The allotment goes to the farmers' market

Over the past week, we have all been carefully gathering our surplus produce and selecting spare jars of jams and pickles to put on today's stall at Redland farmers' market. There was a fine selection of fruit and vegetables but for me the most exciting thing was the appearance of some beautiful jars of honey from the beekeeper who keeps bees in the little wooded area at the end of the allotments. The bit my kids aways used to call "the wild woods" - just think, those bees have fed on our flowers!

The proceeds from the stall were going to a charity that aids disabled gardeners, and when I did my stint in the morning, the money tin already had quite a few notes in it. Marion (on the left of the photo) had organised the event and stayed all day, with a rota of assistants coming and going. It was a very sociable affair and actually more conducive to having a good chat with allotment neighbours than when you're in mid dig.

I nipped up to my own allotment this afternoon to water, it's still very dry after this lovely Indian summer of the last two weeks and it all needed a good soak. It was boiling hot and very hard work lugging the watering can up and down the beds so I was ready for a good soak myself when I got back home.

Happy gardening ( and oh!, the bliss of a hot shower afterwards!)

"Harvest Hats" event

Yesterday was the annual allotment tea, held as before on Cylla's beautifully eccentric plot. I'm afraid the photo I took of her manages to look like the chicken sculpture on her shed is balanced on her head, but hey, I've never claimed to be a good photographer, have I?

This year we had a talk on companion planting by organic horticulturalist, Tim Foster, shown taking second place behind the laden tea table. Again, not a deliberate composition! Tea and talk were both very much enjoyed by all.

J and I culled a couple of mini sunflowers from our allotment to decorate our hats and Lesley very
kindly recorded us for posterity. I had a bit of trouble with my sunflower, it kept falling down over one eye so as soon as we got home I unpinned it and put it in a jug with some others on the kitchen table. They look gorgeous.

Our contribution to the allotment tea were individual normandy apple tarts (I've now nearly finished the bottle of calvados we bought on holiday in Normandy in 1988, when I was pregnant with Edmund!) and individual plum tarts, made with honey baked plums. There was so much food that we all ended up bringing stuff home again, but I'm not complaining!

Happy gardening (and happy harvest)

Plum recovery

Well, the weird organic remedy for plum brown rot seems to have worked, we sprayed it on fairly liberally 3 or 4 times and the plum crop now looks pretty damn good as you can see in the picture.
So..the magic formula, as promised...

1/4 pint milk
teaspoon bicarb of soda
a few squirts Ecover washing up liquid or hand soap (I'm sure it doesn't have to be Ecover)
top up to roughly a pint in total with warm water

We're having to give the plums a good wash before eating them because sour milk and soap doesn't bring out the flavour as well as cream or custard but that's no big deal compared to losing all our lovely fruit.

I've even had enough already to make a couple of delicious helpings of "exploded plum surprise", a quick and easy recipe that J rather liked. Lovely served cold with a big spoonful of marscapone.

"Exploded plum surprise"
A dozen or so plums, halved and stoned
Runny hunny, as much as you want, really
Bung in a pyrex dish with a lid and microwave for slightly less time than you think it's going to take! Enjoy.

Happy gardening (especially when you get to enjoy the harvest)

Brown rot

This is brown rot according to the information J found on the internet. It rots ripening plums on the branch in a matter of hours. He's also found a recipe for a spray that may cure it. I bloody well hope it works, we've got loads of plums so it'd be a terrible shame to lose them all now. The spray sounds completely innocuous and contains just household ingredients such as milk and bicarbonate of soda so I find it hard to believe it'll be powerful enough to combat the rot. Might as well try though.



If it works, I'll put the recipe on here in case I need it again.
Ho hum.
Happy gardening

Redcurrants

Doesn't he look pleased with himself!

When we got back from our holiday there was a lot to do in the way of picking. The redcurrants (only some in the picture, not all) had got to that very overripe, deep red - verging on dropping off the branches stage that meant we had to harvest the lot all at once. J kindly did it, hence the pic.

The redcurrants are being made into jelly in 3lb batches. The jelly recipe is very simple, just a lb of sugar to every pint of redcurrant juice. Yesterday I tried to make more than that in one go but my pressure cooker overflowed at one point so to keep it less messy I'm going back to just 3lbs at once. I would have made a slightly posher recipe that adds port at the last minute but unfortunately it seems that the port that I knew was in the cupboard had mysteriously disappeared by the time I looked for it. Funny that. J says it must have evaporated. Anyway, there's an off license at the end of the road so I think maybe the person who evaporated it should nip down and get a bottle while I start off the next batch!

Hurry up beans

Midsummer already. Hurry up beans - I'm sure they're slower than usual in growing up their poles. It hasn't been reliably warm yet this year and it's definitely been dry. I expect that's why they're still sitting there at the bottom of the poles looking like this.

However, I spent all day yesterday feeding, watering and transplanting and although I say it myself, it's looking great up there. The broad beans are fantastic, the artichoke is producing more tender young globes than we can eat, the spinach beet has been delicious and the potatoes and garlic are almost ready. I'm just waiting for the beans to climb up their poles before I can say it's truly summer.

So, with the usual silly timing, instead of sitting back and enjoying all this lovely summer produce and spending time just chilling with a beer and a barbecue, what do we do? Yes, we pack up the camper and head off into the sunset on our holiday and come back just in time to start all the weeding and strimming again. Nuts, really.

Happy gardening (and happy holidays)

So far, so good

All this fecundity! I've been far too busy planting, weeding, and watering my allotment to have any time left over to write about it. It's all looking damned peachy out there at the moment.

I think the modular system has been really successful in providing small, intensive growing areas that are easy to maintain. Taken as a whole, the plot resembles a patchwork quilt of these little modules with their varying vegetable occupants, but the one quality they share is that so far, touch wood and all that, all the modules are producing abundant, healthy plants.

So far this year we've already cropped radishes, pak choi, lettuces, rocket, spring onions, turnips, spinach beet, spring greens, broad beans and a couple of strawberries. Oh, and there was a fine crop of rhubarb earlier on. I forced it under a broken incinerator and the stalks were particularly tender and pink.

We're not remotely self sufficient, but we certainly grow enough to make a huge difference to the quality of what we eat because it doesn't come any fresher than this, does it?

Happy gardening