My Favourite Game

Well, it's Spring now and it was quite a pleasant day but the ground is so wet we didn't do any digging. I tidied up the purple sprouting broccoli plants and picked our first ever harvest of them. I'm hoping there's still time to get a few more sproutings from them - it seems they're late to sprout for many gardeners this year.

I picked a few more leeks for dinner tomorrow night, they were spare plants that I planted in a cluster rather than composting them and they've grown pretty well. A few good-sized ones and some tiddlers. The french garlic is looking happy considering it's been crushed under snow twice this month! It shouldn't get too used to this milder weather as we may have further snow by next weekend...

We had great fun last night at the HAHA Skittles Evening. With 36 people attending it was a perfect amount and there were a few non-plotholders.I was in charge of the scoring but as you can see from the photo below I had a little help from our Chairman :-)

The marigold seeds we brought home during the coldest weather are liking it a bit too much inside - they've nearly all germinated and we don't dare return them to the plot just yet...

And the potatoes are chitting away but we're not going to risk planting them out for a few weeks yet - even if it is traditional to plant them on Good Friday - just a week away.

We threw a couple of seed potatoes away as they had strange white growths on them - though it didn't really look like mould. We hope it hasn't spread to these other ones...
So, the blog title is based on the skittles evening - maybe not my favourite game but for an off-site plot holder gathering it's a great one! And so is this song from The Cardigans...

Black and White Town

The freezing weather returned! And we have even more snow than we had at the beginning of March.

Modified photo of icicles from the roof of our composting toilet

On Friday evening we retrieved our recently-sown marigold seeds and wrapped fleece round the shelving where our broad beans are trying to germinate. The fleece and four litre bottles of water are keeping the temperature at about 1° higher than the non-protected thermometer, but will it be enough? Perhaps we'll have to sow a third lot of beans this year...

Look at our pots...

And our chives...

And the site!

There were lots of tracks in the snow - nothing very interesting but we rather liked this meandering trail - bird or mouse?

We saved a panicking thrush from a brassica cage and then checked ours. We cleared the snow to stop it ripping the netting and, hooray, our purple sprouting broccoli is doing something at last, but it was too cold to stay and harvest anything today.

You may have noticed that my camera decided to use macro for the photo above and focused on the netting - now, if I was trying to do that you know it wouldn't work! I tried photographing some of the freshly fallen snowflakes on Friday and nearly caught them, but I need a bit more practise.

It was a very chilly walk back home. The thermometer in the greenhouse showed 3.3° but when the wind blew and whooshed snow about - BRRR! And we may be due more snow tonight - we're not used to this in Berkshire!!

The Doves provide the title track. The pure white snow and black roads made me choose this song.

Also, if you're in the area on Saturday....

History Repeating

It's the time of year... there's not that much happening on the plot and all I seem to be writing about is SOUP! So, as I'm sitting here drinking my latest spicy parsnip I used my webcam to create this fractal effect. 

I decided on parsnip as I thought they had all died/rotted away in the ground but, because the tops are growing back, I can see where they are again. And what a whopper - it's the same length as the hob on our cooker! With hardly any canker. I didn't use all the core, which may be a bit tough because of the re-growth.

I was going to flavour it using curry powder but decided to put individual spices in instead and it's very tasty.

There are still some more leeks to be pulled, but they are quite thin now.

I love the smell of them frying in the spices before I add the stock and parsnips.

Our visit to the plot yesterday was interrupted by thunder, lightning and a huge downpour of rain. The roads were flooded and the drains were popping up as we drove home.

Here's a little video looking out from the toolshed, which has a metal roof.

I did manage to get some bulbs planted into pots (Ixia and Dutch Iris) and Jamie sowed some marigold seeds (Durango Bee and Honeycomb). The broad beans had germinated but then got struck by the freezing weather so we're having to re-plant them.

So this song by The Propellerheads & Shirley Bassey fits the bill, but I think there will be a few more soup-based posts before Spring...

White Winter Hymnal

I think this year we'll have to follow the astronomical calendar, rather than the meteorological one; 1st March definitely did not feel like the first day of Spring!

We've had very fine snow falling for much of the last two days and we're not used to snow, so we still love it!

We walked through quiet, snowy Hungerford and of course arrived at the allotment site.

All the plots are looking quite similar under the white blanket! Even the empty covered plots look nice.

I hope our garlic and shallots are ok under there. I'm particularly concerned about the french garlic, but at least there's time to buy more if necessary. Our broad beans in the greenhouse are a no-show, so we'll need to re-sow them. Well, -9° is just too low for germination I expect.

The snow is meant to continue till tomorrow and then turn to icy rain - bleah, that's much worse!

So that was a fun way to spend a Friday afternoon off work. And tonight we're having a curry which will include some fragrant fresh bay leaves courtesy of Vishal at work. I'm also freezing some, as they're more flavoursome than dried leaves. I look forward to adding them to carrot soup in the next few days.

This was a meal we had the other evening with Quorn mince, carrots and leeks - basically a cottage pie topped with filo pastry rather than potato because I think it looks so nice.

So, it's still Winter and this pretty title song is provided by the Fleet Foxes.

From the Inside...

..it looks like a lovely day with blue sky and sunshine.. but then a weather app tells you it 'feels like -7°'. No thanks, so I'm not expecting a plot visit today. Instead, here's a post that I started last week. I had tasty carrot and coriander soup for lunches - I haven't had a smooth soup in a while because my stick blender broke. Now I have got the one back from my mum - I gave it to her a couple of Christmases ago, but she didn't get on with it.

It's a Russell Hobbs blender, it's certainly a bit more aggressive than the James Martin one I've been using for years. I hope I'll get used to it. Otherwise, perhaps I'll need to return to chunky soups...which are delicious but some soups really do need blitzing. Not necessarily this one though... look how tasty that looks, mmm.

I was looking through my blog to see what soups I've made since having an allotment, I know there have been a couple of horrible ones but mostly they've been tasty and an easy way of using up extra veg:

1. Carrot and Fennel - delicious
2. Tomato - only made once, rather wasteful unless you really need to use up a lot of toms
3. Thai Pumpkin - how adventurous of me, I even used coconut milk in it
4. Parsnip and Leek - I think I need to make that again before the parsnips rot away
5. Smokey Carrot - made with oak-smoked olive oil and smoked paprika
6. Leek and Chestnut - this year I discovered what an amazing addition chestnuts are
7. Vegetables with chestnuts - carrot, parsnip, swede, chestnuts and leeks
8. Vegetable - Chunky carrot, leek and parsnip
9. Parsnip and Pea - using frozen peas
10. Curried Pumpkin - pumpkin is best if roasted first so it's more time-consuming
11. Courgette and Fennel - peak courgette season!
12. Potato and Celery - The one year we managed to actually grow celery
13. Potato and Mangetout - FAIL! It was grey and disgusting!
14. Roast Festival Squash - the squash didn't taste as good as it looked
15. Celeriac and Fennel - so delicious. This soup is why I first started growing bulb fennel
16. Swede (and Leek) - nasty! Nearly all thrown away..
17. Carrot and Parsnip - I think this may be due next week too
18. Pumpkin and Carrot - we'll be growing big pumpkins again in 2018
19. Lettuce - well, it used up a lot of lettuces as they were going to seed
20. Leek and Butterbean - nice and creamy
21. Curried vegetable - curry powder cheers up a plain recipe

I also picked a couple of small swedes and had mashed carrot and swede with my frittata dinner last weekend. Jamie picked those sprouts from a plot which has been recently vacated - a perk of being on the committee? Well, they'd only go to waste otherwise. We generally say that anything left on an empty plot is free for use by other plotholders.

We both managed to do quite a lot of digging last weekend. Plot 7 is looking pretty good but we'll probably need to resort to weed-killer for some other parts of our plots. Jamie had laid bags on black plastic on the section shown above as that's where our sprouts are going this year - well away from the mole on Plot 3 we hope! We still need to do some proper planning of what we're planting where.
Linkin Park provide the title song...