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Over the weekend we finally made it down to our neglected allotment. We went to see how it was looking and what we need to do over the coming weeks.
At the bottom of the allotment was one small, gleaming orange pumpkin! Isn’t it cute and such a gorgeous amber colour!
I also discovered that one of my Cosmo plants has gone crazy and is covered in hundreds of dusky pink flowers.
I managed to pick a good bunch along with a couple of jolly yellow Calendula’s that have finally flowered. I think this will be my last homegrown bunch of flowers for this year.
Most bizarrely our strawberry plants are fruiting again – in October! Quite incredible. Sadly, the rain we’ve had over the past week has reduced most strawberries to a soggy mush and the remainder have each had a nibble taken out of them by some hungry mouse or other creature.
I picked this pretty bunch of flowers and herbs from my allotment and back garden. It’s a mixture of pink and white cosmos, orange marigolds, yellow daisies, purple chive flowers, green mint, and delicate white parsley flowers.
I fear this may be one of the last sights of summer as the leaves are already beginning to change colour and fall.
So on the way home from work, N and I met up at our allotment to dig up what seems like ten tons of potatoes. They are happily stored away in an assortment of saved paper bags. I took a wander round the allotments and took some snaps of the lovely plots that other people have – none of mine this time, it’s looking more like I’m cultivated weeds…
The nice man who owns the plot next to us is growing these beauties…
And another plot that is stunning and designed like a garden complete with lawn and benches has a fence that is partly covered in a vine. In amongst that vine are these dark, glossy green squash…
There are purple beans…
Giant cabbages…
Yellow courgettes and their delicate flowers…
Greenhouses overflowing with ripening tomatoes…
…fattening cucumbers…
…and onions drying…
There is corn as tall as me…
Blackberries are turning in the brambles surrounding the allotments…
Apple trees are groaning beneath the weight of their laden bows…
There are pears plumping up…
And fat marrows discarded by the path…
One lucky plot owner has in one small space two types of apple and a plum tree at the back, all of which are sagging, heavy with fruit…
The final burst of sweetpeas are overshadowed by their neighbours…
Mallows, hollyhocks and scrambling nasturtiums are taking over where the poppies were…
And jolly sunflowers bob in the breeze…
My allotment offers up one final surprise of early summer – another crop of ruby red strawberries, sweet and juicy…
I am currently holed up in bed, for what looks like the week, with suspected swine flu – oh joy! N is picking up my dose of Tamiflu on his way home from work, and hopefully I will be back to good health in no time. So, after spending the night sleeping upright on the sofa and not getting to sleep until about 3.30am I am trying to cheer myself up by sharing the latest from the allotment.
Last week N and I lifted all the onions and shallots growing on the allotment. I have never grown onions or shallots, but grown from sets they are pretty hassle-free, apart from the odd weeding session. I’d noticed the last time I’d been to the allotment that their green spiky tops had started to wither and fade, so pulled out my Grow Your Own Veg book by Carol Klein to find out how to harvest them.
N used a fork to carefully lift the clusters of shallots and onions out of the soil, and I followed behind breaking up the shallots, rubbing off large clods of earth and popping them into my basket. It was that simple.
Once we got home, we set about putting them out to dry. Rather conveniently we were away over the weekend at a friend’s wedding, so we cleared the draining board and counter top next to the sink – the sink has a large window that lets in lots of light, which I thought would be the best place in our house for the onions to dry out. We lay down a couple of tea towels and used the wire stand from inside the grill tray to allow air to circulate around the onions – which is what the book had recommended as ideal.
They look really beautiful, these soil encrusted orbs which glow a brilliant amber where the papery outside layer has been removed. Now we just need to store them properly in order to keep them as long as possible into the autumn – that’s if we can resist making a meal from them.
One of my favourite onion recipes is Pasta with Lemon and Onion. Simply saute an onion (any kind will do, ordinary, white or red) in some olive oil and a knob of butter until soft. You can pop a couple of sprigs of thyme in to impart its flavour if you like. Add in the zest of a lemon, season with salt and pepper. Remove the thyme sprig before tipping into your drained pasta. Loosen it up a little with some extra virgin olive oil, squeeze in lemon juice to taste, and add a good handful of finely chopped parsley. Eat with a sprinkling of Parmesan. We had this for tea last night and it is just so homely – like a big hug. Perfect for people suffering from swine flu or other flu-like bugs!
So the Mexican party last night was lovely, lots of sombreros and homemade ponchos, Maria brought maracas, and we ate a lot of chilli, baked potatoes, tortilla chips and wraps. Ours friends Katie and Kate, who’s party it was, have just finished doing their back yard and it looked stunning – they’ve painted the walls a cream colour and trellis in a mossy green, they’ve put some decking down and built raised beds that are full of interesting plants. It was just a really lovely place to sit out with friends.
Here are some pretty flowers and herbs from my garden that I made into a posy for our friends as a gift. This little bunch was so fragrant – with lavender, sweetpeas, marjoram and mint – I would definitely recommend using popping a couple of sprigs of herbs into a bunch of flowers.
Today has been another warm day in Cheshire, so N and I headed straight down to the allotment to trim the long grass, water and put in a few more plants I’ve been growing from seedlings.
The strawberries we inherited on the allotment are plumping up nicely, we are just waiting for then to start blushing and turning red…and hope the rabbits don’t get to them first!
The purple sprouting broccoli (the green plant towards the back of the pic) has shot up since we last went down, and Maria’s brussel sprout plants (the purple plant in the foreground) are looking equally healthy. Even the three smaller plants that aren’t enclosed by my snazzy wire fence are doing well and haven’t (yet! touchwood!) been decimated by the rabbits.
I also discovered a number of small cabbage white caterpillars on one of the broccoli plants, so I have carefully pinched the leaves off, brought the caterpillars home and have lovingly encouraged them onto some of my nasturtium plants. Mad you may say, why didn’t I “dispose” of them you ask, well I like butterflies and I’m happy to sacrifice some of my nasturtiums for them.
Some of the sweetcorn (like this one) are doing well, others look a bit piddly, but rumour has it we’ve got rain this week, so hopefully that might pick the smaller ones up a little.
N cleared a patch of ground where pumpkins had previously been grown, and I planted four Uchi Kuri pumpkin plants that I have tended from seed. In between them I also dug in a couple of nasturtiums because I just love the way they trail and ramble over everything and their jolly flowers.
So overall the allotment is looking pretty good, taking into consideration that this year we just haven’t had the time to clear and tidy it properly. Rather things are just growing between the tall grasses and weeds, but growing they are. Next year we will work on making it look pretty and neat.
It’s been a while since I posted any pictures of my newly acquired allotment. I feel that we’ve done quite well with our plot, considering that we only get down there occasionally.
This photo was taken almost a month ago – we had just finished planting five large beds of potatoes!
With N out playing cricket, I made a trip down there on Sunday and ended up there for about 3 hours. The garlic, onions and shallots seem to be doing well.
The shallots have started to split, which is quite exciting for someone who’s never grown onions or shallots before:
I planted some Cosmos that I have grown from seedlings, which had probably spent a couple of weeks too many in their tiny pods, so we shall have to wait and see how they fare on the allotment. I also managed to plant out some Purple Sprouting Broccoli plants that I bought at least a month ago and have been hanging on to as it said to plant them out in May.
I spent a good while erecting a chicken wire barrier between them and potential death – I’m not sure whether bunnies like broccoli plants, but I’m not about to wait and see:
Overall I was quite pleased with my attempt, especially as it was quite a challenge with no one to hold the other end of the roll of chicken wire:
I do feel that having put a fence to prevent the wild rabbits from munching on my tiny vegetable plants that it will attract them. I worry they will see it as a challenge, that because there’s a fence whatever’s behind it must be even tastier, and therefore they will try especially hard to get it.
The potatoes have finally shown their faces – I was beginning to think that maybe all five beds were lost…but fear not, they are growing:
The fruit canes (believed to be raspberry) behind the ’shed’ are now green and leafy with lots of flower heads appearing, which means (fingers-crossed) lots of berries – my mouth is already beginning to water at the thought of harvests yet to come:
I burnt off at least one of the three-and-a-half-bars-of-chocolate brownies that we made for N’s birthday by hoeing a piece of ground at the bottom of the allotment. I am undecided as to whether I will sow it with purple clover (which is a green manure) or whether I might try making it into a mini meadow.
I do think it’s a shame you don’t drive along country roads in this country and find odd patches of meadow brimming with colour and buzzing bees like these we’ve found in France:
And finally, the rhubarb has shot up thick stalks topped with a foam of white flowers. How pretty.
With the lovely warm weather and sprinkling of rain that we’ve had recently in the UK, my garden has been busy growing. My blackcurrant bush has lots of bright green leaves and pretty lilac buds forming…
While waiting for my own tiny lettuce seedlings I have ‘cheated’ by buying some plug plants. My mom has a really good garden centre near her and they always have a fantastic selection of plants and plant paraphenalia. I choose two different varieties: red baby gem lettuce and green batavia.
Because the tiny lettuces had been living in a greenhouse at the garden centre I was a bit concerned about putting them outside. So I kept them for a night in our lean-to/porch, and then managed to recycle these glass jars (that had previously had bulbs in) by turning them upside down and making them into mini cloches.
I am so looking forward to the first salad of the season. It is such an exciting time of year in the garden, plus with our new allotment we have also been busy digging, but more on that another day.
Recently I have taken on an allotment. It’s in the small town next to us, about a five minute drive away – I put my name down on for all the allotments in our town, and the next, because I was told it would be about a three year wait (!!!) for allotments here. Back in February, when I’d given up all hope on the allotment front, I received an email from the council and went to visit a couple of allotments that had become available. For a start, the plots were a lot larger than I imagined the would be – a full plot is 250 square metres!! The first plot I was shown was overgrown and had been unloved for over a year – this one filled me with fear, I just didn’t have the time to sort it out. The next looked more manageable, so I signed up and I now have an additional 125 square metres in which to grow.
my new allotment
There are a lot of raspberry canes at the bottom of the plot, in amongst the rubbish.
raspberry canes and rubbish
And quite a lot of rubarb. It’s quite exciting to be given a plot that already has things growing on it.
rubarb coming through the weeds
A couple of weeks after I’d taken it on and still hadn’t been down to do any digging, I was beginning to think I’d taken on too much. I finally managed to spend a couple of hours there on Monday last week and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
freshly dug raised bed
I dug over a number of the raised beds that were left by the previous owner, and put in all my garlic and shallots, and half the onions I’d bought.
rows of garlic, shallots and onions
N dropped in on his way home from work on Friday afternoon to check that they hadn’t been decimated by some naughty bunnies (wild ones, not the cheeky pets this time), birds or mice. They were fine – thank goodness! – and still sat neatly in their lines. I’ve never grown shallots or onions before, so I shall keep you posted with how they go. I adore all things onion-ey and couldn’t live without them in my kitchen, so I am looking forward to the day in autumn when I can (hopefully!) cook some of them. Garlic I haven’t had much luck with in the past, so fingers-crossed I’ll do better this year. If anybody has any garlic growing tips – please leave me a message in the comments as I would love any help I can get!
I love food and especially food that comes from distinct places – food that is specific to a place and shaped by the landscape. I hope that Eat the Earth will be an outlet to share the fantastic food that is local to me, and local to other places that I visit. I will also share the food and recipes I like to cook, especially with homegrown goodies.
courgette flowers at the Saumur market :: the Loire Valley, France ::
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