Hedging Day

It was the first visit to the allotment for a week and it was a foggy start. The last week has been noticeably darker in the morning but I didn't think it was particularly cold. However, there had clearly been a frost - the squashes have definitely had it now.

Frosted squash

Something had enjoyed the last of our Rocky cucumbers! Not sure if it was a mouse or a slug - or a few of each!


Just hollowed-out skins left

We didn't do anything to our plot today (though I had intended to plant garlic) as it was a HAHA workday. And when the fog had cleared it was a lovely sunny day for it.
We cut back the hedging which was growing through the rabbit fencing and strimmed some of the overgrown communal areas. It was quite exhausting but a nice way to spend the day, though there was some guilt in cutting off the lovely rosehips and other berries - we left plenty for the birds though. It's been so wet recently that we got soaked by the dripping hedge but managed to finish all the way round the site.


Zoe and Alison

The brambles, hawthorn, ivy and other cuttings were piled onto the communal area and Jamie and I attempted to burn it...

Firestarter/Smoke breather

Unfortunately there was more smoke than fire and the wet green cuttings were really not wanting to burn so we've left the big pile to dry off for a bit (hopefully we'll get the Indian summer we've read about).

The barbecue was rather more successful and made for a welcome break for a chat - shame for the workers who couldn't stay for the grub though!

Hmmm, leek moth and lifecycles

Well, I clearly should have looked closer when I photographed the leeks yesterday! We have got some leek moth damage (not too much) and today we found several leek moth cocoons, which we disposed of, away from our leeks - hopefully our little robin will gobble them down! It would appear that the leek moth caterpillars had sneaked under our leek netting cage.



Leek moth cocoon

If these do develop into moths they'll be the parents that start the cycle to trash our alliums next Spring :-(
Talking of which, we visited the local Wyevale Garden Centre to buy a fork - they didn't have any!! - but I did buy a Solent White garlic bulb. So, we dug over the area by the leeks and hoed some chicken pellets in - we'll plant the garlic next weekend. I think there should be about 10 cloves.



Hoe hoe hoe (sorry!)

There are still quite a few butterflies about. Though it was cold enough for a frost last night it's lovely and warm in the sunshine. This small tortoiseshell butterfly was warming itself on the stones and there were a lot of cabbage whites about too. From the patterns on the outside of the wings I think it's a male. According to UK Butterflies, tortoiseshells stay in the UK and hibernate in outbuildings or hollow trees.

When we picked one of the cabbages early last month we took a tip from Liz and Ken on the allotment - they're long-term veg gardeners and know loads of tips. If you cut a cross into the remaining stem you can get extra cabbages to grow - well, this is the result. Not quite cabbages but certainly brassica leaves that can be eaten. We'll try them at some point if we get a chance while they still look edible.

The weeds continue to grow, we have a lot more weeding and clearing to do, especially with the rain and warm sunny days we keep seeing...

We picked two of the biggest celeriac and the last of the kohl rabi and sweetcorn. We rushed home to eat the sweetcorn within 20 minutes to ensure they retained as much sweetness as possible - it worked they were delish!!

Clearing through the showers

As soon as we arrived at the site it started to rain - we really should try to move faster on a Saturday morning!! There were a few heavy showers throughout the afternoon but we escaped to the container with Neal and Malcolm for one of them and managed to work through the others. Sadly, our umbrella that I was so proud of a few weeks ago, broke on it's second outing :-(



Rain's a-coming

Jamie cleared the area where the onion netted cage is - we're going to sow some Aqua Dulce broad beans in there over Winter. We're hoping they'll survive better than they did last year. Kerry told us that she protected hers with enviromesh and got a good early crop this year, so we thought we may as well give it a go. Jamie added some chicken manure pellets to the ground and hoed it in well.


Not a great pic, but I like the shadow of this black wasp

I cleared the cabbage patch. We had one giant cabbage left and one little one. They've gone over though - have black tainting along the inside of the leaves so they went into the compost bin, apart from the stems which would take far too long to rot down (so the Council gets them).

The leeks are looking quite good, even with the rust. Quite a few people have leek moth damage but the enviromesh seems to have saved ours so far. Our ones from Malcolm, which aren't under netting, also seem to be doing alright - he said his look better on the side that's protected by the runner beans so maybe ours are protected by the marigolds and the carrot netting on the other side.

The temperature in the last few days has still only gone down to 4.5° - the courgette plant has succumbed but still hasn't collapsed completely. And the Cornells Bush Delicata has still not been frosted so they're still ripening up.

This is evidence of mice in our raised bed - look at those little teeth marks! They really like beetroot! Our sweetcorn seem to be ok but pheasants have desecrated other plotholders crops :-( We'll probably pick the last of ours tomorrow.

Beautiful day in between the showers

HAHA Seed Night

We held the HAHA Seed Evening & Get Together on a wet Monday evening. Not many turned out which was a shame but we had a good time up the legion. I had arranged a quiz but that's been saved to be used another time when there are more people to make up teams!

Instead we had a few drinks and a nice couple of hours of chat. We had an interesting discussion about the best potatoes - so many different opinions and this year was such a poor year to base a decision on!
We picked up the 2012/13 Kings Seeds catalogue - they've printed in colour, it looks so much better than the black and white one and is surely more enticing to buy from :-)
As members of HAHA we get an excellent 40% discount off all their seeds.

Kings Seeds Facebook page

So, Jamie and I now need to go through that and decide what we want. We have so many old seeds at home but many of those will be from 2009 when we first got the allotment and bought everything we saw :-) It's time to actually start planning...

First Sprouts and Kohl Rabi

We had a few hours on the plot this afternoon - mostly socialising and a bit of HAHA chat but also did what we intended to do. We took the fleece off the squash. The temperature had got down to 3.5° so the squash are fine but the Leonaris has succombed a bit and the asters are flat to the ground :-(

We pulled the sprout plant which had the mouldy section. I tried to pull it in one go but it snapped so not sure it would have stayed intact much longer anyway! We got quite a few sprouts from it which will go into bubble and squeak tomorrow.

We also pulled a few of the kohl rabi - I forgot to sow the next lot of succession but as the slugs are starting to eat them it's not a bad thing! We grew some in 2009 and 2010 but they have always got ravaged before we can eat them - that's why they're under mesh this year.We should have another harvest and then that area can be cleared - it should be where I'm putting fruit trees in next year..

I also pulled the last good carrots - two are really good; the other two would have been perfect for the funniest veg competition in September!!
All our onions are gone so my carrot and coriander soup is being made with spring and silverskin onions - I'm not sure they'll add much flavour, but waste not want not...! I'm using coriander seeds which I picked and dried yesterday.
The last thing in the trug is two Atlantic turnips (thanks Malcolm!) - we swapped a kohl rabi for them. That's another great thing about the allotment - swapping and freebies!

October Clearing

We had a lovely sunny afternoon on the allotment today. We had the place to ourselves for half the time but after lunch more plotholders turned up.



Cleared potatoes

The picture shows the potato quarter with no potatoes left (just the leeks). We pulled the last couple of Chopin plants today. Got some good-sized spuds but slug holes a-plenty - just hope there's enough potato left to cover two dinners!

Cleared runner beans

Most of the time today was spent clearing - such a shame, but it is October (though it didn't feel like it at 17° in the sunshine). Jamie saved the last of the tomatoes and cleared the three plants - it wasn't worth saving the green toms this year as they're rather blighty, but the plants did do fantastically well for us. The tomato plants couldn't go to compost because of the blight, so they went home to the Council recycle bins.
I cleared the runner beans and put them in our green compost bin - I transferred the contents of the green one into the black bin first and gave it a good mix up.


The Cornells Bush Delicata squash are looking good, we have about 8 squashes which are ripening nicely. There's a risk of frost tonight and because we really want these to ripen a bit more before they get frosted we wrapped them up with fleece for the night. It's surprising that they haven't already got frosted - seems that our plots may be being protected because of the hedge/stone piles/canal (take your pick!) because other people's squashes were frosted a couple of weeks ago. I had to scrape off the car windscreen again during the week so I was expecting the worst.


 

We got everything sorted, chatted with our fellow gardeners then made a quick exit with the trug so that we could eat our sweetcorn as soon as possible after picking it!

The two biggest sweetcorn hadn't formed kernels right to the end but were delicious and plenty big enough. We had to have the third one because the plant had fallen down - the cob wasn't really ready but we scoffed it anyway :-)

Fruits and Diseases

We had a lovely few hours on the plot today. When we first arrived there were a lot of butterflies around as it was sunny and pleasant. Jamie got down on his knees for some serious weeding around our leeks.

Whilst weeding he noticed that we have rust appearing on quite a few of the leaves. Rust (Puccinia allii) on leeks is apparently quite common and the fungus spreads due to poor air circulation (the usual humidity problem on our plots) and is often worse on nitrogen-rich soils with low potassium - not sure whether this would be the case with our potato quarter... It doesn't look very nice but shouldn't have a big impact on the actual leeks - we may remove some of the worst affected leaves.

Rust

I was dead-heading and ripping up cardboard to add to the compost - we have so much green going in there at the moment and not very much brown. I also cleared yellowing leaves from the sprouts - this helps with air circulation and prevents disease - though we're a bit late with one of the plants which has gone really mouldy, but luckily hasn't spread to the other plants. We'll be pulling that this week or next weekend.

Strawberries round Marsh Lane have been great this year - and they're still going for it!

Sadly I can't say the same for my raspberries which I transplanted this year - they're very sporadic. Hopefully next year they'll be better...

 We've had some lovely peppers though and took some home with the last of our onions - not sure how much we'll get to eat from them - and Red Duke of York and Chopin spuds.

 

 

Loads of interesting wildlife

There was a lot of wildlife around today. Mostly hoverflies and some lovely butterflies but I also saw a stoat (pretty sure it was a stoat). It ran really fast across one plot then made a flying leap into stingers on another plot!
The radish flowers and calendula are still attracting most of the insects. This noon fly probably arrived on site with someone's manure!


A noon fly - great gold face!

A colour-match hoverfly!

Jamie spotted a mass of these tiny caterpillars on the raspberries. I think they're Yellow Tail moth caterpillars but again I'm checking on the Wild About Britain forum. They're great looking though! Will check how much bigger they are tomorrow. Correction: This is a Dark Dagger moth caterpillar!

 Neal was working his plot next door to us  and found this hairy caterpillar.

It looks rather like a ruby tiger moth caterpillar we found before but it's a different colour. I'm checking this on the forum too to see if they agree with my identification. Correction: This is a Buff Ermine moth caterpillar!

Wild About Britain is a brilliant site. So full of knowledge and willing to share. It's brilliant to share pics and get beasties identified.

Lastly we found this common green shield bug. It's slightly more mature than the one we found on 1st September and is getting more green.

Good Housekeeping has arrived!

I was sent the Good Housekeeping magazine (Nov 2012 edition) today. My piece is in there (Page 31) - funny, I couldn't remember exactly what I'd been dressed in for the pic. I also don't quite remember saying some of the words but it's not too embarrassing! Luckily as everyone at work and beyond knows about it!!
Here's a sneak peek but I'd better not scan it just yet...

 

Sussex Cousins & Seedy Onions

Here are the photos of my cousins (Jen & Steve, Paula, Jamie & Julia) visit to our plot on Sunday.

it really was extremely wet!



Thank Goodness for the Calendulas to provide brightness

Huddling for warmth





Our wet plot



Excellent photos courtesy of 'Cousin Jen' - thank you :-)

On a drier note, this is why you should pull your onions more quickly.
Or, if your onions go to seed just let them flower, after all they do have a pretty flower and the seeds can be used as flavouring if not for sowing.

These went in the bin as there wasn't enough onion flesh to use. Also, one side was full of stinky onion water :-(

Admin and sweet, sweet, sweetcorn

I was on leave today so spent the morning doing allotment computing stuff. I'm back on the HAHA (Hungerford Allotment Holders Association) committee as communications officer so had some stuff to do following yesterday's event; I updated the HAHA website and waiting list - we had a new person to add to the list (we've got 13 waiting for a Marsh Lane plot now) and updated the Marsh Lane Facebook page.

I also needed to contact the plotholders and a couple of visitors to the HAHA stall.
Ellie Thompson, a wood turner from The Treen Workshop was interested in the paper pot maker. We always get a lot of interest in it at events. However, we've found that our pot maker is a bit too small so we were talking about a larger one and I asked her if she could make a longer one suitable for sweetpeas.

In the afternoon I joined Jamie at the rather cold plot. He'd been deadheading and watered the strawberries - which sounds rather odd given the amount of rain we've had, but they are newly planted so need a bit of help! He also picked as many orangey tomatoes as he could find and we're redding them up at home under our LED grow-light.

I took a load of cardboard up and added to the compost with kitchen waste. I picked some carrots and courgettes and a couple of onions to make some soup. The onions are ones that flowered. Although the tops were chopped off as soon as possible the stems are weird and bulbous - it gives the onions a hard centre (Steve's information from yesterday) but I can chop round that for my soup.

Finally, we picked the two biggest sweetcorn and rushed home to get them boiled as quickly as possible. They really are super-sweet and so delicious with butter - mmmm

There were a few missing kernels but not many!

 

A Busy Weekend

Apart from work I try to avoid having busy days, so having two busy days over a weekend is very unusual for me. My idea of 'busy' on Saturday actually meant spending a few hours at a great family party!

The Garston Gallopers with party-goers

On Sunday it was the Hungerford Food Festival where HAHA had a stall so Jamie and I were there to help Ted and Kerry set up.


Wet weather didn't deter the crowds

Hundreds of people turned up even though the weather was absolutely awful; pouring with rain and chilly. The HAHA stall was placed at the top of some busy stairs so had a lot of passing visitors and it was a fun day. We had plenty of veg and jars of pickles, chutneys and jams from plotholders to show off. We also had out usual paper potters for people to make a pot - previously we've had runner beans to sow but yesterday we had 'pot up a viola'.

Julia, Jamie, my mum, Jen and Steve

During time away from the stall Jamie and I met up with my cousins from Sussex who had been to the party. Jen, Steve (who work the Freshwinds Garden), Paula, Jamie and Julia braved the awful weather and had a tour of the plot. I should have taken a photo but was too cold (hopefully Jen will let me use one our two of hers ~ Jen?!!) They've seen the plot through the blog and I was concerned that my photos make it look more impressive than it is! Luckily it was looking ok though, with quite a few veggies still growing, like the sweetcorn, celeriac, squash, calendula, kohl rabi and even the sweetpeas are still in flower. Our squashes have survived the cold temperatures so far (except the cucumber), though other squashes on site have died back.

After the site tour we returned to the food festival - I won a prize in the raffle! - and then we went home to have salsify (thanks Jerry!). I liked it, it had quite a subtle flavour -we had it with parsley sauce. You have to soak in acidified water after peeling and chopping to stop it going black and slimy. It's back on my planting list for next year  :-)