Easter fun and frolics

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!

It's rhubarb time!

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.

Mud, mud, glorious mud

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.

Spring has sprung! ...or not

Well, we managed to get to the plot on Sunday, despite being greeted by this chilly view first thing in the morning. Not really the type of weather you want to be sowing peas in, eh? Brr.

There's us, thinking it'd be warm and spring-like, and so nice you feel like you can almost hear things growing if only you listened hard enough, then Bam! You wake up and your plans are scuppered by the weather.


But by lunchtime the snow had melted and the sun had come out, all the better for allotmenteering. Adam jumped in feet first - literally - to give the compost heap a much-needed turning. We took our compost bin from home to empty in as it was getting pretty full, and at this time of year it gives our allotment compost heap some much needed greenery and kitchen waste. Since we moved the compost heap we haven't seen the little mouse - or possibly vole - which was living in the heap beforehand. I know they can be a bit of a nuisance, but I hope it found another warm home!

So, Adam got on with some digging up the far end of the plot, while I pottered about for a while, getting excited about the Things Which Have Started To Grow...

Damson blossom! It looks really good this spring, there's lots of blossom, so hopefully we'll get pounds and pounds of damsons - and make gallons of damson gin. Yes, Mum, you can have some.


Home Guard early potatoes! Yeay! These little shoots are possibly the speediest things to burrow through the soil EVER... I got very excited about these.


Rows of broad beans! After surviving the snow these little fellas are coming on great guns. The final three rows - on the right - are just breaking through the soil.


Rhubarb! We picked some more to make another crumble. Unfortunately, this one made our teeth go funny, so it hasn't been a complete rhubarb renaissance.

Lots of little radish seedlings have also germinated. I was going to take a picture, but they're really not very exciting. The epitome of a seedling, really. Just imagine the number 8 on its side, colour it in green, and that's about it.

After I had hoed (stupid word) around the garlic, onions and shallots, I spent the best part of an hour sitting in the sun, talking to an old friend on my mobile, Adam had almost finished his digging. Whoops! I was slacking off a bit there!!! But I did offer my love and support while he was wielding a spade in a manly fashion (and I did make rhubarb crumble afterwards to make up for my lack of effort!)


And later I planted tomato seeds back home, in 40 (count them!) toilet rolls. (That's a lot of bottom wiping!) So these are sitting in a tray on the window sill, with 2 or 3 seeds in each one, and we'll see how many germinate. Hopefully we'll be able to emulate Frank, our Italian allotment buddy, who grows fields and fields of tomato plants so his wife can make real Italian pasta sauce. Must get the recipe.

Yum, and other noises

We tried Rhubarb last week. Our first spring crop from the allotment. I made a crumble with apple, and oats in the crumbly bit, which was gooooood. So we'll definitely do that again. But of course the young pink rhubarb stems could not be brought home without trying the sherbert dib-dab method which Sian told us about (Turns out it was originally Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's idea... or rather Hugh 'Fearlessley-Eatsitall' - good one Sian)

So, I liked it - 'twas tasty. But then I always liked the taste of rhubarb, it was the strange things it did to the inside of my mouth that I objected to. Kind of like you'd been eating something tart and furry... Plus it coats your teeth. Uurgh.

But it didn't do that, which was good. Adam agreed that it was
better than usual (fine praise indeed!) but still - from the picture - seems unsure.

Visitors!

Today we had some visitors to the plot. After a lovely lunch at Mum and Dad's with my cousin Chris, my sister Jen and her fella, Elliott, they all came to see how much work we'd done. Adam had been working like a trooper, doing some more digging while I went off to lunch (lasagne, if you're interested).

They were very impressed, of course. We had a trip to look at the communal well (oooh!) and had a peer inside which revealed a high water level and and a floating dead rat... nice. Then Dad poked at a strange metal thing we'd found on the allotment last year, while I kept my distance as, frankly, it looks a bit like a bomb. (If anyone can zoom in on that thing my dad's holding and knows what it is, please let me know. It's got a kind of valve on the top... ta).

Then dad showed us how to force the rhubarb. We'd been dithering, trying to find a big black bucket, but apparently an old flowerpot stuffed with dry long grass from the plot next door will do just as well. The canes are to stop it all blowing away. If this rhubarb is actually nice, I'll eat my hat. And the rhubarb, obviously.

And please note the fancy iron bedstead headboard thing in the background. Found in the bushes, and now being used as a bit of fence. Ah, the random uses for things found at allotments. Next time you're on a train, look out for allotments as you whizz past. They're often near train lines, and look a bit ramshackle from a distance but I find them fasinating - always have. On the commute to work I go past one on the outskirts of Leagrave, and usually end up peering out of the window, nose pressed to the glass like a madwoman, trying to see what people are growing.

The weather actually wasn't as grey as it looks in the photo at the top, and the sunset was gorgeous. (I wonder if the electricity people would consider taking the pylons down - they're ruining my sunset views....)

Oh, by the way, Louise, the site secretary went round yesterday Sorting Things Out, so we are officially on plot number 145A. (Yes, 'tis true, we didn't even know our plot number until ten months down the line.) Now I can make a number to go on the shed(s), and then the plan is to paint them in beautiful colours. Sky blue with daisies? Mr Men themed? Only time will tell....











Back home, and ooh, excitement! Our potatoes are chitting! Or is it called sprouting? Last week I'd laid out the Home Guard earlies to chit, and left them in a corner of the room, in light, but not direct sunlight, as the books said to do. Then when I went to put the tray of Picasso maincrop taters next to them, discovered that the Home Guards have little sprouts! This isn't the most exciting picture in the world, I appreciate, but - look! Little sprouty bits! Usually the only time I see potatoes do anything is when they've been left in the cupboard for too long in the dark and are trying to come out and play. These shoots/sprouts/chits look like they'll be big and strong and give us lots of tasty tubers.

I will now take a moment to wonder at the marvels of nature....
The potatoes are Growing. By. Themselves.

Getting organised-ish

Ok, today it didn't rain. Yeay! But we missed most of the morning after having a lie-in. Oops! So we decided to work extra-hard and get the plot sorted out... creating a plan for the coming year. Or attempting to, anyway!

You can just about see in the picture above that we marked out where the beds are going to go with nice blue string. We've decided to have big beds as permanent features, and sub-divide them if we need to with planks for walking on. (This will help to not compress the soil.) We've marked out 4 beds on each side of the main path so far, with some narrower beds along the far left boundary line for the permanent features - the gooseberry bush, raspberry canes and 2 small globe artichoke plants.

It's getting confusing trying to work out what needs to go where. Crop rotation sounds easy, but it's somehow very complicated... brassicas, legumes, root crops... waah! The only thing we're certain about is that the onions and shallots are going to go either side of the already-planted row of garlic, in a big bed down towards the compost heap... but do we put the leeks in there too?... or shall they go somewhere else? Decisions, decisions.

The spring cabbage is coming along. I say cabbage like we've only got one! I got carried away, and I think we have about 40 cabbages growing! I hate throwing away seedling thinnings, and when too many cabbages germinated last autumn I ended up just transplanting them instead! Ah well, at least the slugs haven't nibbled them too badly. And I guess the netting is actually keeping the pigeons off. Hoorah!

And check out the rhubarb! It's started growing, and is kind of slowly erupting through the ground like something out of the Alien films. Looks really wierd! I was quite intrigued, hence the photos. I think Adam was little confused for a moment, when he turned around and saw me nose-to-earth trying to get up close with the camera.

We're going to get an old dustbin and force it to see if it can taste as nice as Dad says it can do. Otherwise when we eat it it makes our teeth feel funny, which is a bit offputting! If all else fails, I'll take a leaf out of Sian's book and make rhubarb rum (sounds odd, I know, but it's surprisingly tasty, oh yes!)

Also moved 4 little fennel plants (the herb, not the bulb variety) which had self-seeded and were being smothered by long grass. I've also moved a little herby bush (in the background) which is yet to be identified - think it might be oregano... smells lovely anyway! So we'll now have a small herb section. There's loads of mint growing too, just off the left hand side of the pic. I'm planning on making Mojitos this summer.

Summer seems a long way away, but I'm sure it'll fly by! So much to do before then. We've got to chit our early potatoes before planting them in a few weeks time. Need to plant out a row of onions and a row of shallots once the soil has dried out a little bit (or they'll rot) and still need to buy a whole load of seeds and work out what needs to be sown when.

And I want to build a cold frame.

Ever feel like you've bitten off more than you can chew? : )