Bladon veggie curry

Since my last post the allotment has blossomed with vegetables ripening nicely.

Tonight is the night for our first home grown vegetable curry. Yellow courgettes, green french beans, purple french beans and runner beans along with a white onion and a fist full of potatoes will make a lovely meal.

Whilst harvesting our beans a rabbit was spotted investigating next doors cabbages. I asked if he was called Peter but before answering he skipped away happily into the evening. There was a small blue jacket lying on the ground so I guess he'll be back for that sometime soon.

Photo51: The raw produce. How lovely they look.

Photo52: Rearranged into an underwater scene with the courgette taking on the role of a yellow submarine entangled in french bean seaweed - a little imagination required for this one.

Photo 52: Ready for the pan (important note - the red pepper is an impostor from Waitrose).

Right, I'm off to investigate the lovely curry smells coming up from the kitchen. Glass of beer required I think. Mange tout, mange tout!

PS - I'm now the proud 'carer' for a Stihl petrol strimmer which Emily's grandpa has let me borrow on semi-permanant loan. Most fun - the untended allotment next door didn't stand a chance.

Four lady slow worms, two cats and brassicas galore!

In order to fill the remaining planting area we had to resort to buying seedlings from the local garden centre in Yarnton. Purple sprouting broccoli, savoy cabbages, kohlrabi, curly kale, purple cauliflower and parsnips are all now in residence.

The brassicas are camping out in our three tent like tunnels to guard against the pigeons and cabbage whites. Ging Gang Goolie... and all that!

Photo 47: Any more tunnels and we'd almost be in France.

The compost heap is a hive of activity with four lady and one gentleman slow worm in residence. They seem to be making a rather comfortable home under the Axminster.

Photo 48: Our harem of 4 lady slow worms! We've only seen one boy so far. He must be a happy chap!

As the wildlife on and around the allotment thrives we've also been graced with the presence of two local cats this week. One young and adventurous kitten and a more wise and laid back ginger chap.

Photo 49: Cat number one, the Ginger one.

Photo 50: Cat number 2, Explorer cat.

Tattytastic!

It's been a while since my last post but things have been busy on the allotment (and in the garden) as Emily mentioned.

We've added two vegetable tunnels this week which are now full of brassicas of various types (purple cauliflowers, curly kale and savoy cabbages). Whilst Emily was busy planting those I put three rows of parsnips in, they will eventually be turned into a nice soup no doubt.

The peas we planted earlier in the year were particularly popular with the allotment's resident pigeons so I've constructed a new frame for them to grow up built of chicken wire. Hopefully with an extra layer of wire around the seedling we can protect them and keep the pesky pigeons at bay until they are mature enough to look after themselves.

Photo 44: Tunnels and Chicken Wire - all a cunning ploy to keep the dastardly butterfly and pigeon population away from our veggies.

The strawberries continue to produce with another large bowlful taken from the garden yesterday. Enough for two desserts and one Emily working from home day. More still to come!

Photo 45: More strawberries.

This evening was a momentous occasion. After the frost earlier in the year which damaged the potato plants we were unsure what to expect when we went to harvest our first crop. Happily I can report two plants gave us plenty to eat for our dinner this evening. You can't beat a nice freshly dug boiled potato with melted butter, salt and pepper. Delicious!!!

Photo 46: Our first crop of potatoes.

One final and rather exciting thing to note took place on our walk past the allotment on Wednesday evening. A barn owl carrying a mouse or shrew (difficult to tell as it was wriggling) flew silently and low over the hedgerow and off into the woods. A great way to round off any day (I guess the mouse wasn't too happy though). Hopefully we'll be honoured with the owl's presence again soon.

Strawberry Rob

Rob's been out picking strawberries in the rain. As much as he likes strawberries I think it's because he wanted to test out his new jacket which arrived today..

Photo 43: Strawberry Rob!

Our first harvests!

Although we haven't been allotmenteering much of late, back in the garden we have been nurturing salad crops whilst waiting for other seedlings to grow large enough to transplant.

The lettuce, rocket and radishes we sowed before we went on holiday are providing us with our first home grown salads of the year. Although aiming for successional sowing, I was late in sowing a second crop so there will be a gap before the next ones are ready.

Photo 35: Our first radishes.

Photo 36: Buttercrunch and Lizzy lettuces.

On Saturday we trundled up to the allotment with the pea, bean, pumpkin, courgette and sweetcorn seedlings we sowed a few weeks ago. There were weeds to pull before we could start with the planting. Even though the weeds appreciate the rain as much as the gardeners do, it always surprises me how few weeds there are to pull. Two people and half an hour later and the plot was looking much tidier.

Photo 37: Rob building pyramids for the beans

We have been using the compost Rob dug out of the compost bin in the garden last month to dig into the planting holes for the seedlings. And it appears that it's not just the seedlings that like our compost - slow worms do to!

We have at least two slow worms in our compost heaps - a beautiful bronze one and a paler silvery beige one. After further investigation I think we have a male and a female!

Photo 38: The bronze coloured tail of a sprightly female slow worm.

Photo 39: A much more lethargic male slow worm.

Hopefully we will get some better photos before the end of the summer.

We have had mixed success at the allotment. The potatoes have recovered from frost bite and are starting to flower and some of the beans we planted early have recovered too and are a couple of feet tall. But much of fruit is really suffering in the dry weather. It is such a long way from the water tap that they are having to manage on the little rainfall and irregular watering we do. Unfortunately that has resulted in a 50% success rate so far

Photo 40: Tatties in flower.

Photo 41: A runner bean.

Photo 42: Our very unhappy autumn raspberry bush, which I feel very guilty about.

Photo 43: On a positive note, Falstaff, our espalier apple tree, has 12 apples! As he's still small I removed most of the buds so he can concentrate on growing. But last year I only left 3 so 12 seems like a glut :)

A house full of Martins

Whilst not strictly speaking allotment related, I wanted to record that our House Martins returned yesterday. They built a nest last summer in a little nook between our house and next door, just outside our bedroom window. Hopefully we will wake to the chatter of little Martins soon!

Good news, and bad news

We arrived home yesterday after a lovely, relaxing holiday in Skye. The sun was shining on seven of the nine days we were there, which combined with a beautiful cottage, made it a perfect getaway.

While we were away my exam results were published. The RHS have been very frustrating. The results were due to be published on Friday 29th April, but the day before they issued a notice saying that they would be delayed until the following Tuesday. At 4pm on the Tuesday they published a note saying that they were having technical difficulties and finally I got my results at 10am on the Wednesday.

I passed all four - two with commendations! I'm relieved and very pleased. You may remember there was one in particular that I was worried about - I passed it with quite a good margin but got a lower mark in one of the others!

So that's the good news. We had been trying not to worry about the allotment while we were away. The evening before we left we worked till dusk, covering up all the emerging potatoes, sowing seeds and taking a risk by planting out some young beans, courgettes and pumpkins - if they made it through we would have had a nice early crop.

Whilst the beautiful sunshine in Skye helped make our holiday so wonderful, we were very concerned about the lack of rain in Oxfordshire. We arrived home to discover from our neighbours that the potatoes and other young plants had wilted last week. Feeling rather gloomy, we went to the allotment and discovered that a frost had not only caught us out but lots of our neighbours too.

I'm rather upset about the potatoes. I hadn't really expected the beans or courgettes to survive neglected for two weeks, but had nothing to loose by trying. They will be easily and quickly replaced by new plants. But the effort we put into choosing, chitting, and carefully planting the potatoes cannot be replicated this year. The quick growing earlies have been most affected - Orla and Sharps Express. Thankfully the rather slow to emerge Pentland Javelin's and the maincrops Arran Victory and Fir Apple are not too damaged so hopefully there will still be some potatoes to unearth later in the summer.

The seeds we sowed before we left have not germinated with much success, most likely because of the dry soil and we put them in and the lack of water thereafter. But again, there is plenty of time to sow some more.

Lesson learnt - no more holidays in late April!

This afternoon we fixed the potatoes best we could and did some weeding (not too much given two weeks away - clearly weeds don't like droughts either). I will catch up with all the sowing this week and let you know how I get on.