Views

Here are some views of the plot now the greenery is thickening up.
Below is the view from the road, over the hay field

From the boundary gate, my plot is the fourth, you can see my compost heap and red chair

Side view from the left side, looking back towards the road

Rear view

Roots bed

Timing

Today was a good day on the plot. I weeded and watered and planted. The ground has had a little rain, but could do with a good deal more, especially after the windy weather last week. I have managed to tick off most of the jobs on my list to try and achieve before my baby arrives, the main aim being to get most crops off to the best start so they can cope with 2/3 weeks of neglect! I have to say having started off most of my seeds very early and nurtured them in the greenhouse, I have been lucky with the mild spring in planting a lot of things out earlier than normal. Some took a hit by the frost earlier in the month, the potatoes, beans and courgettes, but most have fought back hard and will survive albeit a bit later than normal. My potatoes are a good example, here is the plot today:

But earlier in the month they looked less healthy after the frost..

I'm always amazed each year by how much of the planning of planting schemes completely relies on the climate which of course is utterly uncontrollalbe. We can only guess that frost will end by the end of May, and we will have a wetish spring and some crops will not like to be planted out till the soil is warm enough. This year has debunked most of those theories, which has led me to plan more back ups than usual as conditions have been so unusual from an 'ordinary' British spring. Nevertheless most plants catch up or even themselves out according to the conditions and find a way to survive if they possible can!

Back to potatoes, because of the frost damage, my second earlies look like they will flower before the first earlies!

Prize picks

This weeks prize picks are ...

In the colour category, the red cabbage and yellow beet:

and runner up, Oakleaf lettuce

In alien plant category...Kohl rabi

Most promising goes to ....sungold

and the runner up, the broad bean...

Weekly harvest

I'm starting to make modest harvests from the first crops now, and have decided to keep track of what I am taking home each week. So here we are:

Lettuce

Mixed rainbow chard and perpetual spinach

Corn beet/salad

Asparagus (thin this week)

Radishes

Onions

I have eaten 1 pea pod and 2 wild strawberries whilst browsing

Frenzy

The only word I can think of to describe my last couple of visits to the plot is a 'frenzy'. I have mountains of plants to put in from my greenhouse (see previous post) and I'm fast becoming immobile due to a very large baby bump protruding from my tummy. The time is approaching that I will have to step back for a month or so and reflect on my work done so far, and concentrate on the arrival of my new baby.

To top it all off it's the time of year when everything is growing like mad, mostly weeds, that need constant attention, and I'm so reluctant to leave my little babies (plants) alone to fend for themselves in a sea of thistles. Yesterday I cleared 5 small trugs of thistle seedlings, now a thistle seedling is not quite like any other seedling, it is big and comes with a tap root that has to be completely disposed of). Anyway this isn't leaving me much time to enjoy the best bits of having an allotment at this time of year. But there are some, like my peas flowering!

Reflection

I've been absent for a while as I mentioned before, we have just moved house. We are now in temporary accomodation until we find a permanent family home down in Eastbourne. I think I did underestimate a little the amount of work involved in moving house and garden after 5 years, as previously I had moved every year for 10 years (! yes) and though it was relatively straight forward. Anyway, it did mean a mass evacuation of all plants from my greenhouse, and a very speedy evaluation of what was so tender it couldn't survive on the plot for a couple of weeks before being planted. This was quite a short list and consisted mainly of squashes/cucurbits, sunflowers, sweetcorn and some spare french beans, oh and not forgetting my beloved celeriac that seems to wince if I even water it in anything under 20C!.

Anyway, it's a sad sight, seeing my garden like this after many happy years growing flowers/fruit/veg and of course children ....

Stale seed

I used to keep seeds for years, but I'm gradually cottoning on to the fact they have a sell by date for a reason. Many of my crops have failed for this reason, especially parsnips which apparently don't store well at all.

I've noticed that some of my lettuce has suffered this fate this year, so as we are moving house I decided to have a seed audit and cull of any packets that were too old or looking the worst for wear. That of course meant replacements! As most of the lettuce varieties that were remaining were quite similar and very green! I decided to buy some red varieties. I have now planted oak leaf red and bulls blood red chard. I can't wait to see them up and contrasting against the fresh leaf greens.

Asparagus harvest

At last my asparagus plants are stepping up their production, I picked about 5 spears today, enough for a portion for 1 person. Now I think only one of the plants is dead, all the others have at least produced 1 spear so far so I'm not so worried now. Just in time as my back up supply (a local farmer who sells bunches by the roadside for £1.20!) has stopped selling.

What to do with them? grill, steam, eat raw? I tend to throw all the spring veg in together in stages to stop them becoming overcooked. I do this as it's the way my dad would cook young vegetables until there was enough of each type to warrant serving individually.  The other day I had a chicken pie with Jersey royals, peas, my asparagus, my spinach - all tossed together in butter and mint. It was lovely!

Bumper strawberry crop

Everywhere on the news I'm hearing that this year we are due a bumper harvest of strawberries. Something to do with the early spring has given them a head start, so it's looking like we'll all be munching on the home grown varieties! Mine are no exception, they are flowering like crazy.

Most of my strawberries are the wild variety, as they remind me of Finland where they grown prolifically in woods and roadsides. I do have some cultivated varieties, but I don't know what they are as they came as a free gift with my comfrey plants! It will be interesting to find out what they are like...

Hopefully I will have a large enough crop to make some Wild Strawberry Icecream

Creamed spinach

Last night after a frenzied session of weeding, I thought it was high time I picked something from the plot. I chose a couple of lettuces, some spinach and spring onions. Given that my children are not great fans of lettuce, I thought I'd try to cream some spinach based on a recipe in Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's Year at River Cottage book. Sadly the book has been packed away in the house moving gubbins, so here's my version.


Creamed spring spinach

15grams butter
2-3 large handfulls of spinach finely chopped
10ml cream
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
a small squeeze of lemon

Melt the butter and sweat the spinach in a heavy based saucepan with a lid on for 5-10 mins until very soft. Take off the heat and add the cream, nutmeg, lemon juice and seasoning. Taste to adjust.

Just lovely!

Sadly my children didn't think so

Moving house.....and allotments?

So we will be finally moving house in 10 days time. We are staying temporarily at my parents while we take time to look for our new abode in Eastbourne, hopefully in the Old Town Area. I will keep my allotment at Furnace Lane for the remainder of this year, but it does mean vacating next April, which is a little sad. Although always the optimist, I have had my eye on potential new sites in Eastbourne and there are some fantastic ones in Motcombe gardens that have tumble down flint walls and views of the sea! I'm thinking that chalky soil will be better for carrots...

Sissinghurst veggie garden

Since watching Sarah Raven in Sissinghurst back in 2009, battling to supply the restaurant and cafe with vegetables grown on site, I have been curious to visit the new custom built veggie plot.

The last opportunity I had was a week previous to the airing of that programme, so there was not much to see as you can imagine. This time was a little better, but to be honest due to the dry weather I think progress on growth has been a little slow there, but there were still interesting things to see.

 

 At the entrance is an area of raised beds roughly marked out in hexagonal shapes, these contain herbs and ornamental flowers such as sweet peas. Many of the borders are edged with the Limianthes 'poached egg' plant and I spotted a comfrey patch too. You can see how the heavy clay soil is suffering a bit in this dry weather, it's very similar to my allotment.

 

Beyond the structured beds is the main crop growing area, basically a field interspersed with paths for access. Between the crops are rows of fruit, here are some Glen Ample Raspberries.

 

Some very vigorous looking chard and rhubarb

An area being green manured with Red Clover

As the board shown at the beginning, it states the garden has recently been granted The Soil Association's Organic Status. You can see many organic methods in practise, such as green manures, the comfrey patch and lots of catch crops and mulches. Here the shallots have been mulched with straw to keep down weeds. I also saw rows of leeks being intercropped with some kind of vetch which must be being used for the same purpose.

I'd love to come back in late June/early July once they've had some rain to see all the peas and beans in full glory, and see Adam Nicolson's dream realised!

Ladies day and a celebration

Life has been slightly on hold this past week with lots of telephone tennis with estate agents and solicitors trying to finalise the details of our house sale. Finally today we exchanged contracts and have a moving date of 18th May. This is fantastic news as we've been trying to move for over a year now.

Before I had received this good news, I wanted to distance myself slightly from the events, so I decided to take my daughter for a ladies excursion to Sissinghurst. I'm very fortunate to have this fantastic inspirational garden of Vita Sackville West on my doorstep and will miss being able to visit so easily once I've moved down to the coast. Being with my daughter meant any detailed observations of planting schemes and plant varieties was almost impossible. I was able to take a few quick snaps to give an overall impression, and visit the newish vegetable garden which had just opened for this year.

Euphorbia

Clematis montana

Meadow with Wisteria in background

Poppies

 

 

Tender is the night

Well I got suckered by last night's frost. I'm doubly annoyed having actually smugly covered up my corn and courgettes with a closh, my french beans and potatoes with fleece and they are still all limp and listless. Not sure what will recover but it's the potatoes that are the biggest sacrifice as I cannot replace those. Ho hum, it's all part and parcel I guess. Serves me right for posting all those pics of lush plants in my last post!!