Geese

I think these are Canada geese, which probably means they aren't actually migrating, but it looks quite a wintery scene with them heading off and the low sun :-( It's only August!! Hopefully we still will see some lovely sunshine!!

Vapourer Moth caterpillar

Went up the plot this evening to pick peas for tea - very pleased to find that these later-sown ones was much better than the early ones. That is, we only found 2 with pea moth larvae - much happier podding this lot!
I also had to pick a courgette which had grown too massive over the last 2 days so that'll be going to work!
We found this amazing looking caterpillar sitting (and eating) our basil. It's the vapourer moth caterpillar, but a bit disappointed to see the moth it develops into isn't anywhere near as interesting looking. Best looking caterpillar I've ever seen though!!

Raspberry Vodka

Well, now we know that the raspberries that we inherited when we took over plot 8A are Autumn ones - they're better than the harvest we got in Spring (not that we look after them at all). I picked as many as I could and we made up Raspberry vodka (raspberries, vodka and sugar) - should be good to drink in at least 3 months...

Manure and Compost

Nantes Carrots. Congo potato plants

We spent most of the morning on the plot. My friend gave us a big bucketful of well-rotted horse manure so we've put all the compost into the black composter - it's full to the brim now - and put the manure into the green one. There's a problem with some manures at the moment, due to contamination by herbicides. For this reason we're growing a bean in the manure before we risk spreading it across our plot.
Andy's confirmed that he's seen veggies growing in the manure without curled leaves so it should be fine - GOOD!
The Congo potato plants are still looking amazing. Jamie put his hand around the roots and didn't find any potatoes - hopefully they're there though!!

Some of the cabbages have got proper heads now but there's a lot of holes and I found another cabbage white caterpillar to flick off...

Picked some carrots and onions for carrot and coriander soup for tea and pulled another Orla potato. And Dave gave us a parsnip which we'll have along with a veg roast tomorrow. We've taken all the shallots home now and will make up another small jar of pickled onions.

Pickles and things

Here are our jars of chutney and pickles - stored away for a few months now so they should be lovely for Christmas.

The seasons seem ahead of themselves this year so hopefully we'll have some sloe gin to add to our store quite soon - though some say they need to be frosted before they can be used.... We DON'T want frost yet!!

Ladybirds & a spider

We've spotted (sorry for the pun!) these two ladybirds on the plot over the last couple of days and there are masses of 7-spot ones. There's a good ladybird website and they're surveying so I sent them some info.

22-spot 

14-spot

 Oh, and Jamie found this amongst our spuds... it's crawling up his tee-shirt sleeve!!

wolf spider

Walking round a damp allotment

We walked round some of the other plots and saw Jerry's globe artichokes which have flowered - really beautiful.

Our runner beans have a few beans which have set but still really tiny, so the plan's worked so far - we didn't want green beans, runners and broad beans all at the same time. The flowers are looking brilliant and keeping the bees happy.

The raindrops on the bottom pic are quite arty :-)

Scarlet Empire F1

Rainy Sunday

We went up the plot after a rainstorm this afternoon - just to pick some veg. The potatoes are Orla and there are a few obligatory courgettes which I'll take to work - there should be a couple more ready when I want them for my dinner tomorrow evening! Also got another harvest of express french beans from our dwarf plants.

I made some carrot & coriander soup, using our lovely coloured carrots and one of our onions.

My soup recipe is always the same, just with different top 2 ingredients - this is the soups I made last weekend (measurements are very vague):

• Vegetables (e.g.4 carrots/pile of broad beans)
• Some type of herb (e.g.coriander/parsley)
• An onion cooked in butter with the herb
• 1 pint of vegetable stock
• Black pepper

Compost

These are just some of the hundreds of worms in our compost. Not sure why the one in the middle has shiny blue edges! The compost is made up of allotment waste, grass cuttings and cardboard. We've also added some really stinky comfrey juice that we were given a year ago - we added that occasionally.
We're going to leave this bin for a few months (or a year) now as we've started filling our second bin again.

Clearing legumes and spotting bugs

It wasn't a very nice morning; a bit chilly and drizzly but eventually the sun came out. We cleared weeds and also cut down the pea plants which had dried/died back and a lot of the original broad beans which had stopped producing pods and have rust - we don't want that passing to the crimson broad beans (not before the beans have been picked anyway).

We also cut the haulms (tops) off the potato plants which have died down. The Congo plants though are looking amazing - they are standing up again after the rain. We just hope the potatoes under the ground look as good as the plants and flowers!

Found a great little shield bug on the enviromesh over the sprouts - unfortunately we now know it's a Brassica Bug! Doesn't seem quite so pretty now. It'll overwinter in the ground apparently - hopefully it doesn't have too many buddies on our plot - though a lot of nibbling has happened to our purple cabbages in particular...

Eurydema oleracea

Our first Rocky cucumber will be ready to eat next week and another's on the way. Courgettes are going strong and the Balmoral patty pan is producing quite a few more sqashes.

Mostly pickling

Jamie pickled another jar of beetroot this week, again in red wine vinegar but with less demarera sugar than the previous jar.
Also pickled 2 jars of shallots, after soaking in brine for a couple of days. The shallots aren't that good - not many big bulbs. When they are cut into they break into more bulbs. Not sure whether this is because of the weather or the downy mildew, which may have stopped them forming. We did notice that the green tops grew very tall very quickly so maybe it was the soil being too rich from our compost...
Still, I'm sure the pickles will taste lovely at Christmas. The shallots we've used in other cooking have been very tasty.

Sunny Sunday

It was a beautiful day today ~24 degrees this afternoon when we were at the plot. There are masses of ladybirds, hoverflies - they love the calendula - and cabbage white butterflies. Didn't find any caterpillars on the cabbages today - we found 2 yesterday :-(

Our Congo purple potato leaves have started to lean over - this may have been because it was windy, because their stems are so big and heavy or because they are almost ready to die back (hopefully because they've reached that stage naturally, rather than through disease!!)

The sweetcorn are still small (less than 2 feet) but the male flowers have already started growing. It seems the weather may have caused short sweetcorn plants - don't know whether we'll get short cobs as a result...

Picked some more lovely coloured carrots, Orla spuds and broad beans for tea. And the obligatory courgette!

Rainbow Carrots

Made carrot and coriander soup, using our pretty multi-coloured carrots - the soup turned out orange as normal but the pinky carrot kept its colour after cooking.

French Bean Chutney

Spent a few hours this afternoon making french bean chutney - we used our shallots instead of onions and our first harvest of french beans (just managed to get 0.5kg of beans)

First Patty Pan (Balmoral)

This is our first patty pan, picked in the rain to eat, stuffed with broad beans and carrots, for my lunch.

Veggies for my mum

Really lovely hot and sunny day.  I took a trugful of veggies to my mum - pulled the last of the Rocket potatoes and so was able to squeeze 6 more leeks into the space.



We sat in the sun most of the afternoon and in the evening went back up to the plot for a bat hunt. We didn't see any though! We heard a few on the bat detector, but not many although there seemed to be plenty of moths and bugs about - perhaps the bad winter really took its toll on the bat population here :-(

Lettuce flower and nature..

This is what lettuce looks like if you let it go to seed and then leave in the ground for a year - really quite beautiful! The flowers are on long spikes of stem - over a metre tall - amazing!

And this is what I found living in our compost bin - eek! He's probably helping in some way and as long as he stays there and doesn't get too close to me then no problem!

Rather prettier was this comma buttefly I managed to snap before it took off again...

A long barby afternoon

We spent all afternoon having a barbecue. It was such a lovely day, just perfect weather!

We had shallots and courgettes from the plot but had to buy tomatoes - ours have flowers and tiny tiny fruit but it'll be a while...
I was going to pick my first patty pan but will wait and maybe have that stuffed.

Turnips planted for winter

Another warm day and annual leave meant we spent a few hours up the plot this afternoon.

We've moved some of the better looking shallots to dry onto the metal cage - we'll pickle that lot first. In the space on Plot 7 we sowed 2 rows of turnips - Atlantic and Oasis (which are melon-flavoured, apparently).
I took all the grotty-looking leaves off the onions and tickled round the bulbs and you can see they look really healthy!

The runner beans have climbed to the top of the wigwam and have lots of flowers - no sign of beans setting yet, a good job really as we've got plenty of broad beans and peas to keep us going.
Tonight we're having our first ever baked spuds from the plot - 2 lovely big Orlas.

First Orlas

It was lovely and sunny this afternoon so we spent a few hours sitting and pottering. We watered everything as the ground dries out really quickly and we haven't done a proper water for a few days.
We pulled our first Orla potato - lots of lovely big potatoes, which should be good for mashing and baking. Also picked a load of broad beans for tea.

Whilst wandering around the site I spotted this pretty gingery moth - a Ruby Tiger apparently. The whole site is covered in Cinnabar caterpillars, so expect to see a mass of the pretty red and black moths soon....

BBQ weather

The sun shone for much of the day and it was lovely and warm, so we had a barbeque on the plot - just me and Jamie, though Malcolm and Richard joined us for a bit and our neighbouring plot holders, Sue & Chris, Jane and Dave were around so it was unusually busy at our end of the allotments!

Earlier in the day we saw this Common Footman moth sitting on our potatoes.

A ladybird gets its spots!

While we were at the plot yesterday we saw that a ladybird had just emerged from his chrysalis, which you can see on the cane below him.

Over the next couple of hours his spots became clearer and here he is the end result - quite amazing!

Shallots galore

At last a lovely warm sunny day this July! We went up the plot in the morning and have laid all our shallots out to dry on a canopy for a few days - looks like we'll have plenty of pickled onions at Christmas and beyond!

We planted out the 12 french bean plants which were germinated under the cloche. We put a few in between the sweetcorn plants, but the others in the legume quarter.

The first patty pan courgette is swelling - it's meant to be white, so though you can eat them when they're small I presume I should wait for it to change colour. The green courgette is providing me with plenty for the timebeing anyway.

We've got rather behind with picking the broad beans. Will probably make some humous or find some other way of using lots of beans - broad bean soup may be interesting..

The only shed I'm allowed!

My friends at work, Cathy and Sarah, gave me this lovely cake for my birthday at the weekend!

I can't tuck into it yet - need to leave it intact to show to others :-)

Peas, peas, peas

Managed to avoid the rain while we picked peas. Loads to be picked and plenty more coming. The smaller ones seem to have managed to avoid the pea moth but there were still lots with larvae in them - urgh, makes podding a bit of a chore! Anyway, they tasted lovely along with spuds and onions.

We need to pick more broad beans - I took a load to work the other day but there are still masses more. These two butterflies were sheltering from the rain amongst the leaves.

The french beans have all sprouted in the cloche so we'll plant them out at the weekend and beans are just about big enough to pick from the 5 plants we planted out already.

Fungus Gnats

It's been really rainy over the last couple of days. We've been up to pick food but haven't done much else. Had a courgette, spring onions and chard yesterday. Today pulled a load of Rockets from just one plant (forgot to weigh them) and some lettuce and radishes.
Peas and broad beans are desperate to be picked, but we've got a cabbage from Malcolm today, so they'll have to wait till later in the week...

We took up a lot of compost today - all the broad bean pods, etc and some cardboard boxes (which is mainly what we use as brown for our compost and it works well).
There were masses of little black flies all over the wooden compost bin - fungus gnats apparently, don't seem to do any harm.

Potato, carrots and onions for tea

Picked a couple of lovely big onions, another Rocket spud and a few carrots (Early Nantes - they're so delicious!). They're all cooking (dauphinois-styly) in the oven at the moment.

The crimson broad beans have flowered - they're really beautiful and lots of different pinks and purply. I thought they'd all look the same. The beans are meant to be red in green pods, but we'll see...

Broad Beans galore and first courgettes

Jamie pickled our first lot of beetroot yesterday - in red wine vinegar.

Picked another mass of broad beans for tea and to have raw in a salad tomorrow lunchtime. The crimson broad beans are just starting to flower - I'll take a photo when a few more have bloomed.

Also picked the first 2 courgettes - they're only little and there are 2 more growing already. I'll try to keep ahead of the game, otherwise they'll be marrows within a couple of days.

Pea moth

Taken from my website for 2010 - some things don't change though

Hmm, well we did pick a lot of peas and they really WERE delicious, but podding and finding little caterpillars is REALLY unpleasant! Timing must have just been wrong when we planted the first lot as there were a lot of worms in them - ugh.
Hopefully the next lot will have escaped the moth laying period...

On the plot today...

We've sowed 2 rows of carrots where the parsnips failed - a row of Autumn King and a row of Resistafly, so they should be good for over the winter.

We pulled a Rocket potato which will do us for a couple of days and our first lot of peas for tea tonight.
We ate a couple of peas on site and there was a pea moth larvae in one (ugh), so more careful podding is required!
We got a lovely trugful of veggies today - we're going to pickle some of the beets and I'm having a broad bean salad for lunch tomorrow.