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!
Two weeks of extreme heat and still no rainfall have meant plot visits have mostly involved watering, watering, watering! But because of next Saturday's Open Afternoon and Hungerford in Bloom (Allotment) judging in the morning we're doing a lot of weeding too.
We fed nearly everything. The green things were given a nitrogen-rich mixture and the flowers were given a coffee-based mixture, which is potassium-rich as well as providing a bit of caffeine!
After the confusion with the pumpkins in my earlier post it turned out that the four gifts were courgettes - that took us up to 7 courgette plants! A few too many :-) So we swapped two of them for 2 Tromboncinos, a spaghetti squash and a Jumbo Pink Banana! They're all in the barrels and as they grow we'll try to encourage them across the wires over the top of Plot 46a.
And, we now have 3 pumpkins which have germinated - 1 Atlantic Giant and 2 Jack of All Trades. They're rather behind the other competition growers but hopefully we'll have something to show! And here's the first trug shot of the year - nice and colourful, huh?
I've cited poetic licence with the title song: Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me) by Cockney Rebel is to encourage you to visit the Marsh Lane Allotment site next Saturday! I wonder if there will be any lavender flavoured goodies there?!
A little off-topic but I had a day off work so we took a trip to Somerset to visit a lavender farm.
There were two large fields of lavender and a garden with many different varieties. It was interesting to see that the bees seemed to prefer the pinky coloured varieties (I preferred the purple).
The cream tea with a lavender scone was delicious! I feel inspired!
Apart from the scones I like the sound of chocolate and lavender brownies or how about leek, potato and lavender soup? Yum!
I would have liked to buy one (or more) of their little plants to grow my own for culinary use next year, but didn't think the plants would appreciate the extreme heat of the car journey yesterday.
As you can see the farm had a lovely vegetable patch and look at those calendula, what a display!
After that lovely visit we made our way home via Farleigh Hungerford Castle - amazing remains of the 14th Century castle.
Thomas Hungerford who bought the original manor in 1369 was the son of Sir Robert de Hungerford who was buried in our Hungerford's St Lawrence Church in 1352. He was an MP and general bigwig in Berkshire. Interesting to know the link to our town and to wander through the castle remains, chapel and priest house.
It was such an amazing sky yesterday evening, I had to put this photo on the blog, but this post is mostly about pumpkins.
I'm preparing for the Pumpkin Competition at Hungerford Food Festival in October. I managed to get some Atlantic Giant pumpkin seeds but none of them germinated. Fellow plotholder Jonathan left four pumpkin plants on our plot for us. I was so close to planting them on the empty plot that HAHA have commandeered for the competition when I remembered that they aren't pumpkins, they're Tromboncini squash plants! My "pumpkins" would have looked a bit strange compared to the others on that plot!!
So now the Tromboncini are on Plot 46A in the barrels and we're attempting to quickly germinate 2 more Atlantic Giants and 2 Jack of All Trades... We've got 3 months so hopefully we'll have something to show for it!
We've put two cucumber Mini Munch on that plot too, along with a row of swede under the netting.
At least I'm fairing a bit better with the flowers this year. We're having to water a lot as there's been no rain (apart from a few drops) for weeks. But the sunflowers and sweetpeas are doing ok. Also, I'm pleased to say that the asters got over their problem after I removed the crinkled leaves and I'm hoping the flowers will develop quite soon...
The tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing what they always do - but this year we're really trying to remove the side shoots! Flowers and a few tomatoes are appearing on the Aviditas plants and the Redcurrant, but nothing on the Tigerella yet.
My lunchtime salads will be more interesting when they have tomatoes on them, but the rogue potatoes from last week made fabulous potato salad!
So, we just have to wait for all these little plants to get bigger.. And I'm going to sow some more salady bits and beetroot to see if I can keep the production going for a bit longer this year.
Dwarf beans and sweetcorn
This song by Birdy seems appropriate at this point - enjoy!
In May I started soaking chive flowers in white wine vinegar and now it's looking pretty in 5 small bottles with the remainder in our vinegar bottle.
It has a lovely mild onion flavour, much less over-powering than pickled onion vinegar, which makes it perfect for adding to salads. The chive flowers had faded completely in the bottle.
I strained the liquid into a jug to get rid of any loose bits of flower and dusty pollen.
And voila - looks like an apothecary! It needs to be kept out of sunlight though, otherwise the colour will fade. The Psychedelic Furs provide the title song ...
We spent several hours yesterday weeding one of the mini-plots, which had to be given up by the tenant. We should have got in touch earlier and then the weeds wouldn't have been so high and the ground not so solid - it was hard work. But, we managed to clear the whole plot and cover it to avoid some future weeds appearing. So, we didn't get to work on any of our plots, but there was a reward..
That is a lot of new potatoes - at least 4 meals worth. They weren't planted by the latest plotholder, but were 'rogue potatoes' which were leftover and re-grew from potatoes growing at least two years ago!
The lettuce is lasting well as I always add chard to the salad too. As well as the mangetout which I'm barely managing to keep up with. And, look what we've got for dessert tonight...
Hooray! Our original strawberries have paid out so they can stay for a bit longer. The raspberries aren't quite so good yet - I thought I was going to find more ripe ones when I started picking them!
So, Roger Sanchez's song is for the mini-plot which gets another chance at having a growing season this year.. If we can find an interested person...
