Our patch of earth

Green fingers

2010-08-11T16:31:00.006+01:00

After pinching the growing tips off our tomato plants I now have an idea as to where that phrase came from...

The tomatoes are just starting to ripen and for once - hurrah! - we seem to have a healthy crop with no signs of The Dreaded Blight. (Touch wood). We've got a veritable field of tomato plants... well, a small field at least, which is good as they're all helping to prop each other up! (Some of our stakes aren't quite big enough!) The yellow cherry tomatoes are ripening first, with the red cherry and red standard ones close behind. The giant beef tomatoes which Frank gave us are getting HUGE but most are still green - a few just showing an orange blush. The smaller ones were red so I've picked 'em.

Sorry I haven't got the varieties to hand, maybe I'll let you know what's what next time.

The courgettes are also doing pretty well, especially as they've been a bit neglected as we've been away for the last four weekends, so they're surviving on fleeting evening visits from us and whatever rain they get. I'm trying to pick them before they get too large and watery.

The sweetcorn is growing well, but we were a bit late with it this year, so I doubt they'll get large enough to pollinate each other and ripen the cobs. Oh well. And the squash and pumpkin plants are also doing well, with a few summer squash on the way.

Summertime

2010-07-27T20:51:00.010+01:00

Quick quick QUICK get some stuff on there about June before July's nearly over...!

Have you noticed I don't have the inclination to blog as much as I did? I think it's 'cos the novelty's worn off. The learning curve of having an allotment has levelled out and it's not quite as exciting digging up potatoes the third, fourth and fifth time around as it was the first or second. And my gut feeling is that there are only so many times you guys out there want to read about my potatoes... so it's more of a struggle to turn on the computer and tap away. So, apologies, but that's just the way it is right now. Plus, it's summer, for goodness sake! No one in their right minds really wants to spend time at a computer when the evenings are long and warm(ish) and there's the possibility of a barbeque and a cool beer in the garden.

Ah, the garden. Brings me on to my first piece of June news. The chickens are no more. That's right, we are now chicken-less, but garden-rich. I hadn't realised how much space the chooks took up! Ellie got egg bound, we think, and unfortunately didn't make it. We'd decided that once another chicken died we'd call it a day for now, otherwise we'd just keep ending up with one older and one younger chicken - a never-ending cycle of replacing chickens! So Peggy Sue got adopted by a lovely little old lady in a nearby village, who has three-quarters of an acre, a large veggie plot and about 50 other chickens, all living out their days free-range in the countryside. The good life, eh?

Now, back to the allotment. June started with a break-in - someone wrenched the hinges off our shed doors and about a dozen others down on the plot. Nothing major was taken - just our camping stove, coffee pot, kettle and radio - but it was a bit of a shock. Not as bad as it could have been, mind you, as a few years ago someone had their shed burnt down to the ground...

Veggie-wise, we've had peas, broad beans, potatoes, onions and garlic so far. The tomatoes are just starting to ripen, as well as the cougettes, pumpkins and squash. The damson tree looks good - lots of fruit - so there'll be more damson gin made this autumn! And the big blackberry bush along the side of the plot is also bursting with fruit, just ripening in the sun, so again, it'll be blackberry vodka. Possibly the tastiest flavoured alcohol type concoction I've ever made. (Please note, I'm not actually an alcoholic, it's just that sticking slightly tart fruit into cheap alcohol with a shed-load of sugar is damn tasty. And possibly one of your five-a-day... wishful thinking, eh?)

We tried making elderflower champagne at the start of June, using a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe, but it was a bit of a disappointment. Lots and lots of fizz, but not much taste, so we're having to add some of our elderflower cordial to it for a bit of flavour.

What else... oh, the raspberry bushes are taking over (eek) and after all my faffing about last year with parsnip seeds on kitchen paper and in warm places and in toilet rolls, this year I just chucked some in the soil and loads have germinated. We've also got beetroot, swede and some crappy carrots. (really can't do carrots - any tips?)

Enjoy the summer everyone... will be back soon...

May... oh my.

2010-06-07T21:55:00.010+01:00

It's gone, already, hasn't it. We're halfway through the year and I don't even feel like 2010 has really started yet!

So here's an update on the month that was May...

We had purple sprouting broccoli. And Lo! it was goo-o-od.

The strawberries started flowering. Pollinate, bees, pollinate!

The rhubarb went a bit crazy. We had to give loads away, and then make more rhubarb-and-orange-flavoured vodka. Mmm... ready in a couple of months...

We got new neighbours over the other side of the crookedy fence. I'll try not to mind that their new shed shades our garlic bed in the afternoon.

At the start of the month we sowed a whole load of seeds - sweetcorn, green and yellow courgette, cucumber, butternut squash and a few different varieties of winter squash. Along with the tomato and pepper plants they’re in our tiny plastic greenhouse at home, but will be heading outside onto the plot any day. We’re a bit behind with these - most of the other allotmentholders have already got their tomatoes and squash in the ground. But a nice lady from the next plot along gave us three summer squash plants and another butternut, and Frank The Italian gave us some tomato plants (he'd already planted 300!), so hopefully we’ll have a few things which are in line with everyone else!

Our broad beans are flowering, and our peas and French beans are growing steadily. I built a complicated bird-deterrent using netting, canes, string and plastic bags (which I home will flap and rustle in a threatening manner) so hopefully that’ll keep off the pigeons.

Onions and garlic also growing away, as well as our potatoes - which got a bit frosted at the start of the month but seem to have recovered well. The 2 elephant garlic look like leeks! God only knows how big the cloves will be!

And generally, day to day, we’ve been fighting with the weeds that are continually trying to take over.

Oh... stuff

2010-04-29T21:22:00.005+01:00

Wow, look, there I go again, getting on with everyday life and forgetting about my poor blog. I seem to have lost enthusiasm for posting right now. Maybe it's work related, maybe it's cos there's not much new going on. But I don't feel like I have much to say. Not that will interest anyone else, anyway. We'll see. Hopefully I'll perk up again soon.

But we have been doing stuff down at the allotment, honest... just not for a couple of weeks.

Just over a fortnight ago we planted our potatoes - first and second earlies. We also did a lot of weeding and hoeing, but still the dandylions come. We've also sown tomatoes and peppers, and any day now we'll get around to doing squash and courgette as well as some salads to grow in windowboxes at home. Adam pottered off one evening and got some seed trays, pots and compost, so there's nothing stopping us now.

And.. urrr...

Maybe for the next little while I'll just try posting more pics and less words.

Bear with me...

Family fun

2010-04-06T20:10:00.001+01:00

Our folks came to the allotment on Easter Sunday on what seems to be becoming a bit of a tradition - bacon sandwiches, tea and coffee and an Easter egg hunt for grown ups.

Instead of an Easter egg...

2010-04-03T11:29:00.000+01:00

... I gets tulips. Yey!

All systems go!

2010-03-29T20:37:00.005+01:00

I know, I know, rubbish, rubbish me. Where does the time go? All I have in my defence for being a useless blogger during the month of March is a crazy departmental restructure at work, meaning more work for me and even less inclination to sit in front of a computer screen for any more hours than I'm paid to.

So sorry, blog, you got neglected there. Again.

We spent a couple of hours on Saturday and more than a couple of hours on Sunday at the allotment. Did a whole lot of weeding (where do they all suddenly come from?!?) and sowing, and planting, which was nice.

So we now have....

A bed of white and a bed of red onion sets.
A big bed of broad beans, which we're going to try and pick when they're small this time, so they're not as tough-skinned as last year. Yuk.
A small salad bed with a row of little gem lettuce and a row of radish - beetroot seeds are ready and waiting to be sown next week.
A big row of chard and 2 rows of spinach.A whole load of slightly rotten-in-the-middle cauliflowers. Grr.
4 garlic beds with about a million different varieties, all growing well - although only one of the two elephant garlic cloves has so far emerged.
Raspberry canes and a gooseberry bush both just showing new shoots.
16 transplanted strawberry plants so now the overgrown middle of the plot can be properly dug over... finally.
2 artichoke plants. Spiky.
Lots of red cabbage, getting there slowly.
Leeks of various sizes. Give it another month and a couple of them may finally be edible.
Purple sprouting broccoli which is not yet sprouting. We don't seem to have that much luck with brassicas.
And three trays of potatoes, chitting under the dining room window.

And the damson tree's just about to blossom. No late frosts, please!

Crusty

2010-03-03T17:40:00.001Z

I bought Adam the River Cottage 'Bread' book for Christmas.

Best. Gift. Ever.

Now he keeps making things like this:

Fresh bread with Mum's scrumptious greengage jam.

Deeee-lish...

Hurry up spring

2010-02-28T15:49:00.000Z

It keeps raining at weekends, that's the trouble.

Then when it clears up for a while the allotment seems like too much hassle, muddy as it is.

Last weekend Adam went for a visit and a bit of a dig.

And took the camera so I could see what's going on down there.

I've been neglectful, really. Even if neglectful isn't a real word.

I keep thinking it's spring, and then it's not, again.

There's a bit of garlic, and rhubarb... but, hurry up spring.

Considering cabbages.

2010-02-07T08:29:00.004Z

You know, all you're going to see from our plot for the next month or so are pictures of brassica leaves.

They're the only things of any interest at the moment, and I'm strangely fascinated by them.

They've got pink bits on, for goodness sake! Pink bits!

How lovely.

Some of the garlic that Adam planted last Autumn is starting to shoot, but really, that's about it. We haven't yet chosen any seeds, bought potatoes to chit or decided what we do and don't want to do this year.

2010 has caught us on the hop. I'm. Just. Not. Ready!

Snapshot

2010-02-06T07:54:00.001Z

Wow.

Mangocheeks at Allotment 2 Kitchen has tagged me for a Favourite Photo Meme. That's lovely. But also REALLY difficult to do! Thinking about which photo to select has made me realise how lucky I am - from having Adam and my friends and family, to enjoying open spaces, fresh air, fresh food, and great holidays, even keeping chickens - they all represent different aspects of a wonderful whole. Which is great, as 2010 hasn't been that brilliant so far. So thanks for making me think, Mangocheeks!

Ok, so an hour later, after scrolling through many more photos than I thought I had, here's my favourite picture (of the moment):

We went away to stay at a yurt in the Cotswolds last May, to celebrate us being together for ten years. The yurt was in its own little forest, in the middle of farmland, and was totally secluded. At night, the only light was from candles, the shower was a watering can hanging on the branch of a tree, and the toilet was a hole in the ground behind a willow screen. It was all pretty basic. At the time this photo was taken we'd been there all of ten minutes, but a campsite's not complete without a good campfire! I've never seen Adam more content than when roaming around 'our' forest with his axe, looking for suitable burning materials! The fact we had to start a fire and wait 15 minutes for the iron kettle to boil for any cup of tea forced us to slow down and take it easy. And you know what - it was a fantastic escape from real life. Which we all need now and again.

I'd love to go back.

Chill

2010-01-11T16:09:00.000Z

Wow, it's still cold. Though the snow's starting to melt a bit. The red cabbage doesn't seem to want to let go of that last bit of ice.

Not a lot going on at the plot at the moment. But we've had some seed catalogues through the post so I guess it's that time of year again for looking back at what worked and what didn't, what tasted great, and what didn't, and planning and dreaming for the future.

brr.

Pictures galore!

2010-01-06T16:11:00.006Z

As promised, dear readers, here are some pictures from Christmas...

Here's the garlic, under its thin blanket of snow:

And Oh! What's this hiding away?

Could it be...?

It is! A parsnip! Small, but perfectly(ish) formed.

But wait! There's more!

Parsnip number two!!!

I was most pleased.

And on another note, this is why chickens are called 'chicken'...

"What on earth...?!?!? No, I don't think so thank you. It looks far too cold."

Happy 2010!

2010-01-05T13:42:00.006Z

Oh look, we seem to have vanished for a while there. Been busy-busy over Christmas, what with family, friends, birthdays and weekends at the seaside to fit in, but a belated Merry Christmas to you all, and best wishes for 2010!

There. Done the important bit.

So, we went down to the plot on Christmas morning to gather carrots and parsnips for lunch. And the parsnips were GREAT! The surviving two from my epic battle last spring to get the darn things to germinate were big enough, slightly gnarly, covered in mud, and truly delicious.

But! The brussels sprouts were rubbish. ("I'm not angry, just disappointed".) They're still only about 6 inches high, or 8 at a push, with the teeniest sprouts ever. Maybe we'll have some to eat in June...

What else... well, the garlic is still tucked up, hopefully not rotting in the soil and not killed outright by the days of snow. The red cabbage, cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli are also still growing away nicely, and not nibbled by pigeons.

I'll put some more pics on here later, I promise.

For now, you'll just have to enjoy a shot of our slightly bedraggled chickens after enjoying a 'dust' bath in the mud.

Eleanor Rigby ('Ellie') on the left, and Peggy Sue ('Pegs') shaking her comb on the right.

Festive

2009-12-14T18:49:00.001Z

Foraged, picked, bottled and stored in the summer...

...now decanted and ready for Christmas. The blackberry vodka is par-TICK-ularly tasty :)

I'm starting to feel festive.

Catching up

2009-12-13T17:16:00.014Z

Well, we're back from two weeks in the Indian sun. Now surrounded at home by a few heaps of washing, half-empty suitcases and a selection of hastily-organised Christmas gifts. (Note to self - if returning from holiday on a Sunday evening, consider booking the Monday off work too. Otherwise a week of exhaustion follows.)

Popped down to the allotment this afternoon, the first chance we've had since getting back from Goa. And everything seemed fine! The chilly weather has meant that the weeds haven't taken over as feared, though some of the grass is sneakily encroaching on the edges of the beds.

Last week my Garlic Lovers' Pack arrived (yey!)

So today we planted out about 100 individual cloves - nine different garlic varieties. Actually, ten, if you also count the garden-centre-bought garlic which Adam planted before we went away.

So we have ...

Elephant Garlic - two MASSIVE cloves!
Solent Wight
Aquila Wight
Early Large Purple Wight
Lautrec Wight
Iberian Wight
Provence Wight
Chesnok Wight
Albigensian Wight
and a random white variety from the garden centre. Can't find the label...

Here's Adam preparing four beds down at the bottom of the plot. And all four now have garlic in... That's going to be a lot of garlic!

And in other non-garlic-related news, the brassicas are doing well - the red cabbage especially is looking great. The brussels sprouts, however, are tiny! I'm not sure what's gone wrong this year but I doubt we'll have any to eat for Christmas. The plants are about 6 inches high and - although they're healthy-looking, the sprouts are about the size of a pea!

Ooogosh again!*

2009-11-18T09:23:00.011Z

*Or, Slightly overwhelmed by all the excitement!

Excitement? I hear you ask... What excitement?

Well, there's a much-looked-forward-to holiday fast approaching, with all the sorting, organising, planning and packing that involves when heading off to somewhere that's 32 degrees and has palm trees. And if that wasn't exciting enough, I took a look at Our Patch Of Earth to find...

...an award!Woo!

Thanks very much to Gary at Reads Allotment Retreat, it's very much appreciated! And also slightly strange to think there are People Out There reading and, I assume, returning time and time again to an insignificant blog that little ol' me wrote about chickens and vegetables! Funny old world...

And, here are the rules:
Post the award on your blog (including the above picture) along with the name of the person who passed it on to you and link to their blog. Choose 15 blogs which you have recently discovered and you think are great and pass it on to them. Don't forget to leave a comment on their blog to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Now, at the risk of being a party-pooper, I'm gonna have to do my own set of nominations when I'm back from sunnier climes in a couple of weeks. I think it deserves a little more thought and attention than I have to spare right now this minute.

And in other news.

I often visit a great site at Fennel and Fern and, on a whim, I recently entered a Garlic Giveaway - a competition to win a Garlic Lover's Growing Pack from the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm, with nine (count them!) different types of garlic - that's enough cloves to make about 100 new plants.

And I WON!!! Yey!

So I think it's only fair to say a MASSIVE thankyou to Isabel at Fennel and Fern for running the competition, and to Darren at the Garlic Farm, who was kind enough to call me this morning to discuss the merits of garlic, top tips on growing conditions and when to deliver my prize (my Prize! Eeee!). I look forward to it!

And so to pack... Anon, chums...

Ooogosh!

2009-11-09T22:35:00.004Z

I just wanted to share the wonder of raindrops on brassica leaves...

I won't take them for granted any more.

PS: I love my camera.

Disheartened

2009-10-29T22:10:00.004Z

I have been remiss. Updates are not appearing on here as thick and fast as they should probably be. But there, look, I only posted once last October, so this is a vast improvement. And anyway, not much has been going on this month. Or at least, not much has been going on that I've been tempted to blog about.

We're onto chicken no. 5. A couple of weekends ago Lola had a cough on the Saturday, wheezed on the Sunday, and was dead on the Monday morning. Even as we were discussing the possibility of finding a chicken-certified local vet. And Lola! Good ol' faithful, had-since-the-beginning Lola! There were tears, as I wrapped her in newspaper...

I've put off blogging about it this long because our apparent lack of ability to keep chickens alive had me feeling somewhat ashamed, embarrassed, guilty, sad, angry... they were never supposed to be pets, exactly, but then they're not supposed to blimmin' well die so fast either. What are we doing wrong?!! Ah well. We discussed getting rid of Peggy Sue and becoming chickenless again (after all, where the run had been would make a fantastic veggie patch - all that poo!), but then a Saturday impulse led to us getting as-yet-unnamed-but-possibly-called-Alice.

I know. Don't say anything. I'm still not entirely convinced it was the right thing to do. At least they have a fairly pampered life with us while they plot their numerous escapes and pop out eggs every day before their untimely demise.

And I can keep working my way through the cupcake recipe book my sister got me for my birthday...

Harvest

2009-10-18T13:58:00.007+01:00

We needed a wheelbarrow to take our tatties home today. Ok, not a massive wheelbarrow, but still, not bad for a couple of hours' work in the sunshine, and it feels like we've got all this food for free!

As Adam re-insulated the composte heaps with lots of dry grass, I picked the last of the tomatoes and the squash. Then we spent an hour or so digging up the last potato bed, and we ended up with half a barrowfull of Cara potatoes, as well as nearly a dozen winter and butternut squash, a bag of tomatoes and another big handful of dried borlotti beans.

I'm looking forward to eating these. They're not massive, but perfect for a meal for two, which is great as, well, we are two, and we eat meals. They should keep pretty well - especially if we can cure them a bit more in the sunshine - but that iddy biddy one on top isn't going to see the inside of a cupboard, as it's going to be roasted along with potatoes (ours), carrots, swedes and parsnips (all not ours, sadly) and a pheasant from the local market for our lunch. With lots of garlic and lemon. Yum.

And I wonder if I'll be able to resist making a Halloween lantern out of that orange one...

Update - ickle squash tasted goooood.

All autumnal

2009-10-11T14:22:00.004+01:00

How time flies when you're having fun! Since my last post we've had more tomatoes, more beans, and more potatoes. Also my birthday, and, oh yes, a new camera. Woo! But the weather's definitely turning, the courgette and tomato plants are looking sorry for themselves and the sunflowers in the garden are getting a little bedraggled. But still beautiful, especially if you look close up.

One of the first real signs that autumn is well and truly here - the borlotti beans are drying nicely on the plant. We've got a couple of handfuls of the dried beans now which we can store and use in something hearty in midwinter. They're sitting in a kilner jar in the kitchen, look nice and rustic.

The winter squash are also ripening nicely. We'll just give them another week or so to get a bit more sun. We've also got three small butternut squash, which is very exciting stuff indeed as I love butternut squash.

No real success with the sweetcorn this year. We've had three, maybe four decent sized cobs and a couple of tiny ones. But boy, were they tasty! The cauliflowers, brussels sprouts, red cabbage and purple sprouting brocolli are all doing fine. The netting seems to have kept the pigeons off so far!

The allotment as a whole seems to be going from strength to strength. Apparently the council-owned allotments are full and they've started sending people our way. All the suitable plots are now let, so the ones near us which are mainly overgrown with brambles and grass are going to be professionally rotavated, so we should have some neighbours which will help keep the path clear and the weeds under control But they're going to leave the big giant blackberry bush untouched, so we'll keep a little privacy. And get the blackberries!

We helped to clear some of the long grass on one of the adjacent plots and found this little fellow hiding under a rotting piece of plywood...

Bless!

Cooking stuff

2009-09-23T11:22:00.007+01:00

Yep, I know I said I was going to make tomato and onion chutney, but hey, it just didn't happen. Instead, I made a couple of pots of simple yellow tomato sauce (see pic - it's just loads of chopped toms, onion, salt and pepper and oregano, all cooked until it reduces into a big yellow mush) which we've frozen, and then a whole load of really, really, REALLY tasty spiced onion and apple chutney. Mmm.

My mum gave us a bag of apples from her tree, and though they weren't technically cooking apples, I thought I'd give them a go in chutney. Along with the big bag of onions from the local shop for one pound something, it was all a bit of a bargain.

I did a quick search online for Nigella's Spiced Apple Chutney - which my good friend Sian made and gave me a jar of at Christmas (and my, it is GOOD, more please!) but couldn't find the recipe, so I just got a bit of inspiration and then made some chutney with whatever I had in the kitchen cupboard. Couldn't be bothered to go out and search our local shops in the vague change they might possibly have a mouldering bottle of white wine vinegar tucked at the back next to the tins of ghee and henna, or a packet of golden caster sugar hidden behind the garam masala and methi leaves; so normal vinegar and normal sugar it is.

So for all you recipe fans (!) here's my Spiced Onion & Apple Chutney one.

Ingredients: - MAKES ENOUGH TO FILL 6 REGULAR JAM JARS.

(NB I have a habit of making things by just chucking in a bit of this and a handful of that, which makes it very hard to translate into actual measurements - this is my best guess...)

good glug of olive oil
approx 20 small onions, peeled & chopped
15 apples, peeled, cored & chopped
5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
250g raisins
half tsp smoked paprika
half tsp turmeric
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tbsp oregano
generous sprinkling of salt & freshly ground pepper
3 bay leaves
600g sugar
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
100ml malt vinegar

Method:

Put olive oil in a BIG pan. Chuck in onions, apple, garlic and give them a good stir 'til they're well mingled and just warmed through. Chuck in everything else and stir and stir. You won't see much liquid at first but a lot comes out of the apples when they start to cook. I cooked mine on a low simmer for a couple of hours until it had reduced down a bit and was brown and glossy and sort of caramelised. It's spiced, but not spicy, but I guess just put in less paprika if you want to avoid any kind of warming tang.

Now it's in the cupboard for a few months to mature or, urr, do whatever it is that chutneys do when you're told to leave them for a few months.

It's the paler chutney at the front, by the way, the really dark stuff in the taller pale-blue-lidded jar, and the one to the right is good ol' onion chutney, made in February. (February! Gah! Better get eating!).

And yeah, I know, the pic isn't great - but have you ever tried taking pictures of jam jars in a dark store cupboard when you can't see what it is you're taking a picture of? But never fear, blog-readers! I'm getting a new camera for my birthday in, ooh, about a week! Woop woop!

Gardening guilt

2009-09-20T16:08:00.001+01:00

I have a confession. We've cheated a bit. Ok, maybe not really, but I feel like we have.

We went to a garden centre yesterday morning, and I got distracted by the little trays of veg. Now, I've been thinking for a while that we should have sown our winter and spring veg back in May, or June, or July, but we just never got around to it. And while it's not like we'll starve without our own home-grown winter greens, it'd still be nice to have some that we'd grown ourselves.

We did sow some leeks a few months ago, alongside the swedes and carrots, but haven't ended up with half as many as we really wanted. So into our basket went a tray of little leeks. And as for red cabbage, well, that's a Christmas essential, so we obviously needed a tray of those too. And we had some purple sprouting broccoli last spring, but haven't sown any this year either, so a tray of those as well please... And what's this? A sign saying 4 for £10? Then we definitely needed to get a tray of cauliflower too, even though they weren't very successful last year, with all but one mouldering away on the plant. This year, they'll be fine, I can feel it.

So, £10 later and we were the proud owners of many, many baby leeks, 12 red cabbage, 14 PSBs and 12 cauliflower plants. Yey!

Down at the allotment in the afternoon Adam discovered that one of our compost heaps has produced some rather fine compost, (never thought compost would be so exciting, but it just kindof appears from nowhere!) so he hauled out a few bucketfuls while I attempted to transplant the little leeks into the seed bed for a bit of fattening up alongside their slightly larger brothers and sisters. Then Adam dug over a couple of empty beds which I'd - coincidentally, and handily - weeded last week (see - it must be fate!) and in all the brassicas went, with a good dollop of compost underneath. We also netted the tops of the beds so that the pigeons can't eat them and maybe it'll stop some snails too. I also relocated the little brussels sprouts plants to the same bed as the caulis, as they were in danger of being swamped by the artichokes.

We picked a courgette, more beans, dug up some more potatoes and have another big bag of yellow tomatoes. I'll definitely have to make something this weekend or they're in danger of going to waste. Maybe pasta sauce... Yum!

Toms!

2009-09-13T14:52:00.002+01:00

The yellow tomatoes are ripening - I picked a big mixing bowl full yesterday, along with a few red ones and a few cherry tomatoes from our grow bags in the garden. Yum. Now I have to decide what to do with them. I'm thinking about making some tomato sauces to freeze and maybe some chutneys too - the local shop is selling sacks of onions at a ridiculously low price (I'm not so bothered about our lack of onion success this year now, seeing as how they're so cheap to buy down the road!) so some tomato and onion chutney could be just the thing. And it'd be nicely matured by Christmas.

Did lots of weeding yesterday, tackled the four worst beds which had the biggest weeds on. What's the phrase? 'One year's weeds, seven year's seeds'? In that case, we're doomed... we're going to be weeding forever.

Adam's away this week so I took it nice and easy, had the radio on, and stopped for an egg mayo sandwich and a cuppa for lunch in the sunshine.

Peggy Sue's managed to find a way of escaping the chicken coop. We saw her jump up onto the top of the cage door, so we put some bamboo canes across the top to stop her begin able to flap and flutter up there, but she's still found a way to get out into the garden. Hmm, I'll have to keep an eye on her...

It's a double!

2009-09-07T09:40:00.000+01:00

Peggy Sue's first egg - her very first - yes, that exact same one as in the post below - was a double yolker. FAB! Contributed very nicely towards a tasty omelette. Thanks, chickens...

Since then her eggs have been smaller, no more doubles.

Peg's first egg

2009-08-28T10:30:00.002+01:00

Yey! Well done Peggy Sue! It's a bit smaller than Lola's, but for a first egg-making attempt she gets top marks.

Blight.

2009-08-26T22:35:00.006+01:00

Gah! The evil blight has struck.

At the weekend Adam pulled up all our Marmande tomatoes. They were just starting to turn orange, too, the majority having survived the attack of the chavs. (Please note I am speculating wildly here; the vandals could as easily have been embittered old folk as delinquent yoofs... but somehow I doubt it.)

Anyway, it doesn't seem to have affected the other two tomato beds yet (touch wood) and we ate our first red tomato straight from the vine. Now we need just a bit more sunshine, please, to ripen the rest and help the sweetcorn along.

And we have beans, beans and more beans. We're leaving the borlotti to ripen and will dry the beans for storage. The French beans are delicious, crunchy and juicy, even the ones we missed and picked when they were six or seven inches long. But the runner beans are not great - a bit stringy and fibrous, even when we get them when they're tiny. We're thinking we may not bother with runners next year and go for different varieties of french beans instead.

We have a baby butternut squash, 'ickle and green but still that recognisable skittle shape. And a handful of winter squash, some green, some yellow, as well as summer squash and courgettes.

Oh, and potatoes! Still un-blighted, and we're working our way through digging up the second earlies - delicious.

The damsons have ripened (sorry Mum - forgot to tell you! The damsons are ripe!) and we've picked some, but not as many as we'd hoped. Enough for just about two bottles of damson gin for Christmas. And the blackberries on the giant bush next door were plump and juicy, so I've made some bramble jelly (which hasn't quite set so will probably end up swirled through some yoghurt, at which point I'll pretend it was intentional) and some blackberry flavoured vodka. Mmm.

And I haven't mentioned the parsnips for a while, have I? Well, after all that faffing around with kitchen roll and windowsills and toilet roll and greenhouses, two (count them!) have survived and seem to be doing well. Now I'm willing them to grow big and strong and pointy and hope they don't just put all their effort into pretty leaves.

Bank holiday weekend coming up... lots of weeding in store. And does anyone know when is the best time of year to move strawberry plants?

Yikes! Spikes!

2009-08-23T16:53:00.004+01:00

I have realised I don't really know what to do with artichokes. I know you can cook them - boil them? - and then somehow pull off the petally bits and eat the bases with butter or hollandaise or something dippy and tasty, but that's about it. Except for the choke or some unappetising aspect which nestles at the bottom and which you should avoid.

Sounds like it's fraught with danger. Plus they're really spiky. Ow.

Vandals! Troublemakers! Ruffians!

2009-08-09T09:55:00.002+01:00

We've been lucky, up 'til now, not to have had any sort of trouble on our plot. Other people have had lawnmowers stolen, tools nicked, and even - on one occasion - a shed burnt down. But we've escaped. Until now. When we went to the allotment on Saturday it was to find that someone - or maybe many someones - had turned our wheelbarrow of herbs upside down, and also pulled up all the stakes that we'd painstakingly (pain-stake-ingly, geddit?!!) tied our tomato plants to. We'd also acquired a heap of broken glass, and we still can't work out where that came from...

Gah! I cursed and sweared a bit, but then wandered further down the plot to realise that actually, it wasn't so bad. The bed of tomatoes at the far end had been completely ignored, as had the rest of our patch of earth. Adam said he had visions of all our courgette and squash plants, growing away merrily, to have been trampled, corn flattened and bean poles crushed, but it was only the beds right by the shed which had warranted any unwanted attention.

Luckily.

But our poor tomatoes, which had been a little bit neglected but were bravely producing plump, juicy fruit, were either pulled up by the roots, decapitated or twisted and crumpled, lying on the ground. We put the stakes back in and re-tied as many plants as we could, but it'll never be the same again. Our crop is not going to be as big as we'd hoped.

I'll have to get in touch with the secretary and find out how the bid for a big fence around the allotments is coming along.

Ho hum.

On a brighter note, our first summer squash was picked, and we have lots and lots of beans.

Aaaaaaaah August!

2009-08-02T21:11:00.004+01:00

Dear me it's suddenly August. The allotment's gone crazy, and what with various weekends away and Adam having a knee operation, it's been a bit neglected. There are now many, many weeds. Grr. And raised beds to make. And things to plant for the winter.

And it's become a bit of a chore, again. I think it's just a phase, but it all seems like Such An Effort.

But we went down there this afternoon, staked all the tomatoes and nipped off all the side shoots. Did some weeding. Gathered our onion crop - a pitiful amount when compared to last year. Maybe last year was beginner's luck? Thought about strimming the paths. Tried to ignore the shameful, embarrassing, hideously overgrown "strawberry patch" (see, it's that bad I've even put it in quotation marks). Did some more weeding. Adam found a brown slug with orange frilly bits (yuk). Looked at the damsons, which are starting to go a bit purple. Ate a blackberry. Ate another one which was really sour. Decided they're not ready for picking after all. Examined the carrots - looking good! Cleared all the dead broad bean plants. Forked over the now-empty onion bed. Didn't pick two yellow courgettes - they're still a bit small. Put weeds in the compost bin.

No pictures I'm afraid. Camera screen still broken, and not being able too see what you're taking a picture of takes some of the fun out of it.

Next weekend (next weekend, always next weekend) we can spend a long time there and really get on top of things. I hope.

Egg-cellent stuff

2009-07-18T12:37:00.003+01:00

Our trusty Lola's still popping out one egg a day. Gosh she's a handsome ol' bird! Little Peggy Sue should start laying any day now. (She looks a lot smaller in the photo than in the flesh...). And they're still getting on fine.

Fab :)

Mmm, taters

2009-07-14T11:16:00.001+01:00

Wahey! Potatoes! I still get over-excited digging up spuds, especially when you can hold up the plant in a celebratory manner and say "Look! Look what we've got! For practically free!!!" So after four, or was it five, plants, we'd got a good half-bucket-full of tasty new potatoes.

We also had a big handful of broad beans and mange tout, as well as the first artichoke bulb (bulb? head?) which I haven't quite worked out what to do with yet. I'm hoping to sow some more mange tout next weekend, to see if we can get a late crop from them. They've been a bit neglected this year, but these ones tasted so good, even if they were a bit old and crinkled, that I want more! We're also keeping an eye on the blackberry bushes too, as I have plans for jam, puddings, cordials and various blackberry-infused alcohol concoctions.

Loads of bees are bee-ing (!) attracted to the purple alliums, which were dancing about in the wind like cheerleaders shaking purple pom-poms. The bees clinging on for dear life. Although if they do get shaken off, hopefully they'll head over to the squash and courgette...

Sunshine and showers

2009-07-05T18:04:00.007+01:00

A lovely day on the plot today - not too hot, and not too cold, with a little shower of rain to make it easier to weed. Did lots of weeding, and also transplanted some squash plants where two had germinated in some places and none in others. We've filled all the gaps now but we sowed butternut squash and a varied selection of summer and winter squashes all in one bed, so it'll be interesting to see which ones have ended up where. We've just got the beginnings for some squash flowers and some yellow courgette flowers so hopefully in the next couple of weeks we'll get the first harvest.

Picked all our gooseberries and made gooseberry chutney and gooseberry and summer fruits jam. Mmm. Now I need to make some scones and get some clotted cream for a real taste of summer. And the damsons are looking good so we'll keep our eyes on those to make damson gin again for Christmas.

We're continuing to dig up our early potatoes, which are delicious, and the main crop ones are flowering now - some even have little tomato-like fruit on - are you supposed to cut them off??? The runner beans are flowering too, and the carrots are looking good after a slow start. I sowed the last of our orange carrots and some more purple ones so hopefully we'll get an ongoing crop as soon as some are ready.

Last week Adam put some water butts along the edge of the plot, which makes watering much easier as we don't have to walk the whole length of the allotment with watering cans. Just need to do the odd one-off trip to fill the water butts instead!

I'm still taking pictures on my camera without a viewfinder or screen so it's a bit of a gamble if I get the right thing in shot and in focus! Here's a quick pic of the plot... nice and green but the grass needs strimming again! It's never-ending!

Chicken update

2009-07-04T18:59:00.004+01:00

...now they're getting on fine. Lola stopped laying for a few days, maybe in protest at this new creature in her space, more probably, because of the hot, hot weather. She gives little Pegs the odd peck every now and again, usually when Peggy gets in her way or has a treat that Lola wants, but Pegs seems to be holding her own and there hasn't been a repeat of the incidents which led to them being separated. Hoorah!

Anyway, back to allotment business... Popped down there very quickly this evening to dig up some potatoes for dinner, and also picked a load of gooseberries (the berries of geese? where did that name come from?) and a dozen of the very first raspberries. Mmm.

Last week Phil gave us some of his left-over sweetcorn plants, (who in their right minds has left-over sweetcorn? You'd find a place, surely?) which was great as we had a million gaps to fill. They all seem to be doing fine, as are two small pumpkin plants he also gave us, and two cucumber plants which mum gave us - only one plant germinated out of three spots, each one had at least three seeds in! Not a good year for cucumber, squash and courgette, I think we're going to have to buy two or three courgette plants.

Also saw a million ladybirds on the broad beans, no doubt attracted by the blackfly which haven't seem to have been affected by me squirting them with soapy water last week. So now I'm going to look up varieties of British ladybird and see how many we can tick off.

Longer visit for weeding planned tomorrow.

Pretty pretty...

2009-06-26T18:48:00.004+01:00

The new hen has been named Peggy Sue. Not just 'the little one' which Adam may have preferred. But Lola has turned out to be a bit of a bully - after a couple of days of chicken harmony she started pecking and being very possesive of the nesting/laying box. So now they have separate sleeping areas and all seems well. We'll re-introduce them slowly and see what happens.

Anyone for tennis...?

2009-06-21T15:41:00.007+01:00

Yum yum yum. The strawberries are ripe.

And we've got a decent selection of food from the plot today. Alongside the strawberries we got a couple of bunches of shallots, potatoes (the very first crop of potatoes!) and peas. Sounds like there's a good dinner on the way!

There's nothing quite as exciting as digging up potatoes. It's a bit of a lucky dip 'cos you never know if you're going to get a couple of big'uns or a load of little'uns. We seem to have a better yield from a couple of plants this year compared with last year, so hopefully this variety won't be another explode-in-the-pan-when-you-boil-'em sort, and we can have some nice new 'taters for tea.

Today we did quite a bit of weeding and strimming, which tidied the place up a lot. The weeds weren't as bad as I'd expected which was great! I planted out four brussels sprouts plants which a friend from work gave me, and we also transplanted some squash plants as two had germinated in some places and none in others. The carrots are doing ok (miracle!) and the swedes have also germinated so we'll have to keep an eye on them and see how they get on.

But we've had a bit of a sweetcorn disaster - only 8 out of about 35! AND we put at least two kernels in each spot! So we may have make a trip to the garden centre to fill in the many, many gaps.

Oh, and although hen #4 doesn't have a name yet, she's already provided some comedy moments. Lola's a bit broody, and keeps hunkering down in the nest box. So what's a new little chicken to do, but copy her? And if there's no room left? Then just sit on top! Looks pretty comfy to me!

Chicken little

2009-06-20T11:36:00.003+01:00

We now have a new chicken. She's only 15 weeks, so she isn't laying yet. And compared to Lola, who's about one year old, she's tiny. She's a different breed too, a Lohmann cross (brown/ginger and white). And because she's so young she doesn't yet have much of a comb so she looks a little bit like a golden eagle gone wrong.

No name yet either.

Pics will follow!

The worst end to a fab weekend

2009-06-14T21:34:00.003+01:00

Angie just died. Literally. In the last hour or so. She was crop-bound before we went away for the weekend (when food gets stuck in the crop, often from eating long grass or similar), but we'd massaged her crop and got some olive oil down her and she'd started pecking about again and eating her food. She wasn't laying, but she was drinking like normal, which was a good sign. And then this afternoon she pooed a big mass of compacted straw, but she seemed fine, rootling around, having a dust bath and generally being chicken-y. Then she went in the nest box a bit early this evening and when Adam went out to check on them half an hour ago she was dead. Just like that.

And Lola - typical Lola - was standing on Angie's head.

Now I feel like crap. I feel incredibly guilty. Especially after Ruby. I thought Rubes would be our one bad luck hen and from here on in it'd be plain sailing. Adam says we haven't done anything wrong, but I feel awful. I guess Lola's good health and constant egg-laying counts for something. And we did say that they were outdoor creatures, just here for their eggs. But it's hard not to get a little attached.

How come no ones else seems to have bad luck with their chickens? On other blogs I read they're always laughing at the chickens' antics and counting their many, many eggs.

But now? Jeez, I don't know. Do we get another one? I think we have to. We can't have Lola on her own, they're sociable creatures. Or maybe we should call a halt to the whole chicken thing, and take Lola back to the chicken farm.

Weedings and weddings

2009-06-14T20:16:00.006+01:00

Ok, let me bring you up to speed. We've had two weddings in as many weekends, so haven't been to the plot as much as maybe we should at this time of year. We did make a visit last Sunday, with our friend Erica, who was fantastically helpful with pulling up weeds and picking elderflowers from the back of the allotments. We now have four bottles... hang on, no, three - we've already finished one - of elderflower cordial. Mmm. I'll have to make some more before the elderflowers have gone, it's just too delicious.

While me and Erica weeded, Adam sowed leeks, swedes, more parsnips and more carrots. (Yeah, we know it's maybe the wrong time of year for sowing some of these, but we figured we'd give them a chance. You never know.)

The strawberries are ripening. Sorting out the strawberry bed is, once again, getting near the top of the To Do list, as it's completely overrun with weeds. We'll create a brand new strawberry bed somewhere else, I think, and transplant the best plants once they've finished fruiting.

This weekend, we haven't been to the plot At All. We intended on popping down this evening to water things and do a bit of a check-up, but honestly, after driving to the Cotswolds and all the wedding excitement and camping as well, we're just pooped. Camping was great fun, but at this time of year the birds wake everyone up at some ungodly hour, so there's no chance of a lie in. Luckily we had a spot in the shade so we didn't get boiled in our tent. But what fantastic weather for a wedding/camping weekend. We were so lucky.

And, in other news, my camera's broken. It still takes pictures, but the screen is just kaput so I have no idea what I actually taking a picture of. So the next few posts will either be blank or have some random point-and-click experimental images... Here's one of the allotment from last weekend.

Tiny toms

2009-05-31T20:49:00.000+01:00

The tomatoes are planted out. All 66 of them. Phew! Digging trenches in the sun is hot work. We've saved six tomato plants - three of each variety - to put in growbags in the garden so hopefully, if the dreaded blight* strikes again we'll have some tomatoes at least.

They looked pretty big when they were in their seed trays, but they seem a bit weedy now they're planted out in the Big Wide World.

Hang on in there guys! Don't wilt!

*I now have strange images of an allotment-themed range of superheroes and villains in my mind. The Dreaded Blight would obviously be the criminal mastermind of the piece, but I guess he'll need some henchmen. Bindweed Boy and... urr... umm... ... .. Dr Weevil?

Maybe this train of thought has already gone too far...

Water water not everywhere

2009-05-30T17:10:00.001+01:00

Another sunny day down on the plot. And lots of watering to do. We're running low on water - we have lots of containers of water in our sheds which the last plot owner stockpiled, but even then, it's scary how much water you get through just watering the essentials. Out allotment site doesn't have taps or standpipes - instead everyone relies on their own water-catching devices and water butts, and when it's sunny or there's a long dry spell, there are a couple of wells on-site, one of which gets a hand pump attached. Not the one near us, unfortunately, that remains a bucket-on-a-rope job. And when I say 'near' us, it's two plots down and three across, so it's best to take a couple of containers and a wheelbarrow. It's all very eco-friendly, but not so friendly on the legs as there's a lot of walking involved.

On the up-side, we've nearly have our first strawberry. It's red - just not quite red enough to pick yet. At least, not today. Maybe tomorrow.

The peas are podding, as are the broad beans. The other beans - runner, borlotti, french - need some canes adding. The tomatoes need planting out, so hopefully it won't be too windy tomorrow. And a friend from work gave me four small brussels sprouts seedlings, which is great, as we were really late sowing ours.

Sometimes I long for a small veggie patch with a few raised beds where we can only plant two potatoes and have three tomato plants in a grow bag and a small selection of other things. It'll be small and manageable and rustic and pretty. Then I try to forget the fact that we need to dig over the tomato beds before the plants can go in - in this heat! - and that the chard and spinach needs pulling up, and instead I try to remember the fun we have and the great sense of community we get - not to mention our own amazing fruit and veg - and it's much more worthwhile.

Even if I do feel like I'm going to scream if I have to lug a watering can about once more...

Sunshine!

2009-05-25T16:56:00.007+01:00

After my moan about the weather last time it seems Mother Nature listened and pulled some fantastic sunny days out of the hat. What a couple of scorchers! In fact, it was almost too hot to do anything at the allotment, so we were grateful for Dad's help, as he came for a visit and strimmed our nearly-overgrown pathways.

Over the weekend we... added more supports to the peas, planted the courgettes, cucumbers and squash (winter, butternut and acorn), weeded the carrot bed - there are some carrots coming through, I'm sure of it! - earthed up the potatoes, weeded the garlic and onions, sowed about a million brussels sprouts - a bit late, I know - and watered everything, which takes many, many, many trips to and from the water butts.

The early potatoes are flowering, as are the broad beans...

We also picked some mint to take home and made some mojitos - Cuban cocktails with white rum, mint, lime and lots of ice. Refreshing and delicious. If anyone wants the fool-proof recipe, let me know and I'll post it.

Now we just need to go and do a serious weeding session to get rid of the couch grass around the edges of our beds, and it'll look neat again!

The chard has bolted with the warm weather. Need to sow some more now, and some more spinach. And we have to plant out our tomatoes which are hardening-off in the garden at home.

Wonder if we have any ripe strawberries yet... yum.

Runaway May

2009-05-18T21:15:00.002+01:00

The weather is definitely against us. Not only does it seem to rain every time we want to go to the allotment, but the wind somehow up-turned the mini greenhouse so on Saturday we found pots of compost and just-sprouted seedlings flung liberally all over the patio. I was not a happy bunny.

We have three parsnips growing. Three. After all that effort. Hmm. That's another thing I am Not Best Pleased About. And the carrots aren't germinating either. Whoever knew carrots were so picky? They grew fine in our first allotment year! Maybe I'll have to try growing them at home in a trough instead, to give them a bit of TLC.

The tomatoes are getting leggy on the windowsill - we need to somehow give them some more light but don't have any more space. It's a dilemma. Having said that, one of the Italians on the allotment was planting out the smallest seedlings a couple of weeks ago on his plot. But then he's probably got the time to pop down every day and potter about, giving them all the love and attention they need. Ours need to be a more rugged, determined, Bear Grylls type of tomato, able to stand anything the world throws at them. Even blight, if possible.

So, I have no idea how things are at the plot, haveing cruelly neglected it for two weeks. Tsk tsk. Last I saw, all the beans were merrily growing away. Maybe they need some supports already with this wind... And HOW is it mid-May already??? We haven't sown any courgette yet! Agh!

Ever feel like things are getting away from you?

Yurt-tastic

2009-05-15T14:58:00.003+01:00

No allotment news from last weekend, as we were off celebrating ten years of being together by staying in a yurt in a forest clearing in the Cotswolds...

It was all pretty basic...

but we had a whole forest to ourselves...

where we could make a fire...

hang our hammocks...

cook good food...

drink some beer...

and enjoy the peace and quiet...

bliss.

Squashcorn

2009-05-06T21:59:00.004+01:00

Forgot my camera on the last allotment visit. And it's always when you forget something that you want to take a picture. One of the bulbs in the planted-up wheelbarrow is just starting to flower. I thought we'd planted bluebells but it looks different to how I'd expected. I'd show you a picture and see what you think, but... *shrugs*.

We only had a short visit to the lottie at the weekend as we had a busy bank holiday visiting friends, but on Saturday afternoon Adam got all busy-like and pootled off to the allotment to do some more digging and bed preparation. Then I wandered down, sans camera - doh! - and hoed around the onions and shallots. And we sowed sweetcorn and squash. In the same bed. Hopefully the corn will grow nice and tall and the squash will meander around the bottom, keeping down the weeds.

We've got to the point when we're almost running out of beds, can you believe it? Even though it looks like we're got lots of space we've worked out we need three beds for tomatoes (yes, maybe we've been a bit over zealous with the toms this year, especially if they get blight again, we'll end up with three beds of mouldy sticks) and we haven't even thought yet about the pumpkins, cabbage, leeks or sprouts. Gah!

Anyway, here's a pic from last weekend, just to brighten this post up a bit...

I think the grass needs cutting...

Eggsies

2009-05-02T10:16:00.003+01:00

When eggs seem to be getting more and more expensive in the shops, it's nice to have our own supply.

We fenced off half of the garden this week to re-sow the grass. This the hens did not like.

Angie (possibly THE most stupid chicken In The World) tried to climb through the plastic netting. The holes are about 1"x2". Her head and feet could fit though ok - through seperate holes, obviously - but she seemed confused as to why the rest of her body then wouldn't follow.

She didn't get through.

Stupid chicken.

We also put a board across at the top of the garden to stop them getting to the pots by the back door (these plants are especially interesting and peck-able now that the majority of the garden is off-limits). Lola then decided to try and fly over this barrier. It seems no one has told her that chickens' wings are less than useless. She made it about a foot into the air - mainly by jumping - then decided to hold onto the top edge of the board with her neck, while frantically flapping her wings, scrabbling her feet, and with a slightly manic look in her eye.

She didn't make it over.

Stupid chicken.

Beer garden weather

2009-04-29T19:51:00.003+01:00

Last Sunday was a lovely day. We went to the plot but weren't feeling particularly industrious for some reason, so we didn't get loads done, but just enough. Adam planted the maincrop potatoes 'Cara', and I sowed another row of peas and broad beans, then I mostly mooched around taking pictures.

There was just so much blue sky and fluffy clouds and flowers and new green growth, I ended up lying on the ground in strange positions trying to get my camera at the right angle to capture what I could actually see.

The mange tout Sian sowed are just starting to poke their heads above the soil. The broad beans are doing well (though must remember to try overwintering this year as some plots have at least a month's headstart on ours) and the peas are also reaching for the sky. Need to get some twiggy sticks in there...

Weevils have already started taking notches out of the peas and broad beans, but they don't seem to do any real damage to the actual crop? Is that right? Anyway, everything looks quite pretty with little crimped edges!

The purple-sprouting broccoli has well and truly bolted, but I don't mind, it's so beautiful...

And what about the rhubarb? I know I've squawked about the colour before, but I think it deserves another 'wow'... More sweet, sugary compote has now been made - delicious swirled through greek yoghurt, or double cream and natural yoghurt a la Granny's Barbados Cream. Yum!

Beans, beds and bacon

2009-04-24T12:58:00.000+01:00

So. Almost a whole week has passed without me managing to update. Again.

Let me fill you in on last weekend.

Sian and James came for a visit and a potter at the plot on Sunday in the sunshine. James and Adam cracked on with some more pallet-splitting and raised-bed-making, as well as attaching a length of guttering from the sheds to our mammoth water tank. So hopefully if (IF!) this summer turns out to be a good one we're now prepared and won't need to make countless trips to the well with buckets.

Meanwhile me and Sian sowed a variety of beans down the far end of the allotment - runner beans, borlotti beans, french beans and mange tout. Yum. So now I need to think of a way to keep the slugs off as the runner beans got ravaged last year. We also weeded the raspberry canes, which are sending up loads of new shoots from the roots. Maybe we'll need a fruit cage this summer.

Then it was bacon sandwiches and cake for lunch for the hard workers. Thanks guys! And congrats on the new house! :)

Back home we've got sunflowers which need planting out. But that's assuming they'll survive the cooking they got in the greenhouse this week thanks to the near-tropical weather conditions and my crappy efforts at watering. The tomatoes are doing much better since I brought them back inside. Maybe I was too hasty and they were too small - anyway they seem to like the windowsill much better. And the troughs of salad leaves are doing fine.

Oh! And parsnip news! On Sunday afternoon I searched through my allegedly-chitting parsnip seeds on the kitchen windowsill and found some which had sprouted! Woo! I forgot to take a pic as it was just too exciting. So I sowed them in toilet rolls, and also sowed other parsnip seeds - ones which were looking kinda plump and hopeful - into a trough of compost to see if any take root. Then maybe I'll be able to transplant them onto the plot and fulfil my craving for home-grown roast parsnip at Christmas.

Easter fun and frolics

2009-04-15T21:56:00.007+01:00

Had lots of fun down at the allotment on Monday. It felt a lot more Easterey than Sunday did, mainly because it was sunny, which made a change, though it doesn't look that bright in the pic. Here's everyone at the allotment for a little gathering we had, with bacon sandwiches, tea, coffee and cakes, and an Easter egg hunt. Oh yes. You're never too old. And I put up bunting. And there were Easter-themed napkins.

Thanks to everyone who brought extra delicious treats - home-made chocolate chip cakes, chocolate brownies and hot cross buns (Terry I want the recipe please!). Yum! And everyone seemed to have a good time. Maybe it'll become an annual event.

After people had left we pottered about for a while. I sowed the last of our broad beans but I don't think we've got enough rows yet, so we'll probably need to buy some more. Adam started putting together the next raised bed, I picked some more rhubarb and weeded the spinach. Here's the view from inside my shed...

And then I mainly enjoyed the sunshine.

I tidied my shed a little and caught this view in the light...

I quite like it. Must remember to take more pics like this as they seem to capture the mood more than a generic snapshot.

Back home the tomato plants were looking a bit pathetic in the greenhouse. Maybe I put them out too early? So I've brought them back inside again for some TLC. We've also got some sunflowers which I potted on. I think they could probably manage outside now but what with the chickens an' all I think it'd be a massacre. Anything they can get their feet onto they scratch to death. I also sowed some lettuce a couple of weeks ago - a mixed variety of cut-and-come-again plants - and they're just starting to show. So I'm looking forward to fresh salads soon!

Hello Angie

2009-04-13T08:54:00.002+01:00

Meet Angie, our new hen.

And yes, she's laying (rounder, pinker eggs than Lola), so we're now a two-egg-a-day family again. Hurrah!

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday...

2009-04-11T13:02:00.003+01:00

Adam went to check on the hens this morning to find that Ruby had died unexpectedly in the night. She'd been a bit wheezy on and off since we first got her, and we'd been giving her some medication, but she still seemed perky and she was eating and drinking, scratching around and pestering us for treats like normal only yesterday...

But we seem to have done quite well in maintaining the view that our chickens are egg providers rather than pets, and there were no tears. Lola seems completely nonplussed by the whole event, even - somewhat morbidly - clambering over her deceased friend to lay her egg early this morning. (Sorry if that's too much information.)

Anyway, we toddled off to get Lola a new friend, as chickens are companionable sorts. She's not named yet, and I'll post some pics once it's stopped raining and she's settled in.

Bloomin' marvellous

2009-04-05T20:53:00.005+01:00

I've decided the allotment needs a bit of prettiness so I'm adding to my tiny flower bed and making it more permanent. I've been wanting to grow sweet peas and tulips since we first got the plot, but vegetables have always taken priority. Plus I've been more than a little useless in getting organised. I bought a pack of sweet pea seeds last year, and then I lost them, and I couldn't force myself to buy any more, knowing that they were around here somewhere. And Adam's mum Chris gave me some dwarf sweet pea seeds last Easter, and they just sat on a shelf too... until now. A few weeks ago (or it may be a couple of months now...) I planted some dwarf allium bulbs in the empty patch of earth in front of the compost bins which was to become my flower patch, and today I sowed three rows of the dwarf sweet peas too, and started edging the bed with bricks.

The raised beds we're building using old pallet wood look really good, they're pleasing, but not really very pretty. Functional. So I want my little patch of our patch of earth to be a bit more rustic. We only had enough bricks lying around to edge one side, but I might start recycling beer bottles and embedding them neck-down. God knows we'll have enough of them... And I'm sure I have friends who would be only too willing to help provide me with a few more empties.

Adam planted our first early potatoes - Arran Pilot. We've got 5 rows of about eight, so that's 40 potato plants which we'll hopefully be digging up in June for our first potato crop. Mmm. Next week well put the second earlies in - Wilja. Not so many of them but they seem to be bigger seed potatoes. Has anyone ever tried cutting a seed potato in half - with a chit on each half - so you can double your crop?

Handy Adam

2009-04-04T18:30:00.000+01:00

We have a raised bed! Adam worked long and hard nailing and hammering and we now have a lovely beautiful Bed With Edges. Frank the Italian from a few plots down came over and seemed most bemused by what we were doing. His plot is one big... field, I guess, and he uses the rotorvator to turn the soil each year, then plants wall-to-wall tomatoes. ("My wife, she make-a tomata souwce". His words.) Why anyone would want to put egdes on their beds, or even have beds at all was beyond him. "But then you can't-a use the motor!" I told him they looked nicer, but he was having none of it. I could almost hear him thinking "crazy English..."

And we have new neighbours! The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that the plot next to ours - behind Adam in the pic - has been cleared. An Asian family has taken it on, kids, parents, grandparents, the lot. They've started digging, and seem very friendly, even to the point of incurring the wrath of Frank by agreeing with me that raised beds do, indeed, look nicer.

Thanks to Dick and Debbie who donated a million bags of leaves so we can make leaf mulch. It's another one of those things that we think about each year but never get around to collecting any. And thanks to Terry for bringing them over!

It's rhubarb time!

2009-03-29T19:41:00.008+01:00

I'm still not entirely sure that I like rhubarb all that much. But you have to admire its almost fluorescent pinkness. And I'm trying some new things this year. It's out with the crumbles, and in with the compotes, jams and syrups. But in the meantime, when we have our very first shoots of forced rhubarb, I guess you can't beat just dipping the end in sugar like a rustic dib-dab.

Anyway, more on rhubarb later.

Things are growing! Yey! Shallots, onions, spinach, chard, broad beans, peas, and the potatoes are chitting away nicely. No carrots yet though.

The parsnips are sulking, I think, even though I've covered them with another sheet of kitchen towel and am keeping them damp. I think I'm going to have to set up a second lot in the airing cupboard in the dark and see if a two-pronged attack may result in some success. And if nothing sprouts on kitchen towel then I'll 'throw them away' in a trough of soil and see if total neglect has any better results.

What else is going on... Adam dug over another bed on the plot ready for something to go in. I say 'something' as we don't have much of a plan yet. Probably potatoes... I weeded the onion beds and picked off the dead leaves from around the chard. And after all the hard work, it was time for some sustenance, so I made cheese scones, beef stroganoff (with the almost-last of our onions and shallots from 2008) and... wait for it!... rhubarb and orange schnapps. Wahey! (there's the bottle, look, at the back among the kitchen chaos). I think the general consensus among my friends is that if you have some slightly suspicious fruit or veg which not everyone likes, it can be greatly improved by steeping it in alcohol of some sort for a number of weeks, then removing the fruit/veg, and quaffing the results. Sian's rhubarb rum (or should that be 'rhum', Sian?) was proof of that.

I'm hoping the sweetness of the sugar and the flavour of the orange will counteract that tangy 'bleurgh' of the rhubarb which usually makes my teeth go funny. And I'm looking forward to some rhubarb and orange cocktails in the summer.

Tomatoes

2009-03-27T09:30:00.001Z

Something I forgot to mention... I've sowed a terrcotta army of tomatoes. Marmande, Alicante and Golden Sunrise are all now doing well and are a couple of inches high with the faint suggestion of the first pair of true leaves. We've also bought one of those plastic greenhouse things so they can leave the safety of their warm table by the window and go out in that soon.

Mum said she'll donate some cherry tomatoes - may be can swap a couple of plants - and Louise from the allotment is growing some of the tumbling hanging-basket variety, and has apparently sown too many, so that could be interesting. I'm not sure I remember to water things enough, but they'd be out of the way of the chickens!

Next year, black tomatoes, methinks.

Parsnips. Meh.

2009-03-25T12:15:00.002Z

Maybe parsnips don't like me.

I have parsnip seeds scattered on a folded bit of kitchen towel, which I'm keeping damp by sprinkling water on it morning and night. It's on the kitchen windowsill so I'd've thought it's getting enough light. But. Still. Nothing.

So, what am I doing wrong? Should they be in the dark? Should they be covered? Should they be wet instead of damp?

I WANT PARSNIPS THIS YEAR!

Gah!

Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow...

2009-03-14T20:37:00.006Z

OK, I admit I'm a bit late in publishing this post, so you'll just have to cast your minds back a couple of weeks to the 14th, a lovely sunny spring Saturday...

We pottered about on the plot for a couple of hours, doing a bit of digging and sowing. The bulbs in the old wheelbarrow are growing now so it'll be interesting to see what we planted! I think we had some daffs and some bluebells, and the little ones might be scilla. We'll see.

I sowed the first two (nearly straight) rows of peas. I'm trying to be a bit more organised and have got three pea varieties this year, one which sows and crops quite early, one which has a long cropping period, and another which is later. So hopefully we'll have fresh peas right into autumn. Now we have to figure out how to keep the pea moth (?) off them as we had some teeny caterpillars in the pods last year, which takes a bit of the fun out of podding.

Also need to go on a twiggy stick hunt to give them more support. I've read that if you get really twisted gnarly twiggy ones it also helps keep the pigeons off... We're going to have all our peas and beans down the bottom of the plot this year. I still can't get my head around this whole crop rotation business - I have to go back to a diagram in a book every time - so maybe bunching our similar crops together will help.

While I was pottering about with the peas, Adam sowed another row of broad beans. The first shoots from a couple of weeks ago are just starting to show. I then sowed the first lot of carrots, including some exciting purple ones. Rather than sow them delicately in rows, like last year (when our carrots were, frankly, crap) we decided to try broadcasting them across a finely-raked tilth, a la Jamie Oliver... Anyone who watched the Jamie At Home series a year or so ago will have seen Mr. Oliver scatter carrot seeds willy, and indeed, nilly, across the earth and then pull up huge handfuls of small but sweet carrots. No Thinning Needed. Not sure ours will be that successful, but you never know.

What else did we do... Adam dug over the first bed, to get rid of most of the grass which had started to take over. Oh, and the big water tank Does Not Seem To Be Leaking (yey!!) so once we have it filled we can move some of the other water butts to go along behind the shed and then we have the perfect space to hang a hammock or two... Now we need some lazy summer days, cold beer in hand, picking fresh strawberries and simply, well, lounging. Not sure that happens much on an allotment, there's always something else to do.

And it's March already

2009-03-10T21:51:00.004Z

Gah! March! Already! That's getting on for a quarter of 2009, gone before I've even blinked! We're halfway to May already, and we all know what happens in May - the Allotments Start Going Crazy. Weeds! Beans! Peas! Other Stuff! I'm not sure I'll be ready in time...

Adam went to the plot at the weekend, taking a wheelbarrow, some netting given to us by a neighbour, a bit of handy guttering and a soil sieve thingy with him... not sure we'll use that last one but you never know.

Something I've realised since getting an allotment is that you never turn down 'junk'. You just never know. It may 'come in handy'. I also peer into local skips - just in case, you understand - and gaze at pieces of wood and old pallets on an abandoned corner plot nearby with what I fear may be a longing expression. Although maybe I just inherited certain qualities from my Dad, who never gets rid of anything which might 'come in handy' one day...

While Adam was at the plot he also filled the newly-patched water tank with water to just above the patch. We'll see if there's any liquid left in it next week. Oh yeah, didn't mention that before. The weekend before last we patched the hole with some evilly-sticky sealent and some plastic, and then celebrated the completion of our task by digging up some leeks and having a beer. So fingers crossed it doesn't leak now. We also bunged a big bucket over the rhubarb. Feels a bit mean to deprive it of light but boy, it tastes SOOOO much better :)

I haven't been to the allotment for a couple of weeks. It was cold cold cold last weekend so I stayed indoors and made muffins instead. Yummy. Baking's much easier to get on with when you don't have to remember to buy eggs.

And it's nearly spring proper. Yey! Little buds are starting to burst on the trees and I really should get on and start trying to germinate some parsnip. Any hints or tips? Last year we had (count them) none. Not one. Bah. I want our own roast parsnip for Christmas this year.

Or is that just planning ridiculously far ahead?

I chit you not

2009-03-05T12:10:00.005Z

Our potatoes are chitting in fruit boxes under the front window. And the chits (chits? technical term? anyone?) are different colours.

Stormy greys and moody blues on the 'Arran Pilot' first earlies...

Spring green above a plummy-purple for the 'Wilja' second earlies...

Pretty in pinky-red for 'Cara' maincrop...

Pretty potatoes... Who'd've thought?

Mud, mud, glorious mud

2009-02-22T16:49:00.008Z

We popped to the allotment last weekend, only for it to start raining and the ground slowly turn to mud under our boots. I guess everything was still waterlogged from the rain, sleet and snow the previous week. We picked some brussels sprouts and Adam put some manure on a few more of the beds, but really it wasn't the weather to be outside. There's nothing worse than tramping around a muddy allotment, your feet twice their usual size because of the clogging, oozing, sticky, gloopy, murky, mucky mud, and three times as heavy, and the rain somehow seeping down the back of your trousers when you bend over to dig. Yuck! So we went home.

But today we've spent a couple of hours catching up. Adam carried the compost bin from home to be added to the big heap - all that chicken poo (chickens poo a lot!) is going to do some good - and I carried the last of three big ex-olive-importing drums to use as a water butts. After getting the cricks out of our backs we sowed the first double row of broad beans, and also planted about 100 Centurion onions and sixty-something shallots too. In the picture above, the first three beds on the right are now full of onions, shallots and garlic... plus a patch of chard which went in before the winter.

The rhubarb is starting to make an appearance, breaking through the earth like some kind of weird creature. We'll have to find a big bucket and force it again as it was really tasty last year.

It's a good feeling to have got some things in the ground, especially as it's Six Nations season now, so we keep getting distracted at the weekends. Ah well, as long as we get the parsnips sown in time, I'm sure everything else can manage without us for a little bit.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

2009-02-06T10:32:00.006Z

I've got that song going round and round in my head... "Woah, the weather outside is frightful..."

I ended up making rock cakes and a chicken and mushroom pie on Monday. Managed to get to work on Tuesday and Wednesday, didn't get to the office on Thursday as the buses weren't running (so I made onion chutney and a curry), and am home again on Friday, sounding a bit like a Craig David song.

Adam got out of work early on Monday too, so we went to the allotment to build a snowman. A fine specimen, I think you'll agree.

(Adam's the one on the right...)

So, maybe I need to do more house organising since the weather's not really of the gardening variety. I cleaned out the kitchen cupboards yesterday. Fun.

It's still snowing.

But I helped to push a van and a car up the hill on my walk back from the station, so I'm feeling quite Good Samaritan-y today.

'What about the chooks?' I hear you cry... Well - Ruby T doesn't like the snow very much, and stays in the run, but it doesn't seem to bother Lola, who was out exploring as usual.

I long for a wood-burning stove

2009-02-02T10:36:00.008Z

It's snowing today. My boss rang me as I was walking to the train station this morning to say she was stuck - but then she does live in the middle of nowhere. Other colleagues who live in London and get the train up to Luton are also stuck as the trains weren't running. And it turned out that although there were a very few trains running from Bedford, the surprisingly friendly railway people said not to travel as they could almost guarantee that (and I quote) "you won't be able to get home again tonight."

Right...

So I've come home and given the chickens some hot porridge to warm them up. I've left the door to their run open too, but they don't seem to want to venture out into the garden today.

Sensible creatures.

I'm going to put the kettle on and organise our seeds. Then maybe this afternoon I'll make some chutney and some stew. Or a pie. Something warming and heartening, anyway...

Lots of stuff

2009-02-01T16:49:00.005Z

We've been shopping. Yesterday we went to the allotment shop to buy our seed potatoes. We've ended up with 'Arran Pilot' first earlies, 'Wilja' second earlies and 'Cara' maincrop. I'd post some pictures, but I think you can all just imagine what a string bag of potatoes look like...

We also got a bag of 'Green Windsor' broad beans, ready to sow when the weather warms up a little bit. And we got some 'Centurion' onions and 'Yellow Moon' shallots. We've already planted some red and some white onions on the plot, but we use onions in everything so a few more won't go to waste!

We had some garden centre vouchers from Christmas so today we decided to use them to buy our seeds, rather than send off a big long list and pay postage. And - extra bonus - the garden centre had 25% off all seeds! Excellent! We had a list of things we'd chosen from a catalogue, but there weren't as many varieties available on the shelves so we didn't always get the exact variety we wanted. But then, a beetroot's a beetroot, when it comes down to it. As long as it grows and can be eaten, I'll be happy.

Ready for a list? We've bought...

'Cobra' climbing french bean
'Firetongue' borlotti beans
'Oasis' and 'Twinkle' peas
'Cobnut' butternut squash
A mixed selection of winter squash
'Marmande' beef tomato
'Alicante' regular tomato
'Golden Sunrise' yellow tomato
'Marketmore' cucumber
'Sundance' sweetcorn
'Bosworth' brussels sprouts
'Autumn Giant 2' leeks
Perpetual spinach / leaf beet
'Kilaton' autumn cabbage
'Ruby Ball' red cabbage
'Neapolitan' basil
Mixed leaf salad
Rocket (great on pizza!)
Swiss chard 'Bright Lights'
'Parador' yellow courgette
'Defender' green courgette
'Globe 2' beetroot
'Purple Haze' carrots (purple!)
'New Red Intermediate' carrots

And left over from last year we have:

'Scarlet Emperor' runner beans
'Panache' parsnip
'April' spring cabbage
'Rainbow' mixed radish
Dwarf green curly kale
'Marian' swede
Acorn mixed summer squash
'Tasty Trio' beetroot
'Emilia' spinach
'Rainbow' mixed carrots
'Golden Ball' turnip

Plus (plus!) Suttons were offering a free pack of certain seeds when you bought two other packs... so we've also got three (three!) packs of 'Purple Dragon' carrots, two (two!) packs of 'Hilton' Chinese cabbage and a pack of poppy seeds, called lilac pompom.

Can't blame a girl for sneaking in some flowers...

Seeds of success

2009-01-20T21:04:00.000Z

Ok, I'm feeling a bit more positive now.

We've ploughed through pages of seed catalogues and made a few selections for the coming year. I say a few - it's totalling up at about £50, so we're going to have to whittle it down a bit! Although I suppose it's still heaps less than you'd spend at a supermarket or farm shop for the same amount of produce we get at the end.

So, we have a list of what we want to grow. Now we just need to check what seeds we have left over from last year, and if they'll still be ok to sow. Anyone know how long mange tout peas will keep? We definitely have left overs of those!

We need to take a trip to the local allotment shop soon to buy our seed potatoes. We won't bother getting Home Guard again as our earlies - they seem to explode if you boil them. One minute they're still hard, but give them another 30 seconds and boom! Potato everywhere! But Picasso worked well as a maincrop, even though they didn't get as large as we were promised.

Might wait 'til pay day until we place that order though... January's a long month, eh?

Roll on spring...

2009-01-19T14:06:00.000Z

I've lost that New Year Excitement.

Last year the thought of flicking through seed catalogues and planning for the months ahead filled me with glee, but at the moment the thought of trying to decide what to plant where just seems a bit daunting and I've got no enthusiasm for the plot at all. And just putting that in words makes me feel a bit guilty.

According to the BBC news website, today is officially the 'most depressing' day of the year. I think I'm feeling it. Maybe tomorrow will be better and I'll be able to work up more excitement at the thought of having our Very Own Purple Carrots.

Yeay. Purple. Carrots.

You see? Usually purple carrots (and other unusually-coloured veg) bring a smile to my face. But I just feel like I need a BIG helping of sunshine and a couple of days where the ground isn't freezing cold and the wind isn't blowing my hair in my face and I can get some tidying up and organising done.

Maybe that's it. Maybe I need to get myself organised so I know how many left over sugar snap peas we've got left. And whether we need to plant some more onions.

Adam is much more positive. He popped down to the plot on Sunday, and in the space of an hour and a half managed to spread compost over four beds, chat with Phil, accept the offer of some more garlic cloves from Phil, plant the garlic cloves in a couple of rows, chat with Frank (the bossy Italian man who tells us we're always doing everything wrong) pull up some leeks and generally Assess The Plot.

Adam definitely still has New Year Excitement.

Time to make leek and potato soup... that'll cheer me up.

One year and counting

2009-01-12T13:52:00.001Z

So, one year’s gone since I started this blog. Where has the time gone?

At least as we start 2009 we’re looking at an allotment which is mostly dug over, with decent soil, and some of our beds busy absorbing a scattering of manure to boost their fertility for the months ahead. This time in 2008 about half of the plot was as yet un-dug. We had some weed-suppressing plastic and carpets down, but the ground underneath was still compacted and bindweed-ridden, and giving us menacing looks ever time we went near it with a spade.

This year we still have to tackle the strawberry bed. I started this last January, a whole year ago, but I admit it’s beaten me - it’s the only part of the allotment which is still looking wild and weedy. The rest of the plot at least shows some modicum of control, even if you can see the weeds trying to creep in at the corners while we’re not looking. I think we’ll have to start from scratch and begin a new strawberry patch somewhere else, where it can be Properly Taken In Hand.

So what did we achieve in 2008, apart from digging? We’ve eaten our own veg for most of the year – and given surplus away to friends and family which is a good feeling. Especially when you’ve begun to dread the sight of yet another courgette. We’ve become more aware of what’s in and out of season, and also worked out what we like growing and eating, and what we don’t. Asparagus peas definitely come in the latter category – we won’t be bothering with them this year!

I want to plant a small bed of bulbs for cut flowers – probably alliums and tulips to start with. And speaking of non-edible things, we never got around to planting a honeysuckle to grow up and over the sheds. So that will have to go on our To Do list for 2009, along with mending the water tank and building an outdoor shelter or extension to the shed.

We need to add some raised edges for the beds, to improve the soil quality and help keep out the surrounding weeds and grass. So we need to collect some more pallets to rip apart. We need more manure, too. And to do some investigating into green manure as it seems like a really good idea, just something we’ve never got around to doing.

We’ve also made more friends at the allotment this year which hopefully will mean we’ll be able to do some seed- and plant-swapping come spring. Speaking of seeds, we have to make a visit to the allotment association shop for our potatoes soon, and place our seed order too. I think purple carrots are called for this year...

Cold cold cold

2009-01-04T17:17:00.003Z

Went to the allotment to have a mooch about and use Adam's new camping stove expresso maker which my sister gave him for his birthday (very good, by the way.)

The ground was frozen solid so my plans for planting some allium bulbs went out the window. Everything had a fine covering of frost and the water butts had a couple of inches of ice.

Might have to wait a while before we can do anything productive on the plot. It's just too cold! But we did pick the two Romanesco cauliflowers - which looked like they were about to go mouldy - and had cauliflower cheese. They looked pretty, but I can't say I was that impressed with the flavour.

Curiouser and curiouser

2008-12-29T10:33:00.005Z

The chooks are getting mischievous.

Curious.

Cocky, even, if you'll permit the pun.

We were tidying the garden (hence the state of the kitchen floor in the pic below) and not only were they determined to get their heads between the sledgehammer and the stake we were removing from the ground, or underneath the spade and the dirt we were attempting to shovel, but Lola then tottered into the house to see if Adam had found any treats while he was doing the washing up.

Oh, and you really should see them jump for worms (or spaghetti). I'll try and post a video one day.

Festive foodstuffs

2008-12-27T10:25:00.001Z

So, we went to the allotment on Christmas morning, when all was nice and peaceful, to pick some brussels sprouts, swede, leeks and red cabbage to have for lunch. Delicious. Especially the red cabbage, stewed up with apple and cinnamon. We also roasted the last of our potatoes, and the last of our carrots, which were pathetic-looking, if I'm honest, but tasted GREAT! Which is the main point, I suppose.

Bad news on the cauliflower front though. They mostly seems to be going mouldy, not sure why, as we've done everything the books tell us to. And if you can't trust the books any more, then what is the world coming to?! Maybe it's global warming...

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T10:38:00.003Z

Hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas and New Year.

Sarah and Adam x

In the bleak mid-winter...

2008-12-14T08:53:00.009Z

...frosty winds, earth hard as iron, water like a stone? I wonder if whoever wrote that carol was a gardener?

Anyway, I'd better bring you up to date on the plot, hadn't I? Obviously the chooks have been the most exciting thing of the past few weeks in terms of producing our own food, but the allotment is still chuntering away in the background.

Looks a bit bleak though, doesn't it? And that front left bed definitely needs weeding before the grass takes over completely... (add to To Do list...)

At home, we're still eating our own potatoes, onions and shallots, although supplies of each are starting to get a bit low. We've got two small pumpkins left, and Adam is working through a batch of courgette chutney in his cheese sandwiches for lunch. In the freezer we've still got frozen broad beans and runner beans too. All in all, most pleasing. The damsons were the main disappointment - a distinct lack of them anywhere in the world (it seems) means we'll have no damson gin this Christmas. Apparently it was A Bad Year for damsons...

We went to the plot last weekend and did a bit of tidying. And pillaging, if I'm to be truthful. The plot next door had been paid for but (as you can just about see on the picture above - to the left of out plot) nothing's been done. Now their rent has expired the secretary can re-let the plot, which shouldn't be too hard - it's got a shed and everything! - but also said people could take any of the 'stuff' the previous occupants had left behind. There was some wood and some corrugated metal sheets which went to be recycled into someone's new shed, and we nabbed a gargantuan water tank (with a hole in, as it happens, but we'll patch it, oh yes). Plus there is a compost bin half full of luscious, crumbly goodness which *might* work its way over to our patch. I feel slightly guilty about taking things, but maybe that's part of what allotmenteering is all about - making use of other people's unwanted 'junk'. You should see some of the sheds going up on the plot- one of them is - so far - tied together with old rags (I kid you not!).

My dad brought us three large drums to use as water butts (Dad - we still owe you a beer) so now we can set up a nice system round the back of the shed and we'll have no problems with water storage. It's not really something we've had to worry about so far. Since we've had the plot we haven't even really had to think about watering in the summer, as the summers have been, well, wet, to say the least. But it's always been on our minds that we don't have quite enough water butts about.

Our garlic and onions are doing ok, all poking their little pointy shoots through the soil. Our different types of garlic have shown an obvious difference. The garden centre bought bulbs emerged first, with bright green shoots, but only now have the bulbs we bought from Pat's deli on the corner put in an appearance. The garden centre bulbs were white, so we tried to buy pinker bulbs from Pat's and, indeed, the shoots do have a pink tinge.

And here's the cauli. Beautiful curly whirly shapes. Some of the others - the yellowish varieties - are looking a bit sick, and slightly browned. Maybe they got frosted a couple of weeks ago? I'm not sure what's up, never having grown cauliflowers. But we've tied up the leaves which is supposed to protect them so hopefully they'll be decent enough for us to eat. The purple ones are still looking good. Oh, and we should have just enough brussels sprouts for Christmas. After trying to be so careful and grow more plants this year, we've actually ended up with less than last year! Damn slugs... Watch out, or we'll set the chickens on you!

Here come the girls

2008-12-12T13:35:00.003Z

Well, the chickens are named... Lola and Ruby Tuesday. Thanks to everyone who gave us ideas - lots of food for thought. Henna was a particular favourite...

Here's Lola, scrummaging around in the garden...

"Her name was Lola,
she was a showgirl,
with yellow feathers in her hair,
and a dress cut down to there... "

...no dress, but she's got the yellow feathers. She's very friendly, and will always come over and see what you're up to. She seems to think that fingernails and rings are edible.

Here's Ruby, striking a pose in the run. She's much more reddish around the head than Lola, with less gold on her front. She seems to be the bossy one of the two. She's a bit more wary of us humanfolk but is always first to the food and treats.

Lola lays her eggs in the morning, and Ruby seems to lay about lunchtime.

Eggs three and four

2008-11-24T19:08:00.004Z

Two more eggs today!

I thought one of the girls was eyeing-up the nest box when I left for work, and then - hey presto - two eggs, Both In The Nest Box. Clever chooks!

Adam's cunning ploy of putting a shop-bought egg in the nest box, so they'd spot it and think: "ooh, there's an egg - that must be a lovely place to lay eggs. I'll lay mine there too and I won't poo on them" seems to have worked.

By the way, they do have provisional names, we're just going to give it a day or two before I post them, otherwise there's no going back...

Cauliflowers fluffy...

2008-11-24T18:51:00.005Z

...and cabbages green. (or red, in our case.) Anyone else remember that song from school?

Went to the plot yesterday afternoon to discover that one variety of the green cauliflowers look like they'll be really interesting, a sort of Romanesco type. They're still quite small, but beautiful. Can't wait to try them. Some of the others were getting to a nearly edible size, but I restrained myself and will let them grow til they'll at least feed the two of us!

The purple caulies were looking fantastic as well! Ok, my focus isn't great on this pic, but just LOOK at that colour! Verging on ridiculous! We'll have to remember to steam them when we want to eat them to preserve the purple. Cauliflower cheese will never be the same again!

I really must have a look at the plant labels underneath to find out what varieties these really are, but when it's cold and damp and threatening rain and snow, the last thing you want to be doing is crawling around on bare earth to rummage underneath cauliflower plants.

After ooh-ing and aah-ing at the caulies, we tied the larger leaves around the... err... umm... heads? to protect them from frost, as a couple were looking a bit suspicious. Picked some pathetic-looking carrots, a swede and a couple of little kohl rabi, and roasted them all at home with some Picasso potatoes from our crop waaay back when. The only potatoes we buy now are really BIG baking potatoes, as only a few of ours got large enough. But Picasso have been great for baking, mashing, boiling and chipping. (Mmm, chips...)

Also, we've decided we need some friends to come and help us do some weeding, in return for a meal and maybe some beer. Any takers? :)

Egg-cellent news

2008-11-23T10:29:00.003Z

Another egg!

100% success rate!!! Well done girls!

Feathered friends

2008-11-23T08:59:00.006Z

We've got our chickens!

We picked the girls up from a nice little local farm shop (www.freedompoultry.co.uk), had their wings clipped, stuck them in a big cardboard box, bought their food and that was that!

I felt a bit sorry for them last night. They'd been plucked (excuse the pun!) from a nice big barn, which was filled with hundreds of their chicken-y friends, to a little hen hut in our garden. Plus it was the coldest night of the year so far, with snow predicted. But in the end we only had a light dusting of snow, and the girls looked quite pleased to get out of the hut into their run this morning. The weather was grim - freezing cold with rain and wind - so I took a quick snap to post.

And...

...we had an egg! The first egg! Even though the chicken man said they wouldn't lay for a couple of days, one of them Laid An Egg! (I think it was the chicken in the foreground as the egg was where she was sleeping last night.)

If the rain eases off a bit this afternoon we'll be off to the the allotment to see how our sprouts and cauliflowers are doing. Plus we should probably do a spot of weeding, but there's nothing worse than weeding in the rain 'cos you get covered in mud and the rain goes down the back of your neck. Brr.

Actually, I've just thought, we're going to have to pop to the plot later anyway to get some veg, even if it starts snowing again, as we've got a chicken to roast for dinner! (shh! Don't tell the girls!).

Oh, by the way, they're not named yet. Any more suggestions welcome!

Home to roost

2008-11-16T09:24:00.004Z

Everything's slowed down a lot at the plot now. This time last year we still had half the plot to dig over, but, seeing as that's all done now, it's just a matter of tidying up for time to time, and spreading manure on the enpty patches. We've already planted red and white onions, and lots of garlic, to overwinter. We're just starting to pick our first decent-sized brussels sprouts, we're waiting for the cauliflowers, leeks and swedes to grow larger, and we're unfortunately getting to the end of the carrots, so looks like we may need to buy some for Christmas dinner after all.

Plus, we have a new project back at home - chickens! Yes, you read that right, we've been building a little chicken house for two chooks to live in, plus a run so they won't have the whole garden to decimate. We'll feed them the odd bits of kitchen scraps, they'll do their droppings on wood shavings or straw, we'll bung all that nitrogen-rich stuff in the compost bin, which will then end up fertilising the allotment. Plus we'll get fresh eggs.

Don't have the actual chickens yet - will probably pick them up next weekend.

Some of you must also have chicken or two, so any hints or tips about keeping our feathered friends happy would be much appreciated!

Any ideas on suitable names? (I'm not adverse to calling them Tikka and Korma, or Paxo and... umm...)

Yeay! Pumpkins!

2008-11-05T23:14:00.010Z

It just keeps raining, doesn't it? We managed to pop down to the plot on Saturday in between showers to harvest our mini pumpkins, not quite in time for Halloween. We B Little, they're called. And they are - about the size of a grapefruit. Just right for two, in fact. I got a good armful for a picture. (Would have been a shame not to, seeing as how I'd managed to colour co-ordinate myself!)

After the pumpkin plucking it was obviously time for a sit down and a cup of tea (so soon? Well, it was quite cold.) Adam took some time to give his Grandad's old dibber which - he's inherited along with some other handy tools - a bit of winter protection with some beeswax. After a spot of weeding, Adam flung some of our home-made compost on one of the beds and then we planted lots of garlic, using the dibber of course. We'd bought 3 white bulbs from a garden centre - for improved disease resistance an' all that - and then bought 3 more from our local Italian shop, which have a pinkish tinge. So we'll see which ones work out best.

Discovered a tiny purple (PURPLE!!!) cauliflower nestling among its leaves at the bottom of the plot. I'd guessed that the 'Cheddar' cauliflower variety might be yellow, but purple is much more exciting!!! I'll have to check what type it is next time... I think they keep their colour better if you steam them, right? Although that might be purple sprouting broccoli, I'll have to check. Also had to do some more caterpillar flinging. Little bastards. Gerroff! How on earth are you supposed to stop the little squidgy things from getting onto the brassicas? Obviously the netting didn't stop the butterflies from laying on them.

We picked our first decent sized swede too (ok, it looks quite small here but honest, it was a proper size, like you get in a shop!), and ate it mashed with half a dozen small carrots for Sunday lunch. Along with a roast chicken, a good handful of spinach and chard, and oven-roasted pumpkin on the side it was really tasty. Real sense of achievement, after that meal (until I saw the washing up...)

Oh my god - it's nearly November

2008-10-23T21:40:00.009+01:00

No, we haven't died. Or been cruelly neglecting the allotment. Our computer broke and I can't access the blog at work so that's the reason for the long silence.

And then, when we finally got a computer up and running, blogger was unavailable. Typical. So sorry for the long absence.

But I'm back. For now anyway. And I'll try not to ramble on for too long about what we've been up to for the last few weeks.

The first weekend of October we went to London for a spot of sightseeing and a stay in the Waldorf Hotel (as you do... One of the benefits of working for a big travel company is being able to use your concession on a nice hotel!) So, that was great fun, but no allotmenteering!

Since then we've harvested all the sweetcorn (mmm, yum, delicious - sorry to those of you who we promised to give some - it was too nice and there just wasn't enough to spread the wealth... so maybe next year...) The final courgettes, cucumbers and squash have also been eaten, and we've composted the remains of all the plants. Adam dug over the now-empty beds at the far end of the site, and we've now got lots of space ready for us to plan what's going in next year. Hee! Look at all that nice fertile earth! Now I'm just waiting for the seed catalogues to drop through the door so we can start dreaming of the veggies to come in 2009!

While Adam was wrestling with the cucurbit plants I dismantled the runner bean poles which was an epic task to say the least, as the beans stubbornly refused to let go of their sticks. Then I dug over the bed which had also had the pathetically tiny dwarf French beans in.

The red onions which Sian planted at the end of September are poking their heads above the surface. They're an overwintering variety but I need to find out whether they still need a bit of protection for really cold weather or not. A week after the red onions went in I planted some regular white overwintering onions too, so we should get a decent amount next spring.

We've got some more spinach growing and the chard is going great guns. I've also been pulling beetroot now and again (that reminds me, there's a couple boiling on the hob as I type) and it's great just sliced in sandwiches.

I also dug a little bed next to the shed where I might put some sort of climber to ramble up and over. I mentioned before about getting some honeysuckle in, but I need to find out what sort of conditions it likes first - the soil next to the shed is quite shallow and rubble-y and doesn't get much moisture or sun...

Erica, a friend from work, came to stay last weekend and we took a quick trip to the plot to get some veggies to roast for dinner. Erica pulled some carrots and seemed sufficiently chuffed. We also sacrificed the first leek (it was a bit small, to be honest, but we just HAD to try one!) and had a swede. The first swede! Excitement indeed!

Adam did some more weeding (good man) while I made tea, and then we all had a traditional Bedfordshire Clanger for lunch. (For anyone who doesn't know what a Bedfordshire Clanger is, think of a rectangular Cornish pasty, made with suet pastry, with a hammy-meat-and-veg filling at one end and a stewed-appley filling at t'other. Main and pud all in one!)

We've got some tiny cauliflowers growing, nestling down at the base of the leaves, hiding from the chill it seems. But, see - they look great! I do have to keep picking off caterpillars though and I'm too squeamish to squish them so I fling them into the undergrowth on the deserted plot next door, hoping they'll perish before they find their way back, or get eaten by a hungry sparrow.

And we've been eating the kohl rabi. After neglecting it for the best part of 6 months it's not half bad roasted!

Finally - a random pic. Here's the remains of the cucumber plant on its way to the compost bin. Anyone else think it looks like something out of a Tim Burton film?

Quick plot stop

2008-09-27T18:15:00.001+01:00

Our friends Sian, Kate, Louise and Ian came to stay on Friday for some pre-birthday fun and frolics. We had a massive dish of roast allotment veggies for dinner, with salmon, which seemed to go down well. I love preparing and cooking our home grown veg, and sharing them with others is a strange feeling. I almost feel a bit nervous to start with, in case they aren't as nice as they should be, and then kind of proud, like I'm saying: "Look! Look what our clever courgettes/squash/potatoes/onions did! All by themselves!"

Anyway, we popped down to the plot this morning to have a look - Ian and Louise had never seen it but they made all the right appreciative noises. Sian stayed a little longer, donning gloves and a healthy sense of disgust to help me pull up all the blighted tomatoes (*shudder*) so we can burn them in the incinerator. There's nothing quite so sad as a whole bed full of blighty tomato plants. I think we ate a grand total of 7 tomatoes this year... maybe 8... Although it's heartening to know that pretty much everyone else I spoke to (except Nic, grr, jealous) has also had a rubbish tomato year, either bring struck by blight or just not getting enough sunshine to ripen. I think we may have cursed British Summertime though. Ever since we've had the plot, so the last two summers, it's rained and rained and rained. But it has meant we haven't had to worry about watering so much!

Sian also planted three small rows of red onion sets which my mum gave us last week. Apparently they'll over-winter ok for an early crop. I'll just have to find out whether they need any protection from the cold.

After Sian had gone, Adam rotovated the old tomato bed and strimmed the paths, and I sowed a few rows of spinach. A bit late, maybe, but if they do come up it'll be nice to have some more winter greens. The spinach that's currently growing is doing ok, but there's not as much of it as we probably need to get a decent portion from them.

The plot is looking quite tidy 'cos the grass seed has taken well on the paths and it's just a case of getting the weeds out now. But what you probably can't see in this picture is the couch grass which is beginning to infiltrate the front beds. Any tips for getting rid of it? Or is it - as I fear - another bindweed-type-jobby where it's a case of digging it out, piece by tiny piece...?

We've also got a few flowers (a type of marigold?) which have self seeded around the place. They look lovely in the sunshine, but I have a feeling that they're just planning on taking over while our backs are turned. I'm going to transplant them, I think, to go alongside the shed wall. Just need to attack the grass there and make a little bed. I was also thinking about planting a honeysuckle or some other evergreen climber - preferably with flowers and a scent - to ramble over the sheds. Not only will it look nice but might act as a deterrent to anyone thinking about burning something down (which has happened in the past, though luckily not to us - touch wood).

All things bright and beautiful...

2008-09-25T16:55:00.014+01:00

... well, yellow, anyway, judging by these pics.

I've been off work for a couple of days feeling ill, but this afternoon I felt like I needed to get out of the house and get a bit of fresh air, so I decided to go down to the allotment and see what was going on this week...

Here's an overview pic of the whole plot. You can see in the foreground and on the far left that a few of the squash and courgette plants are well and truly over, while others are still valiantly trying to produce more before the cold weather really kicks in.

I picked a couple of courgettes and three small squashes today as well as the two ripe sweetcorn cobs to have for dinner. I think we'll probably have a roast vegetable omelette to make the most of the harvest.

Fingers crossed that the yellow pumpkin gets enough sun to ripen fully... it's called We B Little so it won't get much bigger than it is now (about 5 inches across) but this one and its 5 friends need to get a bit more orange before they're picked. I also want the strange pointy-shaped squash above to ripen as it's not like any of the others we've had so far.

Grow little squash! Grow!

Indian summer

2008-09-23T09:55:00.002+01:00

Well, I have a confession. We did nothing on the plot all weekend, even though the weather was great. But we do have an excuse... Adam was laying a patio in the back garden, and I was decorating the spare room. So, we were keeping ourselves busy - just not at the allotment.

Then on Monday I was overcome with a sense of guilt and neglect. How could we have left it a whole ten days since we last went down? What about the weeds? What about the snails? We might have become over-run with squashes and courgettes, and some more sweetcorn might have ripened! So we popped down on Monday evening to find that the sky had not, in fact, fallen in and the weeds had not taken over the world. We had one big courgette (almost a marrow) and a few smaller ones, as well as a couple of small squash and lots of runner beans. Apart from that, everything seemed to have been taking care of itself quite nicely. Certainly the weeds aren't growing as fast as they were, and the courgettes aren't ripening quite as manically. I guess that's due to less hours of sunlight, plus the fact that a few of the courgette plants have succumbed to mildew and others seem to have been affected by the colder nights.

My Dad very kindly got the strimmer going properly over the weekend. He took it home and re-built the carburettor, I think, as well as re-attaching the 'stop' button. (That wasn't really a necessity before, as getting the thing to stop wasn't an issue.) Anyway, this now means that we can strim our paths and edges to our hearts' content, and it'll make a big difference to how neat the plot looks, especially now that things are starting to die back and it's all looking decidedly autumnal.

Easygardener from greenforks.com left a comment saying: "One of the upsides of the end of the season is thinking about what to plant next year - and what not to repeat - in my case that would be carrots!". Luckily for us, our carrots are now doing fine, after many, many attempts. But I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment about looking forwards to 2009. I think I get most excited when we're planning what to plant next, flicking through the seed catalogues and choosing the exciting-looking varieties. There are quite a few things that we probably won't bother with again, one being asparagus peas. Who decided they tasted like asparagus, anyway? They taste more like... well, what I would imagine eating grass tastes like.

Mildew, mould and machines

2008-09-13T20:44:00.009+01:00

Mum called me this morning and offered (really offered - no arm twisting involved) to come and help us weed! Fab! I love it when people actually want to come and help out. As long as they don't mind taking some extra veg away with them as well!

So, this afternoon - making the most of the sunny weather - we went to the plot with Mum and Dad and got looooads done!

Dad and Adam immediately turned to the petrol strimmer and rotovator. The strimmer is notoriously temperamental but Dad got it going and strimmed all the paths which has made a huge difference. Then he and Adam had a go with the rotovator and churned up some of the already-dug beds, mixing in the manure which we spread a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, me and mum were weeding around the cauliflower plants (looking good, the snails haven't found them yet!) the courgettes and squashes, and the chard, and pulling up some of the mange tout plants now that they've died right back. Everything looks neater and tidier now.

Here's mum among the courgettes...

We picked quite a lot, including the first two cobs of sweetcorn, which we had for dinner. YUM! This is one of the few things that I can honestly say tastes SO much better than shop- bought. You know how people usually smother corn on the cob with butter? No need. Ours are sweet and delicious, and I'm just hoping we get enough sun for more of them to ripen. Anyone who has a couple of square feet in their garden, or even in a bucket on a patio, should grow some. As Tony the Tiger would say, they're great.

Here's the rich pickin's from the plot this week... swiss chard, runner beans, a little pumpkin (picked too early 'cos I thought it was a squash!), white and red beetroot, colourful carrots, white scallopini squash, a green acorn squash, some dark green cucumbers (bottom right), courgettes, a yellow scallopini squash, a round courgette and the beautiful, delicious sweetcorn. And this isn't all of it, because we gave a carrier bag full to mum and dad for helping out.

Not everything has gone according to plan. The red cabbage and swedes are being munched to death by snails. Grr. The tomatoes have blight, I think, so we've picked all the healthy tomatoes and I'll make some Green Tomato Chutney. The dwarf beans have, frankly, been a bit pathetic, though we've had enough for a couple of meals from them. Some of the courgette plants have mildew, we pulled up the most productive squash plant yesterday after it started to die back with some weird disease, and the biggest cucumber plant has withered and died too.

But all in all, it's been an ok summer for the plot. I'm feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

Now we just have to think about overwintering things and ahead to 2009!

We're back!

2008-09-11T21:13:00.002+01:00

Hello again one and all. Sorry for the absence but we're just got back from holidaying in Cancun, Mexico. (Not very carbon neutral, I know, but we'll plant some trees or something to make up...) It's an amazing part of the world but it's a bit depressing to come back to all this rain and grey skies.

We popped to the allotment on Monday which was very kindly looked after by our Mums while we were away...

Good things:

there are many, many squashes ripening, which is good 'cos I like squash (as I may have mentioned before.)
the carrots have grown, finally, and they taste really good.
there are lots of blackberries on the surrounding bushes so I can make bramble and apple jelly again.
the sweetcorn is getting fat and is nearly ready to pick.
the beetroots are getting big and juicy-looking.

Bad things:

some of the courgette plants have got mildew and look a bit pathetic.
one of the squash plants has some weird disease which makes the fruits go all bobbly.
the tomato plants have blight. Again. (sob!)
snails are eating the brassicas.
there are weeds EVERYWHERE!
I don't know if we'll get enough sun now to ripen the sweetcorn. That would be A Sad Thing.
I've realised I don't know how to cook beetroot... (research is needed.)

Things to do at the weekend:

set some beer traps to catch snails.
weeding, weeding and more weeding.
tie up the cucumber plants.
general never-ending tidying.
find out what to do with raspberry canes which are getting long and whippy.
decide what - if anything - we can plant to grow through the winter.

They're taking over!!!

2008-08-17T22:24:00.011+01:00

We popped to the allotment during this week to pick a 'few' veg, and ended up with a whole carrier bag full of courgettes. It's obviously that time of year when the courgettes decide to go mad. We've had stuffed courgette, barbequed courgette, fried courgette, a mousakka with courgette in, the funkily-named 'courgetti spaghetti', and now I've made a whole load of courgette chutney. And still, when we went to the plot today we came back with another bag of courgettes... and that's not counting the ones still in the fridge.

We also picked the first scallopini squash, which we simply chopped into eighths, skin on, and baked with olive oil, salt and pepper. Delicious, light, slightly buttery taste. Yum! Everyone should try it.

Today we had a big weed and tidy up session as we're due to be going on holiday next week for a fortnight. Good ol' parents have agreed to keep an eye on things, though we're not expecting them to start weeding and digging, just the odd splosh of water here and there (if it ever stays sunny for more than a day) and the chance to pick whatever's available to take home. My poor mum is going to be overrun with courgettes...

Do courgettes freeze? I doubt it. Drat.

Part of the general tidy up involved digging up all the remaining potatoes and onions, plus picking a couple more squash, a couple of cucumber, some runner beans and the aforementioned carrier bag full of courgettes. The potatoes were our maincrop, Picasso, and were a decent size - we even got a couple of jacket potato-sized spuds which is great. As for the onions, well, we had some titchy ones as well as some absolute monsters. Strange, seeing as how they were all planted the same time, in the same bed, with the same conditions. I was really pleased with the onions, cos' as well being pretty much hassle-free, I thought quite a few would have gone mouldy in the ground, what with all the recent rain, but only 5 had to go straight in the compost heap. Here's the onions drying in the sun...

I think I'm going to have to dedicate some time to preserving and pickling (or something) this week, or our families may end up with a big bagful of courgettes on their doorstep before we go on holiday. I enjoy sharing the fruits (and veg) of our labour, but I admit I'd prefer to be able to store it for future use, especially as I'm not sure we've planned far enough in advance for the winter.

Here's our haul - and yes, we did have to use the handy fold-up wheelbarrow to get it home - that's a half sack of potatoes and a nearly full sack of onions in there! No way I'm carrying one of them home with my delicate girly arms!

Oh, you may also spot a little purple kohl rabi on the side. this time it's gonna get boiled and maybe mashed. Barbequeing one last month was not really a success.

And as far as 'not successes' go, the asparagus peas are right at the top of my list for Things We Will Never Grow Again. We tried them, little wiggly pods that they are and, frankly, they ming.

Ethical overload

2008-08-12T22:43:00.005+01:00

Not much to report from last weekend I'm afraid - well, not when it comes to the allotment anyway. I spent the weekend at my friend Jo's house in Stoke on Trent. She and hubby Martin are expecting their first child in November, and it was great to see how she's 'blooming', help her choose some baby clothes, and see how her own veggie patch in their garden is coming along.

On another note, I've just read a book which has given me food for thought - A Life Stripped Bare: My Year Trying To Live Ethically by Leo Hickman. As a journalist/writer for The Guardian Leo undertook the challenge to try to live more ethically, everything from the food he and his family ate to the clothes they wore and the bank he held his accounts with.

But the steps and struggles he went through did made it seem more, well, do-able, I suppose. At least to make a start and change those things straight away which aren't such a massive step. Also, I was quite shocked that a lot of this 'ethical' stuff I just hadn't really thought about before.

Anyway, it's got me thinking... I tried to buy an apple at the supermarket the other day and there was not one - not one! - from anywhere in the UK. 'Hmm,' I thought, 'maybe it's not quite UK apple season... Aha! A neighbour had fresh plums on their tree at the weekend, I'll try that.' But the only plums there were from Israel. So... umm... strawberries! 'British strawberries' as the label proudly stated... but then they were £1.99 for sixteen strawberries (yes, I did count them) and even for a surge of ethical-doing-good-ness, that's a bit steep.

Organic, Fair Trade, air miles, local, European certified this and something else recommended that. It's a minefield out there. Is Fair Trade stuff flown from Kenya more ethical than organic stuff shipped in from Spain? Who knows???

I felt I had to share this with you guys. My gut feeling tells me that you fellow allotmenteers may have some stories to share or hints and tips...

I admit to feeling slightly smug, as I calculated our household annual Carbon Footprint online, and we came in at 2 tonnes under the UK average! But that's still 2 tonnes OVER the world average. Hmm. I get the train to work, Adam rides his bike, we recycle everything our council will accept, plus we have a compost heap and the all-important allotment, but I'm sure there's more, much more, we can do.

So I'm starting with household cleaners and detergents.

I ordered some soap nuts online today. I'll let you know if they're any good...

...and I'm sure that lemon balm in the garden is good for something.

Squash brings a smile

2008-08-03T16:51:00.012+01:00

Much excitement down on the plot today! (Well, it's probably just me.) One of our squash plants has three little squashes on! Hurrah! I actually did a tiny little jig of joy when I saw them! The variety is 'White Custard' and it's one of the little flying saucer style summer squashes that you can cook with the skin on.

We've also picked our first yellow courgette today - along with lots of green ones - and there's a nice round courgette growing nicely too. PLUS the cucumbers are really getting carried away.

Above is a kind of support I put up with canes to keep the cucumbers off the ground, also because the bigger plant was starting to grow over the smaller ones and I didn't want them to get swamped. We ate a freshly- picked, small but perfectly formed cucumber along with hunks of cheese and chunky bread for lunch. Very rustic, and very tasty.

What else did we get up to? I did lots of weeding, 'cos with all this rain the weeds are getting a bit manic. I also tied up the tomato plants as some of those had put on a growth spurt too (no red tomatoes yet), and I sowed some spinach too, a variety which is apparently good for summer sowings and shouldn't bolt. Also pulled up a dozen or so small onions which are now drying outside (I'd like a bit of sunshine but at least it's not raining.)

Adam began weeding the overgrown strawberry patch - a mammoth task. 'But wait!' - I hear you cry - 'didn't you clear the strawberry patch already?'. Yes, indeed I did, some of it back in the winter and some in early May with Jo, but the weeds have once again taken over. I blame the patch next door which has run to rack and ruin since the plot holders' rotavator broke. Then they seemed to lose interest...

Adam also dug a bit of manure into the ex-broad bean bed... Did I not mention the manure? Last week we popped to the garden centre to get a plant for our garden, and on the way back saw a place selling well-rotted horse manure for 50p a bag. Too good a bargain to miss! So we took ten bags, filled the back of my tiny Ford ka, and drove the 5 miles back home with all the windows open. It was a very hot day... poo!

Here are some pics to get you all up to date with what's going on down on Our Patch of Earth...

Little French beans, yellow courgette, pretty Swiss chard, baby runner beans, our first round courgette and a lovely cucumber flower, which the bees seem to like.

Here are our very healthy looking squash plants (they've got bigger than we expected, otherwise we'd have put them further apart!) and part of the sweetcorn patch in the background.

Louise gave us ten little cauliflower plants a week or so ago - 5 different varieties: Cheddar, Emeraude, Nessie, Gitane and Graffiti. They've now been planted out and covered with netting to try and keep the pigeons at bay. Why do pigeons like brassicas so much?

Hot 'n' tasty

2008-07-27T09:52:00.002+01:00

So, Saturday was a busy day. It was very, very hot, so I made best use of the shed and a rather attractive, if not droopy, sunhat to avoid as best as possible going pink. Adam only has to look at the sun to go nice and brown but I - alas - am not so lucky and have to work at getting a tan. I am getting an allotmenteer's tan - brown arms, feet and face/neck but sadly pasty legs. I'll have to hit the bottle before going on holiday, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I digress...

Adam chopped down all the broad beans, leaving the roots in the soil to make use of their nitrogen nodules (sounds like something out of Star Trek). We also picked the past of the pea pods which we'll dry to save for seed for next year. There weren't very many, but Frank the Italian came over to see how we were getting on and he was quite adamant (Oh! I've just 'got' the name of Adam Ant... he he... oh dear) that we should save some. We picked the first kohl rabi - I still think it is possibly the cutest vegetable I've ever seen - and inspected the tomatoes for any red ones. Not yet. But they are coming along nicely. 6 cherry tomato plants, about 20 beef tomato ones and 7 regular sized ones. We'll have a taste test when they're ripe!

We also discovered that the nicely laden bough of the damson tree behind the shed Has Been Cut Off! Seems we may have suffered from the lack of bees that the paper keeps mentioning, cos not very many of the blossom from spring have been pollinated, and now the one branch that had has gone!! We think it's the new people behind us, who've done a fantastic job clearing the plot and attacking a bramble bush with gusto, but still... looks like we'll have to buy damsons again this year for the gin purposes. Bah!

So what else did we do on Saturday? We weeded and weeded, watered and tweaked. I got excited about little yellow courgettes and tiny cucumbers. We tried some asparagus peas raw (Bleurgh! Don't try this at home!) and picked and ate some mange tout. Now, here's a thing. Waaaay back, we bought the sugar snap peas and mange tout from our local allotment shop (not attached to ours - it's at some allotments the other side of Bedford) and one of the nice, rustic brown paper bags actually had 'Mange Tout' crossed out and hand-written 'Sugar Snap' instead. Now it's come to cropping time, I think they ballsed up, 'cos none of our sugar snap peas are sugar snapping. They're all mange tou-ing.

Never mind, still very tasty.

And carrots! Finally, they've decided to play ball. We had a grand total of ten (count them!) carrots which had germinated from the second sowing we did - the first was an outright disaster, even though we covered them with snuggly fleece an' everything. But now, we've got proper rows of carrot seedlings, god only know which ones are which though, I'm just hoping we end us with some of the 'Rainbow' multi-coloured ones , 'cos strange coloured veg is fab.

And then, Saturday evening, it was time for the barbie. I popped back home for get the chicken portions, local Bedford sausages (Lingers butchers' pork and Bombardier beer ones are highly recommended) a red pepper - not one of ours, sadly they're no where near that stage yet! - and plates, knives forks etc, and away we went. Tried barbequeing the sliced kohl rabi, which was nice, but I think it'd be better boiled. The highlight - of course - was the courgette, picked and sliced straight onto the BBQ. About 30 second from plant to grill and five minutes from plant to mouth. Just add olive oil, salt and pepper... Mmm.

How's that for cutting down on food miles?

Freebies and weeds

2008-07-26T18:50:00.003+01:00

Wahey! I'm back after a blogging drought. I blame the computer people at work, who have decided to block access to blogger so I can no longer start writing posts in my lunch break. Bah!

So, what's been going on in the last three weeks...?

The weekend after the excitement of getting the strimmer working was the bi-annual Bedford River Festival - so no allotmenteering for us! The plot judging took place on that Sunday, and then we had to wait over a week to find out if we'd won anything!

On the following weekend the committee had hired a skip to clear some of the rubbish and unwanted carpets with accumulate around the back ends of allotments. Adam was going away for the weekend so got up extra early to lend a hand clearing bits and bobs. Then I popped down about 10am to spend an hour or two helping clear up and then doing a few odd jobs on our patch. Eventually finished about 2pm when I realised that I was grubby and very hungry! But in that time I'd done some weeding, collected up the shallots and garlic which Adam had left drying in the sunshine, and transplanted our leek seedlings to their 'proper' place, where they can put on some weight ready for winter. Frank - the Italian with the huge field of tomato plants - gave us two old oil drums which we could use as temporary water butts. Now we just have to get them rigged up to the guttering. I also had a coffee with Louise (who's house is just 2 doors down from the allotment gate) and she gave us ten cauliflower seedlings, of various varieties, and some beetroot chutney.

That's one of the very best things about allotments - the sense of community and the fact that people are happy (most of the time) to help out and give you their surplus. Plus - free cauliflowers!!!

In the afternoon Adam's mum popped round along with her sister June and Emma, June's daughter. June especially has been really great, donating bits and bobs for the allotment including a compost bin. This time we were grateful recipients of a rotavator (ooh!) some tools and one of those dustbin-style incinerators. in appreciation we gave June some allotment produce - mange tout, shallots, potatoes and garlic - along with some homemade elderflower cordial and some orange, ginger and rhubarb marmalade.

Monday evening was the presentation of the cups and certificates from and judging the previous weekend. and no - we didn't win anything. But those who did win - it must be said - had quite spotless plots, whereas ours certainly has a few weeds (a few! ha!) here and there. Mike was given the Allotment Society Award 2008, and well deserved, as he's single-handedly cleared three or four plots which had become entirely overgrown, to make them more appealing to newcomers. And they're just down the site from us, so that'll mean less weed coming in our direction too. Anyone who reduces our weedage deserves an award as far as I'm concerned.

Adam spotted our first decent sized courgette this week, but we left in on the plant so as to be able to take a picture before we picked it... and then we didn't go to the plot of a few days.

Oops!

You'd have thought we'd've learned from last year that courgettes like turning into marrows all of a sudden.

Update on this weekend to follow. It's too nice a day to sit at the computer any longer!!!

Short back & sides

2008-07-08T23:24:00.005+01:00

The strimmer decided to work! (Raaay!) Fret not, dear readers, the plot is getting neater by the day...

Adam went to the allotment on Sunday afternoon, in the rain, natch, and managed to get the thing going long enough to strim the adjacent path, our paths through the plot, and the area around our sheds. It'll need another quick going over, but we need a bit of dry weather (you know, like the summer holidays I remember from my 'yoof' when it was a 6 week heatwave) and also a new strimmer-wire thing wot whizzes round for underneath.

I put together the certificate template today and emailed it to Louise today, ready to be printed out with winners' names on after the judging of the plots at the annual 'show' on Sunday. There are going to be eight categories:

Winner - Best 10 Pole Plot
Runner Up - Best 10 Pole Plot
Winner - Best 20 Pole Plot
Runner Up - Best 20 Pole Plot
Winner - Best Newcomer (in last 2 years)
Runner Up - Best Newcomer
Winner - Best Produce (for someone growing something great, whether it be super shallots, brilliant beans or cracking cabbages)
The Allotment Society Award 2008 - for someone who's put in lots of their time and hard work helping out and being a Good Sport.

There are a couple of categories there that we could go for - hence the tidy up! Weeds - you have been warned!

Oh, and to liven up this post, here's a pic of some curly wurly garlic, just before we snapped the flower spikes off...

And the grass grows on...

2008-07-05T16:54:00.002+01:00

Today Adam's dad Terry, sister Ruth and her boyfriend JB came to the plot see how we were getting on. JB dug up some new potatoes for us, Ruth attacked the shallots with gusto, and Terry made admiring noises about the compost (which is looking rather fine). We ate peas and mange tout straight from the plants, and freshly pulled radish which has a good bit of a kick. Quite nice to be out in the sun on a day which they'd predicted to be rain, rain and more rain. And other creatures were enjoying the sunshine too. I think this is a Red Admiral, but correct me if I'm wrong...

I also stuck in all of the plant labels I made during the week, so it actually looks like we know what we're doing now! But I need to make more labels, as there were a few things that we forgot about like the turnips, broccoli, radish and beetroot.

The strimmer is playing up again. After Adam had it running quite nicely during the week, come allotment-strimming time it decides to sulk. We've both had a tinker, as well as Terry and JB, and even Ruthie made a couple of suggestions for cunning starting techniques, to no avail. I think we may have to resort to slashing at the long grass with a machete.

Everything is growing pretty well now. The pumpkin and squash which Adam sowed from seed under little bottle-end cloches are starting to germinate. The first sowing of leeks are ready to be transplanted (must add that to the to do list) and we've got the first few Marmande tomatoes on the plants. No sign of blight yet, which is great, because last year it wiped out our tomatoes completely. But I think we've come to the end of strawberry season, all of a sudden, which is a shame because I never did get to make that jam.

The Asparagus peas are flowering with pretty little red blooms. Strange little rambling plants they are - and a bit of an experiment. I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for when they start podding. We're picking more mange tout than we can eat - have given some away but will probably start freezing it if that's possible - and the onions are looking fatter and fatter as the days go on.

Louise - plot secretary - has promised us some asparagus seeds. Her and Mike have grown a great bed of asparagus from seeds which they were given, so were hoping to be able to create an asparagus bed at the far end of the plot, below the crookedy fence.

And we still have to build a bench from the lovely pallets I picked up last week. So much to do...

Getting organised

2008-07-03T21:13:00.003+01:00

Time for some allotment tarting-up methinks... Here are some of the new veggie labels I've made for the plot. Bits of wood painted white and then marker-penned on. I think they look quite professional, personally, and hopefully they'll be relatively weather-proof.

And some good news (for us) - the date of the judging has been moved back a week (12th-13th July) so we've got more time for strimming and trimming and making the plot look pretty, which is great because the weather this weekend is forecasted to be rain, rain and more rain. Boo hiss.

More industriousness

2008-06-30T21:35:00.001+01:00

I forgot to mention - on Sunday I also made a batch of orange, rhubarb and ginger marmalade... ok, I admit, it was supposed to be orange, rhubarb and ginger jam, but I was so scared that the rhubarb and/or ginger would be overpowering that I put extra orange in, so it's turned into marmalade. And that's what I'll put on the label, so it seems like it was all intentional.

This evening Adam got the petrol strimmer going by a lot of tightening of tubes and nuts and the taking apart and putting back together again (and again) of the air filter. So, the plan is to strim the plot on Saturday, in advance of the show judging.

Bounty!

2008-06-29T21:57:00.004+01:00

Tonight we had an almost-completely-allotment-grown meal! New potatoes, broad beans, mange tout and sliced shallots fried in a wee bit of butter, and slathered over a pork chop. Now, if we can only start keeping pigs we'll be sorted! I thought about taking a picture, but it got eaten too quick, so you'll have to take my word for it - it was DELICIOUS!

Here's a pic of our croppage (a new word I think) from our allotment visit on Saturday... not bad eh? Broad beans, radish, mange tout, shallots, lettuce, new potatoes, strawberries and rhubarb.

So, what did we get up to this time? Well, there was the obligatory weeding to start with - I look back now and thank goodness we didn't get the plot rotovated. The guys next door to us did, and now it's gone crazy as every single little chopped up bit of weed has come back with a vengeance, Bruce Willis style...

I sowed another three rows of carrots, in the vain hope that these ones might, just might, decide to do something. I also sowed some more kohl rabi to try and get the hang of this successional sowing malarkey. Honestly, I know vegetables are just vegetables, but does anyone else think this little kohl rabi is kinda cute?

Adam planted some Wee Be Little pumpkin seeds along with some more squash - acorn and scallopini - hopefully these will enjoy the warmer weather we've been having and may actually germinate. We pulled up the first of our potatoes and bunged in some turnip in their place... I know it's probably not the right thing to do but we thought we'd just see what happens! We also sowed a couple of rows of swiss chard and some more broccolli.

And then there's the mystery of the disappearing cucumber plant. Last Saturday it was planted next to its friend, all happy, and now - poof! - gone! All that's left is a little indentation in the soil. : (

Mike from the lovely plot with raised beds (jealous) had a tinker with our petrol strimmer, but unfortunately couldn't get it to behave itself, so our paths are still un-strimmed. Well, we've got a week until the people from the allotments in Clapham come to judge our plots, hopefully we'll have sorted it by then. The bonus was that Louise, Mike's other half, gave us some chilli plants, with a label in saying 'jalepeno', which is great, except I can't remember if they're the really hot ones or not... (I'll just keep calling them Al Pacinos like our mate Anna does, and see if it catches on...)

I chopped off all the shallot flowers. And then wondered about taking them home to put in a vase, as they're really beautiful. Then I realised they smell quite onioney (surprise surprise) and probably aren't the sort of thing you want in your living room. Anyway, shallot flowers are Not Good News. I used a couple of shallots on Sunday and it's true, the ones that had bolted did have a little hard core in the centre, but if you get that bit out the rest was fine, they just won't keep as well as the others.

Along with our delicious meal on Sunday night I also made some strawberry daiquiri type things. Well, what else is a girl to do with a glut of strawberries? Yum! And when they were gone, I obviously had to make some more, except we'd run out of rum (Why is the rum gone?) so I used vodka and gin instead. Also quite lovely and delicious... Even Adam liked them, and he's a boy wot usually drinks beer...

(*hic!*)

Sarah's Strawberry Daiquiri Type Things

handful of strawberries
handful of ice cubes
good glug of elderflower cordial
a tablespoon of sugar
good glug of dark rum OR a good glug of vodka plus a splash of gin (just for that tang, you understand)

mash about with a rolling pin or a potato masher 'till the strawberries have given up their strawberry goodness.

if using rum - top up with tonic to taste
if using vodka - top up with half tonic, half bitter lemon to taste.

Strain through a sieve - unless you have one of those posh cocktail shaker things - and enjoy! (responsibly, of course...)

The old methods are best

2008-06-28T08:55:00.005+01:00

If at first you don't succeed... delete the post completely, and try again.

I've had problems with line spacing, words jumping about into Places They Shouldn't Be, and then the issue with the whole blog getting smaller and smaller down the page.

Anyway, I deleted the problematic posting - no dealing with coding and HTML for me, oh no - and re-wrote it. And now it seems fine.

So, back to the important allotment stuff. I'm on the Queens Park Allotment Association Committee, and we had a meeting last Monday evening to sort out, amongst other things, the best way to distribute The Rules (which some people had never seen, despite having a plot for 5 years... we'd certainly never seen them either), when to have a skip on site for a general clear-up, and how best to organise the Annual Show, which is in a couple of weeks. Some of the cups awarded in the past have gone missing, or at least haven' t been returned, so I'm going to use my Word skills to make some certificates for the winners in case we don't get them back.

We're off to the plot today to do some tidying up - the grass around the edges is getting a bit long but we need Mike to have a tinker with our petrol strimmer to get it going. Then we also need to hack back at the brambles from the nest plot - which are trying to take over. We're also planning to build a bench seat (an allotment essential I think you'll all agree) so I manager to pick up a few small pallets. (Also, it gives Adam something to hammer and nail at, which keeps him quiet for a while...!)

Also - panic panic! - we were reliably informed that you don't need to worry about shallots and onions flowering, that you can just leave them to do their thing until they're ready to be harvested. BUT now I find that other bloggers and websites recommend chopping off the buds as soon as they appear! Aagh! What do other people do? Any advice? Here's a pic looking along our rows of young leeks (leeklets...?!) You can see all the shallot flowers in the background!

Technology

2008-06-23T23:02:00.005+01:00

I've been having a bit of a problem recently - anyone viewing this in Internet Explorer may notice a slight (!) issue with the font size and layout. But in Firefox and Safari there are no problems!

I hate technology from time to time. Granted, the people who wrote the code for this kinda stuff are, in my mind, heading towards genius, My brain just does NOT work that way. But dear God, why oh WHY can't it look the same on every browser...?

Hope to get it all sorted soon. I know people who know coding...

Beans and greens

2008-06-22T21:10:00.010+01:00

Went to the plot on Saturday for a little while - just long enough to pick the first of our broad beans and a big bagful of strawberries to have after dinner. Mr Hussein (he's got a plot the other side of Phil) gave us advice on our garlic, pointing out some which had gone rotten in the soil and telling us which ones looked like they were going to be good. He then gave us one of his own garlic bulbs, to show us What A Good One Looks Like. Apparently, you can tell if it's a good bulb of garlic if, when you pull it up, it has "a big moustache"... he meant the size of the roots - his English isn't that great, but it's a lovely phrase anyway. When we pull up our garlic I will certainly be checking the size of their moustaches...

I podded the broad beans tonight and eesh! You get a lot of packaging, don't you? The beans themselves are actually still a bit small so next time some are ready we'll leave them a little bit longer.

We went again today to do a bit of tidying and also to plant out the courgette and squash plants which Louise had given us, as well as some tomatoes which a colleague at work had been giving away. She'd sown way too many seeds which is a good thing as our tomatoes are rubbish this year. We've been pampering them and they're still only about 3 inches high. I'm beginning to wonder whether it might be the compost we used - is there a chance it may not have the right nutrients or something and that's why they're not growing very fast?

Anyway, we planted out Louise's courgettes in the places where our original sowings failed, and we also planted four plants which we got from the garden centre. (I feel like a bit of a fraud. Does anyone else have feelings of guilt if they have to resort to buying plants?) So we've now got ten courgettes, at least five are regular green ones and then we've got a couple of yellow ones and a round courgette variety, and another two which are going to be a surprise.

We also planted four squash plants, and two outdoor cucumbers. And, we transplanted the successful sweetcorn so they're all in a block, and sowed some more sweetcorn kernels in the places left over. I know - it's a bit late for sweetcorn, but I'd have kicked myself if we hadn't tried to get a few more plants. Even if we only end up with one kernel on each, I'll be content.

Here's an overview shot - everything's lovely and green...

What else is going on... well, the peas are podding, as are the first rows of mange tout and sugar snap peas. The strawberries are still going crazy, so I might get to make that jam after all. The french beans are finally showing their heads above the soil and the runner beans are just starting to look like they might need a helping hand attaching themselves to the canes. The baby leeks are doing well, even the second sowing which I thought I'd done too late. The kohl rabi and brussels sprouts are also looking a lot better now we've covered them with netting (grr, pigeons) and the red cabbage are also looking a lot healthier - seems the aphids didn't follow them after all. Garlic, shallots and onions are swelling up, and we've got a few beginnings of raspberries and damsons, showing the promise of good things to come.

Strawberry time

2008-06-15T07:39:00.024+01:00

How time flies. Look, it's already mid-June and I haven't put a proper posting on here since the end of May. I'd better do a bit of an update...

As the heading suggests, it's strawberry season! Yum! The patch isn't quite as chaotic as last year as we've weeded and sorted out half of it (with a bit of help from Jo) which makes it much easier to pick the little red gems of deliciousness. I'm not sure if we'll have the glut we did last year either, but I'm hoping so as I've now got a foolproof jam recipe (with extra pectin) and I want to make daiquiri cocktails, which Sian suggested last year but I never got around to doing. The picture is of the Very First Strawberry of 2008.

The carrots and parsnip are a total disaster. I made a second sowing a few weeks ago but we've double and triple checked and I think there's three, maybe four coming through. That's hardly even a mouthful. It's reassuring to hear that other people have also failed with carrots this year. We haven't yet seen any sign of the French beans which Sian and I planted either. Most of the runner beans have come through, but the French beans are sulking I think. I've popped a few more in, just in case. And we've given up on the cabbages as well. they all got so aphid-y and misshapen that although they tasted great, they were a pain in the bum to clean up. Plus the aphids had transferred to the red cabbage too which was a Bad Thing. I've cleaned up the red cabbage and moved four of them to the failed carrot bed in the vain hope that the aphids won't be able to find them again!

Another area which hasn't gone quite according to plan is the far end of the plot. Our mini-field of sweetcorn has had a really low germination rate, so it's more like a mini-mini-field... We'll have to buy some more kernels and bung 'em in, quick. Our courgettes have also been disappointing. We planted them in exactly the same way as we did last year, except this year we've got a grand total of three plants out of nine... three (count them!) Bah! I think we'll have to throw in the towel and buy some plants from the garden centre.

I also planted some squash and pumpkin seeds at home in toilet rolls and only 4 out of 20 have germinated. I think I'm losing my green fingers! But all is not lost. As we were walking back from the allotment last weekend we went for a chat with Mike and Louise, (who have a fantastic bed of asparagus, grown from seed!) and Louise offered us some squash plants! We ended up coming away with two courgette and four squashes. Hurrah! They also have a blackbird nesting on the back shelf of their greenhouse. Might try and get a picture if I can.

But anyway, onto the successes. Other than the strawberries, we've got broad beans that are nearly ready to pick (we ate some small beans fresh from the pod yesterday and they were really tasty), the peas, mange tout and sugar snap are just starting to flower, and one of the globe artichokes is budding. The salad bed is doing fine, with peppery radishes and chunky lettuce, although the spinach in the corner has bolted. Potatoes and tomatoes are also doing well so far, and we've got some outdoor cucumbers which are nearly ready to be planted out. The asparagus peas are coming up as well, plus there's the onions, garlic and shallots which are just happy doing their own thing. And I'm happy to leave them to it, especially when they're doing so well.

The onions are getting fatter, and look! Actual shallots!

In the seed bed we've got brussels sprouts and kohl rabi, and lots of little leeks, half of which are nearly pencil thickness, which means they're almost ready to be planted out. We also have a few broccoli seedlings coming up, and - over in the failed carrot bed - we have a couple of rows of swede have just germinated. I planted some more yesterday 'cos there's nothing nicer than some swede mashed with carrots, and we've got lots of... oh.

Adam continues his battle with the bindweed. He's getting there, slowly. He's also used the last of the scavenged pallets to make the cold frame taller as we realised that things like tomatoes wouldn't have enough headroom. Here's his handywork - Ta Daa!

Off to pick strawberries this morning to take to parents' barbeque. Mmm.

Compost-dwelling critters

2008-06-10T08:28:00.003+01:00

Lucky we have a new compost bin. Adam went to turn the old heap with his big ol' spikey fork, and we found that there was a family of field voles living in our compost heap! The baby ones were about 2 inches long, but they ran around a bit so I couldn't get a picture of them. Here's one I nabbed off the internet, so anyone who doesn't know what a field vole looks like can join in with the collective 'aaaahhhhh, how sweet'.

British summertime

2008-05-31T07:56:00.005+01:00

Rubbish, rubbish, weather.

It rained all bank holiday. Literally. All. Bank. Holiday. Adam said "Don't fret, we'll go to the allotment a couple of evenings this week." Only then it went and rained all week too.

So here I am at home wondering exactly how big the weeds have got, and whether the bindweed has completely taken over the strawberry patch, and that we really, really should get another water butt sorted out because just think of all that water that went to waste.

The sweetcorn is coming up, by the way.

Plus we've got cucumber and red and orange pepper seedlings on the windowsill, as well as butternut squash, acorn and scallopini squash and pumpkin seedlings too, all of which are just starting to poke their heads above the soil. I'm hoping to plant these small plants out in a few weeks but also sow some seeds straight in the ground - a sort of experiment to see which actually does better. If they'll go straight in the ground ok then there doesn't seem much point taking over reams of windowsill space at home to start them off, especially when you have to harden them off outside afterwards as well. It's all a bit too much mollycoddling for me - I'd rather we just bung stuff in the ground and let it fend for itself. Tough love, y'see.

If anyone can give me hints or tips on how squashes grow, that'd be appreciated. The only squash-related thing we grew last year was courgette, and they were bushy plants. I've heard of training squash up supports, but I'm assuming they'd need to be more substantial than your usual bean poles...