A year on the allotment: July 2016

July featured some of the hottest days of the year so far. The warm weather means our crops start to reach peak production. It also means more trips to the allotment to water the plants...which I don't mind as it's better than going to a gym.

This year we've had our first crop of blackcurrants. We've picked loads and I've heard people talking on Instagram about it being a 'good year' for blackcurrants. They are certainly very juicy. I made an apple and blackcurrant crumble with some of them, it was delicious. I don't think I've ever eaten fresh blackcurrants and it packed a real taste punch. Magoo declared the crumble was 'too tasty'...which I think is a thumbs up!

It's also the first year our Gooseberry bush has produced fruit. We've had lots of fat, juicy gooseberries which I made into a compote to pour over fresh yogurt.

Summertime means plenty of people are out and about at the plot. It's always lovely when someone passes on some of their vegetables to us. This year our broadbeans have been virtually wiped out by slugs and black fly. They look so moth eaten and only have a few tiny bean pods hanging off the sides. One of our neighbours felt sorry for us and handed me a bagful of broad beans from his plot. He also gave us a bunch of freshly picked radish. We have some growing on our plot too, but I never like to turn down free veg...

The community aspect of allotmenteering features in my five ways an allotment makes family life better blog post. In my opinion, allotments are one of last true community spaces we have in towns and cities. They are open to all, affordable and act as a green space in urban environments.

Thankfully, the peas Magoo planted in her raised bed have produced lots of pods. The broad beans in her raised bed have fared better than the ones planted out in the main beds. We've been picking a few pods each time we go to the plot. Popping peas straight out of the pod and eating them raw is one of the best perks of growing your own food.

July marks the month when the allotment beds are full to bursting. At this point in time we currently have the following crops growing on the plot:
- Parsnips
- Broad Beans
- Celeriac
- Beetroot
- Sprouts
- Potatoes
- Strawberries
- Butternut Squash
- Runner Beans
- French Beans
- Peas
- Raspberries
- Tayberries
- Rhubarb
- Sunflowers

We've managed to squeeze in quite a few after-school trips to the plot with Grandma. It's always lovely to catch the last of afternoon sun and Magoo loves running around after being in class all day. We're now in the first week of the school holidays and we're planning a visit to the allotment later today. Hopefully there will be more peas to pick...

This week I'm linking up with these lovely blogs:

"Making Home" over on www.mrscraftyb.co.uk

"Country Kids" over on www.coombemill.com

A year on the allotment: June 2016

I never cease to be amazed at the growth spurt our plants put on in June. The end of May and early June were really warm and the plot looked parched. Then the weather changed and we've had buckets of rain over the past ten days or so. It's not great for picnics, trips to the beach or festival goers - but it's great for the allotment.

One crop in particular loves the wet British weather - the humble spud. The photo below shows Magoo watering the new bed on the 3rd June. You can just see the potato leaves poking out of the soil.

Fast forward to the 18th June, just fifteen days later, and you can hardly see Magoo as she weeds the area around the same potato bed. The rate of growth is amazing. We should be able to start harvesting our first spuds soon.

We've already started to eat our first strawberries - they are delicious. Sadly the slugs and snails have munched their fair share of them. The wet weather brings the slimy molluscs out in force. We did spot a large frog in the strawberry bed. Apart from making us jump when he jumped, I'm hoping our resident frog is making a dent in the slug population...

We've also planted out some sprouts. It's the first time we've grown them, so I'm hoping we will be sitting down to Christmas lunch with homegrown sprouts. It's hard to imagine these fairly small seedlings will grow into sturdy sprout trees. If the slugs don't get them first. We don't use slug pellets, so we aim to plant out more than we need, then we can cope with some losses.

Magoo has her own raised bed and she gets to choose which crops go in there. This year she wanted to grow peas and broad beans. The peas are doing well and we spotted the first pods at the weekend. The broad beans are getting attacked with black fly as per usual. My Mum has sprayed them with a soap solution, so hopefully they will perk up soon.

We have a section of our allotment dedicated to flowers. Many of them are native wildflowers and the bees love them. Apart from brightening up the plot, it's important to attract pollinators. A neighbouring plot holder has two bee hives, so there's always plenty of them making the most of our flowers.

I've installed these windspinners made with recycled drinks cans by the raspberries and tayberries. I'm hoping they will deter the birds away from the soft fruit when they start to get ripe. If you'd like to make your own windspinners, head over to my tutorial. I'm planning on making more because they look great spinning away in the wind.

Magoo did a sterling job helping to clear our ever expanding weed collection at the weekend. I find that the promise of fig rolls and a few jelly sweets help to coax Magoo into assisting Mum and Dad with the weeding. I think her limit is about twenty to thirty minutes of working away with her trowel, which isn't bad for a six year old. Plus we found these pretty blue flowers amongst the weeds. As Eeyore quite rightly says "Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them."

This week I'm linking up with these lovely blogs...

"Country Kids" over on www.coombemill.com

"How Does Your Garden Grow" over on fableandfolk.com

"Point + Shoot" over on youbabymemummy.com and www.snowingindoors.com

"Making Home" over on www.mrscraftyb.co.uk

"Whatever the Weather" over on monkeyandmouse.co.uk

Tobacco Factory Sunday Market

Every Sunday the Tobacco Factory hold a market. They often have over 40 food & craft stalls. It is a thriving market promoting local produce.

On the day we went, it was absolutely freezing. But despite the cold, the market was full of people. It was lovely to see a market being fully supported by the local community.

There was a diverse selection of food stalls and craft sellers at the market. It was nice to see a mix of food & craft. Many of the craft fairs I have been to in the past have not been well attended. I think food stalls attract people into the market and then people are more inclined to browse the handmade stalls whilst they are there.

My Mum bought a handmade coat hook from Clark and Robinson. It is well made and has great detail on the coat hooks. An individual piece that you wont find anywhere else.

I bought a lovely selection of fresh veg. It was really nice to see huge muddy parsnips, rather than the sanitised supermarket versions. Incidentally, Huge Muddy Parsnips is quite a good name for a band...

I bought the other half a huge, handmade chocolate heart from Zara's Chocolates. My niece also bought two bars of chocolate from her. we demolished a whole bar of salted praline between us. It was cold, we needed the calories. I can confirm that it was some of the nicest chocolate I have ever eaten.

I also bought some spicy chutneys. The carrot chutney is incredibly fiery...we all need a bit of heat in the Winter though don't we?

We will definitely be going back and I'm considering having a stall there myself selling my vintage wares, watch this space...

Allotment Goodies

My Mum has had an allotment for about four years. Sometimes she struggles to keep up with maintaining her plot, so she's given me a key. My daughter & I love to go down there and do the watering, which is the main thing she struggles with. In return, we get to pick some of the yummy produce. I forgot to take my camera down to the plot, I'll remember to take some pictures next time!

But I took some photos of the produce: beetroot, potatoes and huge blackberries. My daughter also loves to stand at the sink and wash the vegetables.

After we'd washed the veg, my daughter helped me make salmon fishcakes with the freshly dug potatoes. It's lovely for my daughter to see the produce being taken from the ground, prepared at home and eaten within hours of it coming off the allotment.

I also made a salad of grated raw beetroot, carrots mixed with lots of olive oil and sunflower seeds. It was all delicious!

I'm linking up with Country Kids on the Coombe Mill Blog.

Self Sufficient (ish) 2010

I started blogging last year about growing fruit and veg at home. As I mentioned previously, veg grown at home tastes better and have travelled a very small distance, which means less road and air freight.

Yesterday I tipped out my last bag of homegrown spuds and made a handful of them into a salmon, broccoli and potato pie for our baby girl. She absolutely loved it and gobbled a big bowl down for tea. I used a recipe from the Truuuly Scrumptious Book of Organic Baby Purees, it is brilliant, I haven't found a recipe that our baby doesn't like (yet!).

This year, I have very little time for gardening with a young baby to look after. But I've still managed to grow some spuds, tomatoes, blueberries, pak choi, various salad leaves and lots of herbs.

Due to lack of time, I chose flowers that were tough and could look after themselves with very little help from me. One plant which thrived on neglect was the Ragged Robin Poppies. The original seeds came from a friend's garden in North Wales, so they have travelled quite a distance. They are absolutely stunning, although they are short lived.





I also love these Balloon plants because the slugs don't eat them and they are a perennial so no faffing about each year, it just dies down over the Winter and reappears in the Spring.



I try to be a thrifty gardener and very rarely buy plants and always try to grow from seed or cuttings. This Hydrangea came from a cutting my Gran took about four years ago.



Likewise the snapdragons were grown by my Mum from seed, they don't get eaten by slugs either and look after themselves, so a big thumbs up from me.





These Allium bulbs were a gift from my Mum and the bees love them, which is always a bonus as their habitats and survival are under threat.





There was one weird thing which happened with my potato plants this year, they bore 'fruit'. I'm not sure what they are, I thought their fruit was underground in the form of spuds. I'm thinking maybe they flowers were cross-pollunated by an insect from my tomato plants? What with me not being a botanist, I'm not sure if this can happen!

Foodcycle comes to Bristol

I recently read about a fantastic new project in The Spark Magazine and wanted to share it here on my blog. A charity called Foodcycle uses surplus food donated by local businesses and creates nutritious meals for people affected by food poverty. It also helps to cut the amount of food wasted by shops and outlets. According to the Foodcycle website, it is estimated that food retailers waste 500,000 tonnes of food each year in the UK with a similar amount generated from the private catering sector.

"FoodCycle combines young volunteers, surplus food and a free kitchen space to create nutritious meals for people affected by food poverty. The idea is simple. Food retailers throw out millions of tons of edible food every year due to supply overstock. The aim of FoodCycle is to redirect this food so it can be used to cook nutritious meals for people in the local community that do not have access to healthy foods for a variety of reasons, such as lack of income or knowledge of healthy nutrition."

You can read more about their Mission on their website



Started in London in 2008, Foodcycle has recently launched in Bristol. A team of volunteers now serve meals at Easton Community Centre on Sunday afternoons and on Wednesday evenings at Bristol University Student's Union.





Please do check out their website to find out more about volunteering or donating surplus food to the charity.

Self Sufficient (ish) part two!

I decided this year that my gardening goal would be to grow some vegetables that I had never grown before.

I blogged about my rhubarb success in June.

By far my favourite vegetable I've grown this year is new potatoes. The taste of spuds grown in my own back garden far surpasses anything you can get in the shops. They are absolutely delicious!

Like I mentioned in my rhubarb blog post, I don't have a large veg patch, just containers on the patio. I used these potato planters from Natural Collection, some smaller black grow-bags from ebay and a large plastic pot.




Each container provided a very good yield, the only thing I would say about the large Natural Collection bag is that you have to use alot of water to soak the soil right the way down to the bottom. If there's one thing potatoes like, it's lots of water!

I will definitely grow potatoes again. Not only is it satisfying to know that my evening meal's food miles have been cut dramatically (literally a few metres from pot to plate), but the taste of freshly dug spuds is fantastic.

If you fancy trying to grow your own veg and herbs, check out the excellent self-sufficientish website for loads of helpful information
selfsufficientish.com