Sunday 16 May 2021

Mosaic

We spent several hours on the plot yesterday and today we went up specifically to enjoy the rain from the polytunnel while having a coffee.

Chive flower
That’s our first chive flower to open. I’m waiting for more in order to make chive flower vinegar.
Strawberry
And here’s the evidence that Jamie’s pollination technique worked; our first little green strawberry is on its way.
Plot7
There’s a sunny-ish photo from yesterday. You can see our giant rhubarb which we’ll be living on for a while - tasty rhubarb on waffles for breakfast. Yum!
Rhubarb waffles
We did lots of weeding yesterday and Jamie sowed some sunflowers. Alfie gave us some spare wildflower seed so I added that to the wildlife plot and Kerry had planted some self-seeded marjoram, which the bees and butterflies love. I spent most of the time planting up pots and a trough for taking home once the plants have got a bit bigger; Fuchsia and geraniums plus some trailing plants to cheer up a spot that doesn’t get sunshine.
Hungerford allotment
The carrots haven’t germinated yet, but the potatoes have emerged in the bags and the ground. Some of the sown salad has popped up, particularly the salad onions and radishes but mostly it’s the weeds that have made the most of this sunshine & showers weather.
Tiny spud plant
Yesterday I sowed 5 varieties of squash at home. Autumn varieties except the Tromboncino. These are all to create my squash tunnel (fingers crossed).
Selecting seeds
Selecting 3 seeds of each and now they’re under the grow-lamp. I hope they’re as quick to germinate as the courgettes and pumpkins.
Squash seeds
Our trip to the plot today was very wet, but the birds were singing and the new growth everywhere is so fresh and clean so it was nice to sit and watch, but once my trouser legs were soaked through it got rather chilly so we went home. 
Hawthorn aka May blossom
The song title is provided by Patti Smith because I found this interesting setting on my camera. I rather like it.
Mosaic effect
So here’s the song - enjoy. By the way, I’m still none the wiser about the origin of our little clay figure...


Sunday 9 May 2021

Who's That Girl?

Look who we found on the site. 
Terracotta girl figure
Interesting isn't she, made of terracotta. She was dirty so must have been buried for a while.
Terracotta figurine
Is she from a previous plot holder or from canal dredging before the Allotments were here? If anyone knows anything about her please let me know. I couldn’t find anything similar on the internet. And, of course, if you want her back because you lost her! Intriguing, it has the makings of a creepy novel ...
Clay figure girl
Last Saturday was a lovely sunny day after the rain the day before. I sowed various salad crops in the large raised beds (radish, salad onions, perpetual spinach and other leafy crops). I planned on doing more but another plotholder was having a bbq and brought me over a glass of wine and that was the end of my work for the day! Wine, sun, allotment - Marvellous :-)
Wine on the allotment
On Sunday we sowed a couple of pumpkins (New England Pie) and courgettes (All Green Bush) at home under the grow light. They had germinated within a week. So they're growing on in the polytunnel now - the temperature is meant to warm up for a while. In the polytunnel yesterday, hiding from the wind and rain, Jamie turned to hand pollinating the strawberry flowers, because there haven’t been many insect pollinators in the poly recently. I hope it’s done the job. We’ll know soon, as the petals should drop as the fruit starts to form.
Pollinating strawberries
We stayed chatting for a while on site, but it was too wet to achieve anything. We were looking at the masses of tiny seedlings appearing on the wildlife plot. Talking of wildlife, I had to put netting round my mangetout in the week because the pigeons have seriously nibbled the little plants - the twiggy sticks were quite a good deterrent until they blew away in last weeks storm!
The Eurythmics provide the song title.

Saturday 1 May 2021

Let’s Stick Together

It’s actually May Day, but this post is marking the end of April and we had some welcome rain - very cold rain and hail yesterday - and Froggy has found a friend.

Frogs

The seedlings and weedlings are happy, finally some salad leaf is appearing.

Lettuce seedlings

The wildlife plot has green shoots all over it, but I wonder how much of that is from the seeds we sowed?!

HAHA Wildlife Plot
We’d planned an extra long weekend because of Bank Holiday Monday - always good to have a 4-day weekend. I didn’t bank on having Thursday off too, but I felt awful after my second vaccination on Thursday - a week earlier than originally planned. At least I knew the side effects would only last a day, so I pretty much slept through it. There’s some doubt about the vaccine efficacy for transplant patients, but well done to the NHS for pushing through the population so efficiently.
COVID vaccine #2
So yesterday, before the hail, we managed to plant the potatoes.
Chitter potatoes
Just Nicola and Kestrel; some in the ground (planted using a bulb planter) and others in potato bags.
Potato plot
While I was doing a plant-swap with Ivan - one of our Rudbeckia plants (self-seeded) for two of his self-seeded Echinacea plants - and planting them by the pond and by the polytunnel, Jamie was busy creating the carrot mesh tunnel. We were just ready to sow when the hail started, so we had to hide for a while. We were watching the magpies.
Soggy Magpie
They were very defensive today; attacking jackdaws and this red kite - I know it’s not a great photo, but they were moving fast and annoyingly the other side of the wires!
Magpie versus Red Kite
Eventually we got the carrots sowed - a row of Eskimo and one of Early Nantes.
Carrots
Soon after that we went home as it was chilly and too wet to do more. We’re hoping to get a few more seeds sown at the weekend, though the weather is rather hit and miss. Here’s a link to a FREE online event if you’re interested. It’s the author talking about her book regarding mental health and the benefit of gardening.
Well Gardened Mind
Aah, look at the plot after rain, so much healthier-looking. And there’s the carrot tunnel at the end of Plot7 next to the beets.
The song title is for the frogs, not humans yet - keep on keeping your distance please 🙂 and stay safe.

Monday 26 April 2021

Wildflower

Look at the beautiful blue sky. What you can’t see is how chilly the strong wind was yesterday! Though I’m pleased to say that we’re quite protected at our end of the site.
Marsh Lane allotment
You can see how dry the ground is, so we're already having to do a lot of watering even though there isn't that much in the ground so far. We're encouraging the garlic to bulb up and have been weeding some of the flower pots to help the struggling plants that have been swamped in them for months!
I planted out the celeriac seedlings. I need to remember never to bother trying to grow my own celeriac from seed in future years - the tray I bought had more than double what I needed and cost less than the seed packet (and my home-grown seedlings are pathetic!). I made a wonky trench for them so that I can keep them wet (they need A LOT of water) and earth them up when they need it.
Celeriac in a trench
I’ve protected the celeriac with the fleece tunnel as our night-time temperatures are still low and it may prevent some evaporation. I planted the beetroot and that’s under the green tunnel, but it shouldn’t really need protection; it just looked a bit vulnerable in the middle of that plot. Talking of tunnels.... we think that’s a vole in our shallot patch...
A vole hole
I planted some rainbow chard seedlings in a raised bed. And Jamie planted up some strawberries in this hanging planter, these are in the polytunnel (and are also wonky), it’ll be nice to get some early strawbs and maybe the birds won't venture in there.
Strawberry basket
Our main job today was to sow the wildflower seeds on the HAHA wildlife plot. Lots of different seeds, as you can see; some we bought, most were gifted or freebies. Hope they beat the weeds to the surface! We may get some rain this week...
The bog garden isn’t worthy of a photo; a couple of plants died (maybe frost damage) but the irises and a couple of others look like they’ll survive - well, it’s early days.
Wildflower seeds

And last of all today, here's one of the frogs in our little pond. There are at least two that we've seen - they're both small, not ours from last year. The water has a lot of algae so I've been clearing it and need to get some more weed. Oh, and we heard the first cuckoo from across the marsh in the week - I do love having lunch at the allotment, definitely a bonus point for working from home! Although there's a lot of sarcasm from all the retired plotholders when I have to go back to work for the afternoon :-}

Common Frog

The song title is provided by Smashing Pumpkins, perhaps I should have saved it for when we have a plot-ful of wildflowers... no, best not tempt fate ;-)

Sunday 18 April 2021

Out of the Blue

Here’s a colourful and tasty meal we had in the week - at home (we haven’t decided to join the throngs in freezing pub gardens!). Lovely fried gnocchi with Vivera ‘bacon’ and veg. Delicious.

Fried Gnocchi

I look forward to eating home-grown again but this year seems to be taking a long time getting started. This weekend has been beautiful weather, with blue sky, hot days but the nights are still dropping below zero. We woke up to these Altocumulus undulatus clouds this morning, rather impressive, aren’t they? 

Altocumulus undulatus

They burnt off quite quickly and we spent several hours on the plot. I planted out the Shiraz mangetout and dug a hole filled with manure for a courgette in a few weeks time.

Shiraz mangetout

Our pepper plants were delivered this week: Denver, Milena and Chelsea. We potted them on and they look much happier. They’ll stay at home for a while until they’re a bit bigger.

We also received the plants for the bog garden which I planted up today.

Bakker plants

Some look a bit dead, but I hope they recover and grow in the HAHA wildlife plot bog garden. We intend to sow the wildflower seeds over the rest of the plot in the next week or two, we really want it to rain but it’s been in very short supply so far this Spring. Attempting a bog garden in a dry year - that would be typical wouldn’t it? 🙄

Marsh Lane allotments

Another delivery this week, and the reason for this blog title, was this lovely card from my cousin Jen. So nice to get something unexpected and interesting in the post!

Corncockle

And, the card is even more interesting, because look what’s on the back! What a fab gift. A collection of seeds for the wildlife plot. So thoughtful - thanks so much Jen! I’ve mentioned Jen before, she’s a very creative lady - visit her Freshwinds Garden blog here.

Wildflower seeds

Aah, how lovely it is to be back on the allotment. We’ve had a few lunchtimes there just to sit in the sun. We’ve seen swifts/swallows/martens (not necessarily all three of those), Canada geese and a heron as well as the usual red kites and buzzards flying overhead. There were also lots of Brimstone, Peacock and Orange Tip butterflies today - I didn’t manage to photograph any of that! But I did photograph Diane’s lovely selection of tulips and a few daffs.

Tulips and Daffodils

The song title is provided by Roxy Music.

Tuesday 13 April 2021

Cheat

No, it’s not cress. That, believe it or not, is a celeriac seedling.

Celeriac seedling

There are 3 or 4 like that. I'm not convinced they'll survive to planting stage but will keep them going, even though we nipped to a garden centre and they had these. Now they look a bit healthier and will be planted rather earlier than our home-germinated plants. Don't they look lovely and healthy?

Celeriac Seedlings
Talking of healthy, our site is now 100% leased, with most plots looking prepped and ready for the year ahead - a bit different from this time in 2010, when the land developer had withdrawn the idea for allotments on Marsh Lane after 1 year of being set up. Thank goodness the Council were able to negotiate a 4-year lease for us - and that was 11 years ago :-)

Marsh Lane Allotments

We were on the site at the weekend. In between snow showers the sun would come out and it was really hot - as my boss pointed out, the sun is as high now as it is at the end of August! We sowed some teasel seeds on the wildflower plot and I'm pleased to say that our bog plants from Bakker are on their way so it'll be good to get them planted out. I moved the drainpipe of mangetout seedlings outside to a cold frame as I'll (hopefully) plant them out next weekend. The weather is still far more wintry than we want in April - look what we woke up to yesterday - snowy rooftops!

Hungerford

I thought it was going to feel like a soup week, so I soaked some of my home-grown dried beans - I added celery seeds to the water which smelled lovely.

Soaking dried beans

To the stock, I added the few leaves of Cavolo Nero, that we'd grown, plus a few carrots and tomato puree, as per Shaheen's recent soup recipe. I have to admit that my soup doesn't look very pretty, but it tastes good. I wish I had mushed up some of the gigantes beans separately rather than blitzing the whole soup, though there are some whole beans at the bottom of the cup.

Remember our broad beans that got severely hit by the frost in February? They unexpectedly revitalised and now look! I hope the frosts we're having at the moment don't take them out at this stage in the game...

I have to start work now, but just one last thing... You must watch the BBC4 programme: A Year in an English Garden: Flicker & Pulse. It's so beautiful, with time-lapse and other fancy effects and just a little bit of talking - I really enjoyed it, in fact I may have to watch it again (and copy some of their ideas).

Flicker and Pulse

The song title is provided by The Clash and is because of buying seedlings from a shop. But, as I said to Forbes on site, "It's not cheating. It's common sense" ;-)