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!
Phew! That was a hot Bank Holiday weekend - how lovely to spend hours in the sunshine on the allotment again. I was pleased with this photo of a recently hatched Cinnabar moth. I particularly like the cape-like wings on this specimen.
I’d normally post this to my Allotment Wildlife Blog, but Cinnabar moths have been posted on there at least twice before; they’re a regular visitor. It’s the first one I’ve seen this year, but I'm sure many more will follow. My camera’s macro was really behaving this weekend.
These are the baby strawberries in the polytunnel - as a result of Jamie's paintbrush pollination (or maybe the abundance of flying insects in there).
And this is a Cardinal beetle - another regular on the wildlife blog as they’re so impressive. They’re not a plot enemy either.
Ok, that’s it for the macro shots. Here’s a sunny shot of our irises by the pond. Notice the may in the hedgerow, a bit later than usual this year, but still May.
I’m pleased that all the squash germinated. I started digging the trenches in the squash tunnel but only got 1metre done as this weekend was too hot for digging like that! 5 more metres to go... well, the plants have more growing to do - I'll just need to feed them prior to planting out as their modules are a bit small.
Our two Rocky cucumbers germinated too. We’re protecting them for the timebeing, we know how slugs enjoy a cucumber seedling!
I earthed-up the potatoes in bags yesterday and added a bit of potato fertiliser for good measure. We were both doing a lot of weeding and tidying - getting rid of the crazy grass edges, it makes such a difference and reduces the slug protection. I dug out some of the thistles from the HAHA wildlife plot, I know they’re good for birds and insects but we need to consider the neighbouring plots and they are rather invasive. It’s definitely greening up and the plants in the bog garden are slowly spreading.
We sowed the Scarlet Empire runner beans and Lingua di Fuoco 2 climbing borlotto beans into modules. The runner bean poles are up and I’m going to use wigwams for the borlotto and Gigantes.
The earth looks very dry, but it’s still wet under the surface. We’re still surviving on rhubarb, but look at this added luxury we had from Ivan on Sunday - it was so delicious! Thanks Ivan!
So that’s the end of the month of May. I'm looking forward to a few days off work this week - allotment all the way, hopefully. The song is by Birdy, because of the cinnabar moth.
This photo sums up yesterday’s time on the allotment; lovely warm sunshine interrupted by hefty showers which sent plotholders scattering across site to the toolshed, cars or polytunnels.
We were working on Plot3, attaching the netting to the old polytunnel frame.
This is my long-talked-about squash tunnel. Hopefully the netting is secured tight enough for the weight of the squashes (I have high hopes - dangerous, I know!)
So it’s ready and waiting for the squashes, which have nearly all germinated in a week - just 2 of the Boston seeds haven’t broken through so far. I’m planning on growing two of each type, so ten plants (Boston, Crown Prince, Festival, Honey Boat and Tromboncino). Some of them have large heavy fruits so may need additional security, but that can be sorted as and when required.
I’m excited, hope it works!
I’ve been talking to a friend about his lovely alpine garden so thought I’d take a close-up look at the succulents and houseleeks by our little pond.
They’re so pretty. I thought they were stunning enough to be considered ‘treasurer’ in the BlackBerry Garden Chelsea Fringe - what a fun idea!
The pond is nice and full but the frogs are a bit shy at the moment. It looks nice overgrown, but the bindweed needs pulling and some of the nigella otherwise that’ll cover everything else.
Here are the potatoes. We covered them on Saturday night as there was a frost risk. It seems we got away with it, though the thermometer showed 2.3° in the polytunnel.
And a few Spring onions, meals for the future come to mind.
But for the timebeing we’re still living on rhubarb 😆
Mmm, rhubarb pancakes for breakfast and the presentation gave me a song title. I like this song by Imagine Dragons, I didn’t realise this was the title. Enjoy
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.
That’s our first chive flower to open. I’m waiting for more in order to make chive flower vinegar.
And here’s the evidence that Jamie’s pollination technique worked; our first little green strawberry is on its way.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
The song title is provided by Patti Smith because I found this interesting setting on my camera. I rather like it.
So here’s the song - enjoy. By the way, I’m still none the wiser about the origin of our little clay figure...
Interesting isn't she, made of terracotta. She was dirty so must have been buried for a while.
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 ...
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 :-)
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.
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!
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.
The seedlings and weedlings are happy, finally some salad leaf is appearing.
The wildlife plot has green shoots all over it, but I wonder how much of that is from the seeds we sowed?!
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.
So yesterday, before the hail, we managed to plant the potatoes.
Just Nicola and Kestrel; some in the ground (planted using a bulb planter) and others in potato bags.
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.
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!
Eventually we got the carrots sowed - a row of Eskimo and one of Early Nantes.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 :-}
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 ;-)
