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!
Monday 8 May 2023
Vote for Me
Tuesday 2 May 2023
The Time is Now
OK, so it may not be Summer, but this is the kind of weather I like to see when I have more than a week off work! It was so beautiful yesterday after a grey start, so I’m hoping today will be the same.
The site has been very active over the long May Day weekend. People arriving with egg boxes full of spuds with the same plan as us. We haven’t gone over the top with potatoes this year. We have 2x2 Nicola in bags and these in the ground. Sarpo Mira is a maincrop with good blight resistance; Desiree is a maincrop which makes amazing mash and Nicola is a second early which is a tasty salad potato and good for mashing.
The beetroot seedlings are struggling to arrive but some of the seeds that we sowed a week ago in the polytunnel have started to appear so morning visits will be needed for opening the doors and watering if it’s going to be warm. The temperature quickly rises to over 30° in there if the Sun appears.A few more seeds sown at home this weekend are: Radish Rat’s Tails, Bush Delicata squash, Sunburst patty pan, All Green courgette, Tall Timbers sunflowers and Jack-Be-Little pumpkins. Also, lobelia which made me think that I shouldn’t have complained about the size of the Nicotiana seeds last week! And these are the parsnip seeds that I germinated on paper towel in a plastic lidded container.Monday 24 April 2023
Time for Action
The nicotiana (Tobacco plant) has the tiniest possible seeds - there they are a tiny smudge in the bottom of that miniature phial. And only 20 seeds! But I know they're a pretty flower so I hope they work.
I spent a lot of time scrambling around by the pond trying to get a 'from the bottom of the pond' style photo. I had my camera on remote control using my phone and had some tadpoles in a transparent pot. It was quite awkward and of the 20-ish photos this was the best but isn't quite what I was aiming for ... oh well, perhaps I'll try again another day.
But I thought this gelatenous outline was quite interesting on this shot.Anyway, enough about tadpoles! Here's an arty photo of purple sprouting brocolli and chive flower buds which formed part of my meal the other night.
I used one of the frozen bean burgers that I made a few weeks ago. I squashed it flat like a pancake; it still fell apart, but I really like the flavour of borlotti beans.
At 3pm yesterday everyone (almost) reached for their phones as we received our first ever Government 'Emergency Alert' - great, what a hopeful new advance for the 21st Century...😕Oh well, it gave me an excuse to use this song by Secret Affair. Let's hope we never have to hear the alert alarm again.
Monday 17 April 2023
Jump Around
The weekend wasn't as sunny as we'd hoped and we only visited the allotment on Sunday. We needed to pick some purple sprouting brocolli.
As you can see we also picked some rhubarb. The stems are rather thin from our plant on Plot3 but we thought it was worth a taster before the large plant on Plot8 provides us with more substantial stems. The psb was delish though.
The mangetout is growing pretty well, I'll leave it in the polytunnel for a bit longer before moving outside a week or two prior to planting out. We've put up our inner-polytunnel for added protection for our seeds which we intend to start sowing next weekend. No sign of the beetroot germinating outside yet.
Our grafted pepper plants have arrived: Sweet Eternity, Sweet Solario and Sweet Campor. They're enjoying the kitchen window for a few weeks but we have to move them if the Sun shines too brightly.So, as that was a rather short, dull post (like the weekend 😏) I spent time writing a blogpost about frogs on my Wildlife on The Allotment blog - why not hop over and take a look <snigger>
The song title is provided by House of Pain (don't judge me, like my work colleagues did when I shared my screen and the video was shared with them all 😁 Well, they shouldn't have called me when I was having my lunch 😂)Tuesday 11 April 2023
These Days
What a welcome long Easter weekend that was! The site was full of plotholders each day and it was great to chat to newcomers and old-timers, like us 🤭
The rain stopped for a couple of days so on Saturday we managed some digging - where the carrots and parsnips will be grown this year. It was so warm even I was down to short sleeves. The birds were singing and one of the robins has found a mate to feed. There were quite a few butterflies on site including brimstones, peacocks, whites and tortoiseshells.
This is a comma butterfly with its wings closed. The little white mark is why it’s called a comma - funny isn’t it? The most striking thing about it is the wing shape; I’d expect it to have a name associated with that!
There were other interesting insects about too, including masses of bee flies and mining bees of different varieties. I managed to get some nice close-ups of these three. Based on data from various sources I'm pretty sure the ids are correct - more photos and info on my Allotment Wildlife Blog.
Strong winds started on Saturday but it was still mostly sunny and it was warm enough for crop trousers. We burned a lot of gathered up wood and cuttings which finally had a chance to dry out. The wind was carrying the wind through the hedge to the canal, rather than towards our neighbours. We couldn’t have done it yesterday (Sunday) as the wind force was significantly higher and it rained again 🙄
Jamie's planted up two strawberry plants into tomato bags, with a pot to water through in each bag. We're hoping that the three bags and black covering will curtail the bindweed which is growing underneath in the original strawberry bed... We'll see, but at least should get a few more strawberries this year.That freshly cleared patch now has a row of beetroot - I sowed them quite thickly as I enjoyed the early thinnings in salads last year and hope to eat the beets while they're small. I sowed mangetout into guttering in the polytunnel a week ago and it's just beginning to germinate. Along with other digging, clearing and weeding in various spots, the garlic got a chicken manure feed and we had some more tasty purple sprouting broccoli to harvest.
And these were some beanburgers I made at the end of March, with stored borlotti beans, fresh chives and shop-bought peppers - to be honest, they need a bit more seasoning so the two remaining I will have with some sort of spicy tomato sauce, but they look nice 😏
Song provided by Nico, aah these days.... and now, back to work.