a disease. The courgettes form but the skin is lumpy and on cutting into one we found that it has brown patches in the flesh. Jamie thinks it may be Mosaic Virus. We'll probably pull the plant to stop the virus spreading to the other squashes. As well as being lumpy we have found that that plant isn't producing as many fruits as the plant on our plot - so, luckily we haven't given many away to people.

Our Lizzano plants are covered in tomatoes and we get a couple of red ones every now and then, which are delicious. We're expecting some more hot and sunny weather so hopefully that will get them reddening up...

Salad, Garlic and Compost

We've had a few visits to the plots since my last blog post; mostly for picking and chatting but we also got a bit of tidying and weeding done. The weeds have gone crazy since we've had a lot of rain over the last week and it's remained warm with sunny breaks. One day during the week we emptied 22mm of rain from the raingauge and that was just over 24hours worth - no wonder there are toads around during the day making the most of the slugs which appeared with the weather breaking!

This photo shows my lettuce which have gone to seed. The Red Fire seem immune to bolting so I'm still eating them but the green ones (Tom Thumb and Cos) have mostly gone into the compost bin. I've sowed a couple of rows of lettuce in an empty patch of earth - will need some to go with the tomatoes which are gradually redding up..
It's really hot in the compost bin - perfect for producing good compost and killing off any nasties. However, there's so much green (wet) waste going in there at the moment - I had to chop back some of the Uchiki Kuri squash runners and there's so much kitchen waste - so I added a couple of bucketfuls of torn corrugated cardboard as brown - otherwise it will likely get soggy and stinky.

The last few visits we have taken cucumbers away with us. We love our little Rocky cucumbers. They have been brilliant each year so far. One even obliged by growing through the old fireguard this year so it will be unblemished - but I think we may be able to produce an 'Odd-Shaped Vegetable' for the Royal British Legion Show on Saturday with one of the ones that has got caught up in the mesh!

When we got home I split the garlic up into cloves and froze some of them; a couple I left to dry out. They are really strongly flavoured! The leaves are browning and have a lot of rust, but the cloves are fine. Still time for them to die back further before they all need to come out of the ground though, I think.

Waiting for Rain and getting some!

We went up in the afternoon yesterday in the hope that we'd get caught in a rainstorm, we watched it moving towards up, getting darker and the wind started up but we only felt a few drops. As we got home the heavens opened and we got a lot of rain overnight and this morning. 11mm in total

The plots look so happy after rain and the weeds appreciate it even more! Above is some of the Asparagus Pea which are very pretty (but don't need a trellis).
Below is one of the Uchiki Kuri squash plants - I'm going to need to cut back some off-shoots. It would happily cover 4 poles I think!

We're a bit concerned about one of our Brussel Sprouts plants - it's leaves are going rather curly. We'll keep an eye on it but may need to pull it up in an attempt to prevent any cross-infection.

I'm also unsure of what to do with my Florence (bulb) fennel. After all the panic as the slugs were munching their way through it earlier in the year, it's come on really well. However, how big are they meant to get before eating? I wanted to keep them for soup but they look like they're mature now.

This is the biggest one - as big as my palm and quite pump. Is it ok to leave it to carry on growing?

 

This is my herb fennel. It's really tall and has flowered. The flying insects really love it, so I'm leaving it to grow as it's not really something I will use much for cooking and it looks very pretty.

The runner beans are also looking beautiful with masses of flowers. There are a few beans forming but not sure whether they'll be ready to win 'longest runner bean' this year (or even come second as we did last year...)

Just as it began to rain again this afternoon, we left the plot with a lovely selection of veggies which will cover us for a few meals.

International Kidney potatoes on the left and Orla on the right. You can tell the Orla as the slugs love them :-(

Last day of holiday :-(

The last few days of my fortnight's holiday have remained very warm and mostly sunny. We had rain overnight on Wednesday which produced another 4.5mm of rain but we've still been watering a lot as the ground dries out so quickly.

We've been eating from the plot all week; potatoes, broad beans, raspberries but mostly courgettes. I'm desperately looking for interesting courgette recipes, though so far plain, topped with a cheesy-nutty concoction is winning. We've managed to give away several as we've had so many family visitors to the plot this week, but now the green courgettes are arriving along with the Floridor yellows.

I couldn't resist modifying this cloud photo I took - the evening cloud had such a perfect formation! I immediately thought of this pic of Aeolus (or one similar).

I wanted to paste in an arty wind-blower, but couldn't find anything suitable so had to use me instead :-)

I did the 2013 Big Butterfly Count today - details on my wildlife blog.