A Meal with Leeks and Lardons

Two huge leeks from a fellow-plotholder (Thanks Neal!) meant a change of plan for dinner, using ingredients we had available.

So I was cooking - I don't cook very often (hence the blogpost!) and I don't like anything with too much timing/accuracy involved as I always forget to keep track of time (Jamie would say, that it doesn't help when I'm taking a photo every few minutes, but there you go!)

Chopped leeks, with black pepper, were fried until soft-ish and then added to the fried Quorn lardons (vegetarian bacon-style bits) to keep warm while the gnocchi was cooked.

The gnocchi was boiled for ~5 minutes, then drained and fried until golden brown in the leek pan, adding a little flavour.

Tomatoes were added for effect and voila! That's what we had for tea last night - yum!

Potato Day Again

Potato Day is always a rather similar (dull) blogpost, but it's a useful record for us to keep track of what and when we planted - so stop reading now if you don't care what we planted! And here's a picture of a carrion crow to raise interest :-)

Digging the trench is such hard work - a real back-breaker. But it means the patch gets an extra bit of digging. The earth is really claggy; wet and rather clay-ey on Plot3.

We added the shredded paper and grass clippings to the bottom of the trench, along with some manure. It's now a row of 12 Kestrels with one Salad Blue at the end.

The rest of our potatoes we've planted in 6 bags: 

2x Orla (plus a separate 1 Orla)

2x Salad Blue

2x Athlete

2x Chopin

2x Annabelle

The bags were partially filled with a mix of John Innes, Multi-purpose and some potato fertiliser. Now we sit back and wait a bit and hope it doesn't get frosty once they pop through the earth...

Cuckoo!

We heard one this afternoon! It sounded like it was across the marsh. I love to hear them, though they are very naughty birds!! We also saw two swifts (or maybe house martens) swoop into the carport next door to the allotment site.

As you can see, it was a busy visit to the plot this afternoon :-) We were so surprised to be in lovely warm sunshine we thought it would be a shame not to make the most of it!

This alien-looking thing is one off our tulips... It should be a proper flower very soon...

We shredded lots of paper this morning and de-needled the remainder of the Christmas tree for the potato planting tomorrow. We also sieved some compost and potting compost for the potato bags.

This is another of our finds on Plot3 ...

Man-made or natural?

I can't tell...

Oh, and this is one of our onions. Most of them have sprouted, but you have to get close to see! At least it shows they're alive.

3-Day Weekend

The plan this weekend is mostly to plant our spuds; some in the ground and some in bags. I've taken Monday off work to make up for today's weather - I've just checked... Not very inviting, if the forecast is right - Ugh, look at those 'feels like' temperatures!

It's been a mixed week weatherwise, drenching yesterday and even a bit of thunder one evening, but Tuesday was lovely! So warm and sunny that my office buddy, Ruth, and I visited the local family-run Savages garden centre in Blewbury at lunchtime.

Pots of tea in the sunshine. Polytunnel envy and a little bit of shopping (I bought a blue hibiscus shrub for £2.95! And some new potatoes and some bird seed. Oh yes, and some lovely relish. Oh, and a home-made cake :)). What a delight!

I could happily sit on that seat all day long!

It was hard going back to work but, now I know where it is, I know I'll be re-visiting Savages, it is lovely!

Nematode Time

It's that time again, preparing the way for a slug free Summer - yeah, right! Well, we do what we can and we use Nemaslug. It's been reasonably successful over the last couple of years and has mostly gone in the patch where our potatoes will be going on Plot3. The ground is very wet on that plot - we're a bit concerned that our spuds will rot before they get a chance to grow. The area is covered with plastic at the moment so, even though it's going to be a rainy week, hopefully the ground won't get any wetter... (hmm, not sure it really works that way, but...)

This is the raised bed for salad and florence fennel. We watered in the nematodes and then watered some more, to help wash them further into the soil, and then covered the bed in black plastic. That should warm the earth up nicely and protect the nematodes from the sunlight.

And there's our beetroot - just peeping through! Only a few seeds have germinated so far, but (touch wood) I've never known beetroot to fail. If it does I'll sow some more; it's pretty fast growing.

We copied fellow plotholder, Vic's idea of putting pots in between the strawberry plants for watering. The plants get so bushy that we find the water (and plant food) often just runs down the outside of the weed suppressant. Each of our strawberry plants got a dose of GrowMore yesterday and a dose of nematodes today - what could be worse than sluggy strawberries?!

That's the plot that I weeded yesterday. The earth looks nice and dark because I've spread the remains of last year's grow bags and potato bags to the area. It hasn't been dug in yet as there are liable to be quite a few weeds and baby tomato plants growing in there before we're ready to plant.

Look at that healthy looking broad bean seedling. We've sowed 24 and we're just waiting for 3 slow ones to break through the surface now. When they're a little bigger we'll plant them out.

This is what we're waiting for now - lovely rhubarb. Nearly there, those stems just need to grow a bit more - a couple of weeks I reckon...