Showtime 2016!

It was the second year for HAHA to join forces with the Royal British Legion for the Horticultural and Handicraft Show. With 32 exhibitors and 406 exhibits it was even more successful than last year - See how useful allotments are to local communities!

Setting up the Show

We were picking, selecting, washing and trimming our vegetables on Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning. We managed to gather together reasonable items for the following categories:

Tomatoes on a vine	5 Bush tomatoes
Matching pair of cucumbers	4 carrots with tops
Any 5 veg	Any 3 veg
3 onions (over 8oz)	3 onions (under 8oz)
Largest circumference onion	Plus a photo for each category

And now we have a flat full of slightly wonky carrots, dodgy spuds and damaged cucumbers. Also the cabbage that we were hoping to include but that is too holey - I think we're going to have lots of coleslaw over the next week! This is our trug of spuds. The Salad Blue are a great colour, but horribly scabby - they were grown in a bag. The white ones are Orla, grown in a bag, and are really good quality. The Kestrels were grown in the ground when we were searching for coloured potatoes to show.

Can't believe we couldn't find 5 runner beans that were suitable! And again our longest runner bean wasn't long enough - doh! We got 1st place for a couple of the categories but mostly 2nd, 3rd or highly commended. But all placings earn points so we got equal third prize so not bad considering the year! And we're always happy to share with Ted :-)

After a busy morning and afternoon it was good fun going along to the prize-giving in the evening. Along with the auction of exhibits and raffle and a bar to enjoy a shandy (ahem) or two or three :-)

It's such a fun event and great to mix with our fellow growers along with bakers, picklers and handicrafters!We're only sitting by the cakes - we didn't buy or make all of them!! 

Lots more photos here.

Count your Lucky Stars

We had a stroll up to the allotment in the early hours of this morning to look for shooting stars during this year's Perseids meteor shower. It was a beautiful night and the moon had just dipped out of view from the bench so we had a great dark sky to view. 

That's not a photo :-) We only saw a couple of meteors each, but it was worth venturing out. An owl was very active and noisy in the trees around the site and on our way through the Croft a hedgehog trundled across our path! We'd only mentioned yesterday that we hadn't seen one for a couple of years.

We had a lovely sunny afternoon on the plot yesterday; watering, feeding and deadheading various plants.

And look! The sunflowers are here! The tall ones are still growing but not flowering yet, but the short ones are very sweet and the bees love them.

We picked a few bits for dinner - our yellow courgettes are getting greener each day! Cucumbers are featuring in every harvest now.

A bit annoying that this was amongst the carrots. That could have been our entry for the 'funny shaped veg' in the show next week. I expect there will be more to choose from though!

Pulled Out of the Bag

I've been trying to think of a way to mention the Olympics in this post and today we pulled our Athlete potatoes - see what I did there?! A topical potato if ever there was one! That's a good haul from two tubers planted in a potato bag.

The 31st modern games started in Rio de Janeiro on Friday night with an excellent opening ceremony (I have to admit that is my favourite part of the games!). Rio does look amazing from the images they're showing on TV - I love the enormous Christ the Saviour statue, but this new art installation is pretty impressive too!

We picked lots of other veg today, mostly because I'm back at work tomorrow (eurgh, my lovely break is almost over!) so need some salad bits for lunch. I'm intending to grate or thinly slice some fennel, which has gone over but should still taste nice) into the salad but it'll mostly be lettuce, chard and beetroot. I've also got some of the radish rats tails pods to give it a bit of a peppery flavour.

Dinner is just cooking - obviously it contains our staples of the moment: potato, courgette, garlic, beetroot and halloumi - mmm, we love fried halloumi! The potatoes look interesting now they've been tainted by the beetroot. It looks a bit like a peachy dessert!

Now That's August!

Aah, two lovely hot days. That photo was taken on Saturday when it really was blue sky and dazzling sunshine all day - how lovely it is! 

Sunflowers growing tall, but no flowers yet

Friday was hot, but not quite so blue. Jamie and I had a long lazy afternoon picnic on the plot with wine, olives, sandwiches and fruit. Such a perfect way to while away a few hours. Jamie couldn't help himself and mowed the grass, but I mostly sat, photographed (see Wildlife blog) and did a bit of watering.

I decided to do a butterfly count on Saturday, but the numbers are very poor. I guess that's what the Butterfly Conservation are interested in seeing though...

• 4 Small Whites
• 1 Brimstone
• 2 Meadow Browns

I may try again today, but it's rather grey, though warm, at the moment

Meadow Brown

Brimstone

This is evidence that the birds do eat the giant slugs. But he spent more than 10 minutes rubbing and scraping it in the dirt - presumably to remove the slime. Most unappetising!! (Of course, I'm vegetarian, maybe to you meat-eaters... :-D)

Still Time Left

I've been hoping to do my Butterfly Count for the last week but the weather just hasn't been right. It's been really windy over the last couple of days. It's stayed pretty warm and there's been no rain since the 20mm overnight earlier in the week, but I want to do the count on a bright (mostly) sunny day and we haven't really had one of those.

There are a lot of butterflies about - masses of whites and a few more interesting ones, but hopefully the weekend will prove to be the perfect day for counting...

That little tiddler is a loofah! There are 3 so far on the plant in the greenhouse... I wonder if they'll have enough time to grow big.
The black tomatoes Indigo Rose are getting blacker - very pretty and bigger fruits than I expected. We've only grown cherry-sized ones before.

And the red Aviditas tomatoes are going orange...well, one has so far and plenty of time for them to go red.

I put strings around the Speedy dwarf beans - it may support them once the beans start forming - although the pumpkin plants may swamp them and the sweetcorn before that happens.

The Radish Rats Tails (are they just normal radishes that have gone to seed?!) are very pretty and their pods are forming, so they'll be lovely in salad lunches when I'm back at work (ugh, don't mention it!) next week.

Our normal radishes were nice at the beginning of the season but, as they do every year, they went to seed ages ago. If they form pods I'll see if they taste exactly the same as the rats tails.

By the way, it's August now! And if you're reading this and are in Hungerford (or nearby) don't forget our Horticultural Show is on the 20th. We hope to see lots of exhibits and/or fellow growers in the evening for the prize-giving and the produce auction - always good fun!