Jamming

Finally made it up to the allotment last weekend. With help from the gorgeous T, I've almost tamed the pesky weeds, staked the tomatoes, strimmed and generally tided up.

Getting to spend even just a couple of hours up on the allotment was a real treat. I really miss this space when I'm away.

We rewarded ourselves with some wine and by harvesting our first decent crop of raspberries.

Needless to say many of the raspberries didn't make the short walk home, ending up in our mouths instead, but I had enough to rustle up a few jars of raspberry jam.

I didn't even have to label the jars I'd recycled. Bonus!

Petrol strimmers make light work...

... of knee high grass on the allotment.







My hard work was rewarded with a veggie bonanza. Courgettes, artichokes, beans, salad, sorrel, onions, blueberries and raspberries.

Lavender & sweet peas

With all the rain we've been having the allotment is romping away. Unfortunately that's both the stuff I've carefully planted, nurtured, and cosseted and the rowdy, weedy, grassy natives wanting to reclaim their territory.

As I'm working away lot I don't have much time to devote to the allotment and Sunday morning was the first chance I had to see how things were faring.

Not too bad all things considered. I harvested a mountain of shallots. Perhaps too early, but with all the rain we've been having I was worried about them rotting. I also don't think they needed to get any bigger! (More on those in another post.)

The broad beans are also romping. I had to resort to spraying them last weekend to get rid of all the black fly. Normally I managed to avoid using chemicals, but needs must unfortunately. We also came home with courgettes, spring onions, and blueberries! They are a first for the plot.

This year though the allotment isn't all about food. I've been trying to grow cutting flowers with varying success. The plot is definitely more colourful, but I'm not getting enough to fill vases. Except for the sweet peas... they've turned out to be real crowd-pleasers.

Crème de cassis: part 1

My blackcurrant bush on the allotment has been generous this year.

To honour its offering I have decided to turn these little fruity gems into one of my favourite liqueurs: crème de cassis. This stuff can turn even the most boring house wine into something a little special - a kir.

After a bit of hunting around I settled on this recipe in the Telegraph. Although this one over at Figs, Bay & Wine caught my eye as well. I love the idea of having a small bottle of cassis in your handbag for emergencies.

The process of making cassis is in two stages. First, the fruit is steeped in vodka*. Then after a few months, the vodka is poured off (and saved), the fruit whizzed to a pulp, strained, and returned to the vodka. You then make a thick sugar syrup. Add this to the fruity vodka until the sweetness is just right, and then voilà! you have crème de cassis.

I've still got to add leaves from the blackcurrant bush to the jar, but it's raining so they can wait until later in the week!

To be continued. I'll post part 2 in 4-5 months when it's time to finish the process...

* Ideally you would use eau de vie. But trying to buy eau de vie in a UK supermarket is like trying to buy rocking horse shit. Our Italian friends are always bemused by how hard it is to get hold of - they use it all the time to cook up home-made limoncello. I think Big Brother believes that us Brits can't be trusted not to over-indulge in the pure stuff.

Choke

When faced with trying to work out whether the tall stately spikey plant on your allotment is a cardoon or an artichoke there's only one thing to do. Eat it!

On the menu this evening was: boiled artichoke, mayonnaise (made with rape seed oil), with a salad of rocket, beetroot leaf, sorrel, tomatoes (care of the grocer), baby courgette. I made a walnut oil and sherry vinegar dressing just to push the boat out.

Turns out we have a bona fide artichoke. To think we let them all go to waste last year!

[PS. Crappy quality photos via my phone]

Garlic scapes... and other tasty treats

After a full-on week or two at work I've been seriously neglecting the allotment. Turn your back on it for a moment and when you next look those pesky weeds have seized their chance and amassed, ready for plot domination. I also found some sad looking plants in the conservatory desperate for a chance to move out into the big wide world.

So I spent the day blitzing the plot. The grass is cut, the weeds are gone (well at least the bits you can see), and I've planted out some marigolds, clary sage, dwarf purple beans, borlotti firetongue beans, and butternut squash. Things are looking good.

In return for my efforts I got to rustle up a supper comprised almost entirely of treats from the plot. On the menu was: gnocci  with olive oil, black pepper and parmesan (care of the supermarket) accompanied by pan-fried baby turnip (Milan Purple Top), grilled garlic scapes and baby courgette, and a salad of sorrel, beetroot leaves, red spring onion and sugar snap peas. D-bloody-icious!

Flowers everywhere

Just add sun.

Operation allotment shed

The allotment shed was developing quite a precarious relationship with its base. Sitting at the top of a slope like ours we would arrive at the allotment after each winter storm fully expecting to see the shed in pieces halfway down the plot.


Somehow it's survived and so one of the jobs T and I tackled during our week off was to redo the base it sits on. Using a wooden frame made from the old (but still good) shed supports, 2x2ft concrete slabs taken out of our front garden, and bricks found on the plot we managed to create a new paved base for free.


The shed took a battering during the process, but it's tougher than it looks. Fixing her up is the next thing on our allotment to do list. For now though we're all set to go back to planting, eating, and G&T's by the shed.



T also finished off the compost bins. A-mazing! I've taken lots of pictures so expect a "how-to" post at some point.


PS Excuse the photo quality - only had the phone with me when I went to water this evening and the light was fading.

Triffid?

Or just a rhubarb flower in the making?

I think you're meant to cut these flower stems out, but they are so statuesque that I usually leave them alone and enjoy their drama instead.

Got one of these...

Weekend to do list:

• Sell sofa on Gumtree
• Make some oat & raisin cookies for T
• Make fat rascals
  
• Finish sowing seeds that need to be started off in March - indoor/outdoor [update: almost!]
• Tidy up back garden - made a start...
  
• Finish raking/prepping the beds on the allotment
• Feed the blackcurrants & raspberries with chicken poo pellets
  
• Buy a tonneau cover for the car on eBay (Tonneau? No idea why! Funny name for the bit of material that is used to cover the soft-top when it's down and stops it getting sun-bleached.) [Update: got it! Should arrive this week.]
• Paint wood preserver on garden trellis
• Order cycle helmet
• Fill in 2011 census
• Fix laptop
  
• Do laundry

It's been a gorgeous day. I was going to check out a new second-hand shop I'd been told about and poke around the reclamation yards, but with sunshine and blue skies it's a day for being outside.




Got to the allotment to find this bad ass standing loud and proud in the middle of the plot.


Somehow T is creating the mother of all compost heaps from this pile of crap. I'm feeling it deserves a special post when he's done.


Elsewhere on the plot:

Garlic.


More garlic!


Raspberry canes.


Broadleaf sorrel.


Itsy bitsy beetroot.

Ruby came to supervise, but got distracted... the slow worm was relocated to the safety of the rhubarb.


PS. Look what arrived on Thursday.

Keep calm and carry on...

Pick up a packet of seeds and most of them consider March to be that magical month when the gods of veg and flowers grant their gift of life. Miss the boat and you'll be down to the garden centre to score plug plants.

Plug plants are amazing for those times when your lettuce gets munched by marauding slugs and starting again from seed is a bridge too far, or you fancy extra broad beans. But, want a yellow courgette or kohl rabi? Forgot to buy seed in time? Better luck next year!

After three years on the allotment I'm beginning to get the hang of planning. The beds were dug over the winter and I been up whenever the weather allowed to tidy, clear out the last of the winter crops and get the soil ready for planting.


All the effort paid off - when the sun came out today I was ready to start sowing. In are a few more peas (Sugar Snap), turnips (Milan Purple Top), beetroot (Bolthardy), along with red onions and shallots.






Hold on, did I just say I was getting the hang of planning? I was fibbing. The garlic really should have been in before Xmas. Anyway the motto for March will be 'keep calm and carry on planting'.

[Source: Wikipedia]

PS. And those mushrooms are still doing their thing...

Angelica

Source: Laundry etc.

Start of the growing season

I spent the weekend sketching the beginnings of a planting plan for the allotment and sorting through seed packets to work out what needs planting when.



March is when it all kicks off in anger, but a few things are made of sterner stuff. Hopefully. I'm chancing it with some tomatoes (marmande and gardener's delight), broad beans (witkiem) and a couple of courgettes. They're in the conservatory so they should be protected from the frosts.

Final harvest of 2010

Managed to spend a few quiet hours pottering around the allotment today. Unfortunately the ground is still too wet to dig, so I finally took the time to turn over the compost heap (it's suffering from terminal neglect), spreading what little compost said heap had generated on the beds, tidying up dead vegetation caused by the recent snow, and seeing what goodies I could take back home to eat.

On the menu for this week: Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips and celariac.


This is how the plot looked before the last of the lingering snow thawed after Boxing day.




Some very sorry looking cabbages and cavalo nero:


But the purple sprouting broccoli is looking promising (providing I can keep it safe from marauding pigeon patrols). And the rhubarb is already showing signs of life!




Chilly toes!