Sunday 23 February 2014

Been Shopping...

Our Kings Seeds order has arrived through our HAHA Seed Secretary's discount scheme. We haven't collected them yet but the news put us in an allotment mood - so we got out the seed catalogues...

Here are a few of the seeds I was tempted by. And note the heart & star mould set - really looking forward to growing some interesting cucumber shapes with that!
I think some of these will be used on the HAHA Plot - they're certainly quite unusual.   The most interesting seeds are part of the James Wong Homegrown Revolution collection. I hope ours grow as well as some of the pictures I've seen online!
Also really looking forward to seeing star and heart shaped cucumbers!!
These I bought from Suttons Seeds

Of course we'll be growing mos of the basics too, but no shallots this year as we've still got plenty of pickled ones left to eat from last year.
These are from Thompson & Morgan.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

Excuses, excuses

Wow! A month since my last post - what a slacker!
Jamie and I have had various ailments over the last few weeks and the stormy weather often scuppered our plans when we did feel inclined to move outdoors! Anyway, excuses over (for now).

The mice have been enjoying our beetroot in the meantime. Cheeky things seem to have a nest under our raised bed. There are mouse-sized holes very close to these tell-tale toothmarks :-)
At least it wasn't completely wasted!
For a very brief visit earlier in the month we walked along the canal to see how flooded it was. Hungerford lock isn't doing its job very well - it's being repaired anyway.

 
 













Jamie spent a bit of time spreading 6x and manure around our two rhubarb plants. One is showing tiny signs of life but the other seems to still be dormant.

Raspberry Red Rhubarb
Still haven't actually achieved much on the plots, but it was lovely to be in the sunshine at the weekend's HAHA work day - though exhausting (I didn't do much, so here's a pic of other plotholders working!).
Aah, look at that Spring-like sky!
One sad bit of news - we found a dead barn owl on the site. I've put a bit more info on the wildlife blog. Shame