Hungerford allotment blog - grow your own, harvesting and vegetarian cooking. Enjoying allotment wildlife, weather and other things that catch my attention. Enjoying time on the Marsh Lane Allotment site in Hungerford, Berkshire. A record of successes, failures and a handy reminder for me. From 2017 each post title brings a song to add a little extra music to the world - enjoy!
Thursday 27 July 2023
The Importance of Being Idle
Saturday 8 July 2023
What’s Going On?
We had our Open Day on one of the hottest days of the year, it was a great success with plenty of visitors and lots of chit-chat. So exhausting organising and setting up on a sweltering day but there were plenty of volunteers and it’s always fun running the tombola.
Photo courtesy of Forbes |
And the after-party was good fun too, with Ivan’s wine followed by a game of horseshoes - definitely need more practice!
The Open Day was the day after the Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging, so the plots were looking their best. Plot7 was included so we had a LOT of weeding to do beforehand. It did look tidier than ever and I even cleared and weeded behind the polytunnel.
We got 3rd place in our class 😊 mostly I think because there are quite a variety of different items growing on that plot. The plot looks better now after a couple more weeks with some heavy showers between sunshine but still much more growing to do to cover all that bare earth - otherwise a weed will find it! I’ve been filling gaps with lettuce seedlings.
The Incredible sweetcorn that Nia gave us is growing at a pace. I had to stomp the earth around them as they’ve had some really strong winds to contend with. The four tiny plants are the Lark variety that we managed to germinate - they shouldn’t be affected by cross-pollination apparently.
Oh, I finished my Best Foot Forward challenge for the National Kidney Federation - Thankyou if you sponsored me! I managed over 176,000 steps in June - a lot of watering was involved in those steps! So much watering!
Alfie very kindly gave us a Bokashi Composting kit. It literally ferments the green waste, rather than composting, and as it ferments we can use the ‘tea’ as a plant food. Seems interesting and all our broad bean waste has been going in there over the last few weeks - the Bokashi bran needs adding for the process to work.
Monday 12 June 2023
Last Nite
Petrichor - that's the word of the day after we eventually had some rainfall last night. Aah, the smell of earth after rain - it really is a feel-good smell. And rain is so much better at watering than we are - having said that, the watering regime has certainly helped me keep my steps up this month so far!
This photo was taken at the HAHA Plant Swap & Picnic on Saturday. Not many people turned up as it was extremely hot and clashed with various other events in town. Having said that, those of us who stayed for the picnic were over the moon to be drinking Ivan's wine - there, on the table in the demijohn. Made from grapes from his Marsh Lane grapevine - it is delicious and rare to have a red grape wine made in England. It was a lot of fun but the walk home was quite a struggle!The Plant Swap was more of a success, even if people didn't stay for the picnic. I couldn't resist taking a pink jasmine climber (probably Jasminum beesianum), which I've planted at the end of the polytunnel; a couple of Heavenly Blue morning glory, which I have seen on other plots before and it's so beautiful, some spinach and two aubergine plants. I spent Sunday planting out the flowers and also planting the Nicotiana and Verbena Bonariensis that I've grown from seed. Hoping the flower bed will burst into colour quite soon...at the moment it's still looking rather bare..Slightly concerned that the rain will have brought out the slugs and snails to polish off my seedlings.
The HAHA Wildlife plot is looking much more flowery with lots of these huge daisies, which bugs really like.
I'm pleased that my mangetout have finally developed some flowers. We've all debated it and are convinced that the cold nights have been the cause of slow growth this year - but they're on their way now. And this week we're working out different ways to enjoy broad beans. I do have quite a few recipes that I know we've enjoyed before and I love them cold in salads.
I've transplanted some lettuces from their grow tray into the ground and we've started eating our radishes - I wanted them to get big enough to roast them, but I may need to wait for the Chinese Dragon radishes for that meal. You can see that the pollen beetles are making a mess of the leaves as usual.
On my final day of annual leave last week we had an engineer come to sort out the site's composting toilet - what a relief (hoho) that it wasn't as big a fault as we thought. Kate and I dug out and prepared a proper soakaway so that the blockage doesn't repeat itself. Jamie and I were wandering the site searching for suitable stones - that's a first :-)
On Saturday, thunder was rumbling around, the sky went quite dark but we only felt about 10 drops of rain but last night (Sunday) we got the rain although the thunder & lightning was mostly further north and east of Hungerford - more may be expected today.
So, back to work now, looking out at the sunshine and wishing I was on the plot - but we'll have a lunchtime visit today to see how much rain actually fell. Here are The Strokes not singing about last night's rain!Monday 5 June 2023
Step On
I’ve been on leave for a week and have a few more days off. I must say that I feel like I’ve been off for a fortnight already - the sunny weather has helped. Although the easterly wind is rather unwelcome, it’s not so noticeable on the allotment site and has even been a relief from the heat at times.
We’ve spent most of the time on the allotment, obviously. It’s been fabulous. We enjoyed a barbecue one day and plenty of allotment lunches and chats with fellow plotholders.
As you can see, the Nigella has flowered and the valerian is filling the air with its lovely vanilla fragrance.
The (blue lake) French beans and Borlotti beans are planted in the old polytunnel frame and we’ve direct-sown Scarlet Empire runner beans as the ones in modules didn’t germinate. And Jamie’s planted out our sunflowers Tall Timbers for the Sunflower Competition 😊
Tuesday 8 November 2022
Bitter Tears
Anyone else had a rainy start to November? It was so rainy on Sunday that we had to shelter in the car when we got back from the allotment! The rain was streaming down the road.
While we were on the plot it felt quite warm and we even saw the Sun for a short while. We went to the plot specifically to pull our last potato plant - Nicola. Surprisingly they’re not very scabby and don’t seem to have been slugged. Although they were rather muddy.
That's a nice harvest for November. The tomatoes are continuing to ripen on the plants and the Chinese Dragon radish are lasting so that was plenty to feed me for a couple of lunches.Yesterday, I added some left-over marinated tofu to the plate.