Bank Holiday weekend

It's been a lovely weekend. The late summer bank holiday is a traditional time for us to spend time at home, rather than join the fraught, exhausted and boiling hot masses in motorway queues so we enjoyed a peaceful weekend here in sunny Bristol.

One of the constant jobs of summer is strimming the paths and the areas of grass around the old apple tree and by the pond and I'm afraid I leave that to J. It's a man thing. He doesn't do weeding because it's too girly (fiddly) so I guess it evens out. Anyway, he manfully strimmed the whole allotment on Sunday, while I did very little but yesterday I was back to lugging cans of water up and down from the trough. It's finally been dry enough to need a bit of water and I was watering in liquid feed around the roots of all the vegetables. They need a bit of perking up at this stage of the growing season. I found an old bottle of Maxicrop at the back of the shed, heaven knows when I bought it, it must be years old - and I diluted it by loads because it had turned into a thick treacly sludge. It seemed ok though so I'm hoping it will pep up the production now everything has started to slow down a bit. It's got to be good stuff - it smells so awful. It's made of seaweed and has a bouquet like seagull sh*t. I'm following the theory that medicine only does you any good if it tastes nasty!

The slowing down means we get time to do other things too. I've been swimming in the lake a few times and we had a bbq on Saturday. Amongst other things we did skewered vegetables and mounds of beans along with the grilled meat. Here's a recipe for using some of those beans:

A pile of french beans
Hard boiled eggs
Chopped garlic (loads)
A little bit of butter
Sea salt
Fresh ground coloured pepper (I use the one with red, green, white, black and pimento all in one grinder, it's called Bristol pepper)
Parsley

Cook the beans al dente, peel the eggs and quarter, melt the butter in a little dish in the microwave and add the garlic. sizzle for a minute and then combine everything into a serving dish. Add the seasoning and parsley.

It takes only minutes and it's good enough to have for a main meal with crusty bread but on Saturday of course it was just an extra side dish.

Happy gardening (and barbecueing)

Today I've had some help. A rather shamefaced sixteen year old boy who didn't do as well as he hoped in his GCSE's decided he might regain some brownie points with his mum if he gave me a hand. So the horrible job of wheeling home-made compost from our tiny weeny back garden up the hill to the allotment fell to him, as did the equally knackering one of digging out all the broad beans and weeds so that we could spread the compost over the top patch. He was a great help actually, I really appreciate it. I just wish it was for a different reason.

Last time we were at the allotment J had emptied out one of our two large plastic compost bins onto the edge of the top patch and it was interesting to compare compost from this to the stuff from home. The home stuff seems vastly superior, much richer and full of healthy looking worms. It makes sense I suppose, there's much more of a variety of kitchen peelings, egg boxes and green garden rubbish going into it. The allotment bins get filled with grass and weeds, although I do occasionally take shredded bank statements and loo roll inners up to add to the mixture. I'm sure cardboard is very good to keep it aerated.

I really do find compost a fascinating subject. I know it sounds weird but it's true! When we were all on a family holiday in Wales (in a tent, in the rain) we went to look around the wonderful Centre for Alternative Technology where we embarrassed our children by getting terribly excited by a compost exhibition. The boys thought it was awful that their parents could want to plunge their hands into different bins of it and sniff the various mixtures. However, I'm determined they're going to understand the value of making it even if they're at the wrong life stage to appreciate it at the moment. At least my family members of the ipod generation are going to know how to provide food for their families in the future even if at the moment it's not a priority for them.

Well, I suppose I'd better get down off my soap box and start cooking some of the lovely beans we brought home or we won't get any dinner. Yes I know the time on these blogs suggests I'm an an insomniac but I think it must mean American time, and I'm in England.
Happy gardening (and bean cooking)

It's Balloon Fiesta weekend so we're really busy. The weather so far has been fantastic for flying and for spectating and our balloon has been flying every morning and evening. J's camping at the Fiesta site but I'm such a wimp that I came home last night and spent a comfortable night in my own bed and had the pleasure of a refreshing shower. (I do so hate festival toilets, and what's more, there didn't seem to be any running water )

So, last night I picked huge amounts of beans, french and runners and courgettes (anybody want any courgettes?) with about a hundred and twenty balloons trooping across the sky in front of me. Most of my photos were crummy though. I think the balloons were just that little bit too far away to look good but this morning was quite different!

I saw the balloons from the house first thing as I was opening the curtains but we live in a dip and the nearest high ground is at the allotment so I shoved on any old clothes (hoping I didn't see anyone I know!) and ran up the road with the camera. They were really close this time, I couldn't see ours but I took photos of the nearest ones. The photo in the blog today is taken from the path between the huts and the balloon's advertising is for Cameron Balloons, based in Bristol. They were so close I could hear the people in the basket talking in the silence between burns.

I spent quite a bit of time chasing about this morning with my camera. Balloons continued taking off until much later and the light breeze kept the balloons drifting over Bishopston so I kept seeing more pop up unexpectedly between the houses or hearing burners from hidden balloons after I thought they'd all gone.

It's late morning as I write this and I now have to go and get some supplies for a barbeque for later on this afternoon. We'll have it early before this evening's flight and this evening I intend to brave the tent and the festival toilets again for another night,
Happy gardening (and ballooning)

Hello
It's almost dark now but today has been a lovely day. I've just planted out some lettuce seedlings and another row of carrot seed and watered the new leek bed. The water content of the soil must still be pretty high, we've had very little respite from the rain for nearly two months so watering is one job we haven't had to do. I usually have arms like an orang outang by this time of year from carrying two watering cans up and down the allotment every night. Very feminine!

The rain has brought problems though. The whole site has got tomato and potato blight. We dug up all the potatoes last Saturday and so far they look ok but I'll have to keep checking them. Once one gets mushy the whole bag goes. I haven't culled the tomatoes completely, just cut off the brown bits but if they get any worse they'll have to go. It's a real shame but I'm not surprised, this humid weather provides ideal conditions for the blight to develop.

The french beans, runner beans and courgettes are doing very well though. The fruit's been good too. I'm jamming this week (a bit like Bob Marley...you know the one I mean) I've made josta jam and redcurrant jelly so far. I'm busy tomorrow but Friday's going to be bramble jelly day. I've got millions of blackberries so they may as well make jelly as well as crumbles. It's ridiculously labour intensive but I love that row of deep red and purple jars when they're finished. Goodness, I'm exhausted thinking about it!
Time for a well deserved cup of tea I think!
Happy gardening.