Wednesday 28 December 2011

Christmas Eve

We went to the allotment on Christmas Eve morning before visiting our relatives. Many of the usual suspects were there, picking their produce for Christmas dinner - which is what we were doing too.
Shame this year, the only home-grown food we had to show was carrots and sprouts to go with our Quorn roast! We had to buy parsnips and spuds.

Having said that, we've had lovely chilli pickled onions and pickled beets to go with our cheese and biscuits snacks! The sloe gin and raspberry vodka has also gone down extremely well :-)

We got a couple of lovely allotment books for Christmas so are enjoying looking through those. We also got a couple of journals - one for both us to record what we think is important through the year. Most of the info gets put in the blog, but it's handy to have a book to record some stuff too.

Sunday 11 December 2011

Eventually got to the allotment

We managed to get to the plot before the cold rain started today.
Not much happening, only a couple of other people were there.

Since our last visit the minimum temperature had been -5° I've had to scrape frost from the car a few times in the last week - brrr. Good for the sprouts though!
We picked enough to for two meals. They look really good; some are huge. The enviromesh did its job stopping most pests before they did too much damage.

Picked some lovely carrots too and pulled the last potatoes (Kestrels). They had started growing but look ok, although there weren't as many as we'd hoped - we ended up having to buy some from Tescos to have enough for the two days (which is always disappointing!).
The carrots split whilst being peeled/cut. This happens quite a lot - probably because they'd been left in the ground too long. They should have been Arctic King so shouldn't mind the cold weather... Anyway, they tasted lovely. As did the sprouts, even the biggest ones and no damage beyond the outer leaves - excellent! Now we know they'll be good for Christmas dinner.

Friday 9 December 2011

Mmmm French Bean Chutney

Before going up to the Hungetford Victorian Extravaganza we needed a snack, so...
We started on the first of the chutney. It was the batch we made with our first harvest of French beans on 30th July this year.

Really sweet and delicious with cheese and crackers.



Saturday 3 December 2011

Marsh Lane Allotments

Wish Google maps would update so we could see the plots from the sky!
Marsh Ln, Hungerford, West Berkshire RG17 0, UK http://m.google.co.uk/u/m/QtUCbA

Thursday 1 December 2011

Tenerife

We've been sunning ourselves in Tenerife for the last 10 days.

Can't help thinking what it would be like growing veggies here! We've decided that carrots would appreciate the sandy soil; potatoes would be blight free; tomatoes and peppers would be abundant and there'd be lots of squashes and melons. Only trouble is the lack of water - really would need to get that sorted! Here in the North of the island they do get some rain so it is lovely and green, but still even drier than Marsh Lane.

The veggies in the shops are pretty weak looking, the spuds tend to look like seed potatoes. Haven't seen too many bugs apart from butterflies, so there must be some caterpillars about, though I'm surprised any get past the lizards!



Aah, back home tomorrow to see if we've had any frost....