Harvest Monday - hotting up?

Well, today has been incredibly warm and quite calm, in contrast to most of the recent weather that's been windy, windy, windy (with a hint of rain). There was a bit of respite yesterday too and before an afternoon at the allotment, I cycled to Whitlingham Country Park again. This time I took the iPad and got some pics. Incredible that this is just outside Norwich, and only 10 mins cycle from my house!

And another contrast, some not quite so photogenic potatoes! I discovered more as I was planting out my sweetcorn this week. I mean, how could I have missed these too?

They went into several meals - a tasty soup (it looks a bit boring but was was nice, honest)

The next day I picked some chard and....some asparagus! I added it to soup leftovers to make a spring veggie soup (plus some bought mange tout)

More of the potatoes went with pie and leek.

I picked some overwintered rocket from the back garden

For my packed lunch which I took to the allotment yesterday

So also yesterday, looking around the plot, there was so much marjoram popping up everywhere (which I usually just let go to flower because the bees love it, and it's very pretty). Jan had managed to get down the plot for the first time in ages (she's hardly left the house over the last few months as she's been ill with a thyroid problem that finally seems to be getting sorted) and whilst enjoying listening to the birdies singing for a bit of nature therapy she looked up what can be done with it (the wonders of the smartphone!) It goes with many things including eggs and potatoes, so.....

The marjoram

Went with some shooting brassicas...

And I fried these up with more of the cooked potatoes and some onion and mushroom

..cracked in a couple of eggs and served with a side of the largest and best condition purple sprouting broccoli leaves I could find (These were actually very tasty too and I might have a look and see if there are any more before I pull the plants out for the next crop). The marjoram gets added right at the end of the cooking, so you don't lose all the good oils etc (according to the web, which is always true)

And finally, tonight I made my new regular meal, cauliflower curry, with more overwintered chard

Mmm

Oh, I forgot, I also had a couple of sticks of rhubarb from last week, so added some marmalade and toasted some flaked almonds. Double mmmm.

Phew, that was a long post! Linking in with Harvest Monday on Daphne's Dandelions

 

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May seedling update

On my day off this week it was really windy and rainy, so I stayed inside for the afternoon. I can't believe how windy it keeps getting! Tonight has turned all rainy too, so I thought I'd do a quick seedling update.

 

My corn was starting to get a bit yellowy, presumably as the nutrients in the compost were running out, so I really wanted to plant these out on Wednesday despite the weather.

 

Some of the yellowy corn

So I did nip out first thing whilst it was dry to plant it out in blocks. I planted out the best 24 plants in the end (out of 26). To protect them from the elements I use large clear yogurt pots with the bottoms cut off. I just cut the end off with a pen knife. It makes a little microclimate around the individual plant.

 

Because the plastic is quite thin, it's difficult to cut through if you just have one pot on its own (the pot collapses when you put pressure on it), so I keep them in a stack whilst cutting the bottoms off. When you get down to the last couple you can slip them on the end of your new bottomless stack for stability when cutting.

 

(You should be impressed. I took this photo with my nose!)

The rest of my seedlings are doing ok so far - Lots of curcurbits (courgette, winter squash, patty pan squshes, cucumbers etc)

The toms are coming along well, I still have some bubble wrap under them for insulation

The tumbler variety are even starting to get flowers (middle of photo). This means I'll have to sort my garden compost out soon, to pot them on.

I recently potted-on my basil seedlings, there were quite a lot (more than this pic). I'll use most of them to plant at the base of each tom plant, they're meant to grow well together and I've done this the last few years.

Some dill (left) and purple basil (right)

Chamomile to fill in our patchy lawn

A different view of the lean-to

On Wednesday at my work they'd organised a plant swap. I thought this might be a good opportunity to get some things I hadn't sown yet, so decided to take some plants along even though it was my day off (it's quite near to where I live anyway). I took: two 3x2 packs of basil, two squashes, two tomatoes and two cucumbers. I was hoping for some salad or brassicas.

Well, sadly, perhaps because of the weather putting people off, my additions almost doubled the plants available. And I didn't really need any of the plants that were up for grabs, so I came away with just this slightly sorry looking little strip of 3 pea modules (my basil in the background).

The event was good though, promoting composting etc, it's just a shame more people didn't bring plants to swap. There were nice cakes available too, featuring Wonder Worm the composting mascot (I should've taken a picture!), and quizzes like guess the weight of the compost cake.

I left the rest of my plants for people to help themselves to, I hope they found a good home.

I was hoping to finish off with a pretty photo of the forget-me-nots in the back garden but it's been too rainy to get a piccie. So instead, here's a photo of my seedlings hardening off outside last week, when the weather was a bit better.

See you on Monday!

 

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Harvest Monday - rhubarb cake

It's been a bank holiday today, which means no work and slightly confusing as it really doesn't seem like a Monday. But a nice extra day off. This morning I biked down to whitlingham country park which is only about 10 minutes from the city, to try and see and hear my first swift of the year.....success! A group of around 30 flew in briefly, screaming and feeding high over the water (there's a large lake), fuelling up on insects after a long migration. An added bonus was my first cuckoo of the year too, yippee!

This afternoon I headed to the plot to get a good few hours work in, in the sun, another bonus, with birds singing all around and butterflies and bees flying all over the place. Jobs included weeding the bed where I'm going to plant out the sweetcorn (lots of couch grass), and cutting the grass to use as mulch for my early potatoes - they'd been slightly scorched by frost.

I've had some pretty good harvests this week-

Still lots of over-wintered chard coming, here's some of it

It's gone into noodle soup, .....

...As a side dish with more spicy chick pea pies (I only discovered these last week and I think they will become a regular weekend meal!)

....and with poached eggs on sour dough bread

I also made another nettle soup, this time adding a few chard leaves as well for variety, and some melted blue cheese.

When weeding the bed for the sweetcorn, I found some potatoes I'd missed, how could I have missed these, they were quite big!

I also picked a big batch of perpetual spinach

.... That went into another cauli curry (I've made one every week recently!)

And I thought I'd jump on the rhubarb bandwagon this week too, I have some growing in a large pot in the back garden. I used to have it in the ground at the allotment where it was doing rather too well in the spot where I wanted my saskatoon to go, so brought it home instead

I picked the biggest stems and a few little ones as the leaves were getting in the way

And made a tasty rhubarb and almond cake to take round a friend's house, you can see the recipe here (I found it by googling rhubarb and almond cake and chose the easiest looking recipe, with the ingredients I already had). It had a really good flavour, the consistency was more like a pudding than a cake though, very moist

Well, it's all gone now, anyway!

Linking in with Harvest Monday in Daphne's Dandelions

 

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A tour around the allotment - part 2

So last week I took some photos on my day off on Wednesday, and shared my Allotment Tour Part 1. Now it's time for Part 2! The photos are from the same day so things've changed a bit since then but you get the idea.

Continuing around the far end, in my fruity area, I have a lovely red gooseberry bush (one of the first things I bought for the plot) you can see the pretty flowers here. It's covered in them! I'm not very diligent when it comes to pruning and tend to let it just grow all over the place. This does make picking the fruit tricky as the branches are very thorny, so I stick a load of canes or sticks into the ground and tie the branches to them, trying to space the branches out so I can reach through easier.

Red dessert gooseberry

I actually have 6 gooseberry bushes! The red one which I bought, a green one given to me by a friend at work (which over the winter I moved slightly and split into two plants) and 3 green ones from a plot neighbour, which I've put in along one of my boundaries. I think they're all dessert varieties, they're very sweet anyway.

In this photo you can see one near the base of the large redcurrant bush (centre) - this is one I moved and split as it was even closer to the currant before. The red gooseberry is just to the left of this. Next to the red gooseberry is a row of 3 different blueberry varieties that I bought last year.

Here's one of the blueberries, it has loads of flowers but the leaves are a bit red which I think I means it's not that happy, I probably need to increase the acidity of the soil around it more as blueberries like low pH. I have given them some mixed leafmold mulch and I only water with rainwater but I should try and find some pine leafmold or something.

Next up is one of my 'U' shaped raised beds, made out of pallets. Across one side of my plot there's a steep slope, so I made these to try and level it up. They're 3 pallets wide all the way round, with a space one pallet wide, two pallets deep, in the middle of the U. I have two of these U beds facing each other. They're a few years old now and starting to rot, plus the couch grass has got into the beds, so at some point I'll need to do something different here. They've been good while they lasted though.

In this piccie are some short rows of brassicas I've just sown, to transplant elsewhere later on. There's already some couch grass poking through, darn. To the left is where I've had most of my over wintered chard, leeks and corn salad, under some environmesh.

Here you can see the change in height, I'm standing in the lowest spot.

Just to left are two small beds of garlic, where I had my early potatoes last year. Today I moved the enviromesh over these to protect them from leek moth caterpillars

And beside that is my new hugel bed, currently under plastic. I've made it in a natural dip: first a layer of small logs from the buddliea cuttings, then smaller sticks, then bramble leafmold, then old compost from the tomatoes at home. I took photos as I went along, so will share them another time. I'm going to plant two squshes in it this year.

Up in one of my U beds I've left a couple of parsnips to go to seed. The flowers will be good for wildlife first and maybe I'll get self sown parsnips too. Under the enviromesh behind is most of my overwintered brassicas (mainly PSB and kale)

Here you can see it from the other side, near the top of my plot. I have a bramble hedge all the way down the left (East) side which produces lots of tasty blackberries for free!

Behind me are the two dwarf Apple trees I showed last time, here they are again as a reminder

I could go even more but that's enough for now, I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of the tour!

 

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