Veg and print

It's the time of year when ripening veg invade the windowsills of our house and printmakers have to take second place!

The tomato plants all decided to get blight and 'Tomato Moths' at the same time and so we harvested the lot (a lot) and left the plants outside for the caterpillars to finish off!  This means that every space has trays of tomatoes of every shade between green and red and I really hope they all go red as we still have some of last years green tomato chutney in the cupboard...

...and the pepper plants got really bad greenfly all of a sudden - it must be an end of season thing - so you can just see the fruits lying on the windowsill getting redder by the day...

...and the squashes (my not so secret favourite thing to grow and then stockpile along with the logs ready for winter) are just having a final warm indoor ripening session before being stored away ready for winter feasts that will be needed in the far distant future.

Oh, and I made some prints too.  But really I'm more interested in the squashes and the stockpiling...

allotment day

We're spending a couple of days at the allotment this week, catching up with the hundreds of little jobs that were ignored through the sunshine, because really, no one is supposed to work when it is sunny, are they?

This year has been amazing for flowers, berries and veg on our plot, and we are seeing so many bees at the moment (50% of growing space is covered with self seeded borage which may have something to do with the sheer numbers of bees - that borage gets everywhere) especially early in the morning on a sunny day.

It all looks pretty lovely - which is why I never take my camera...

Today I had a brain wave though, look, I've scanned in some beans to show you instead.  And I've scanned in a courgette too, which slightly messed up the focus.  So now you know what beans look llike, but are still non the wiser as to the look of our vast borage plantation.  Oh, well...

sunny allotment days

Currently growing at our allotment (unless they've been eaten by slugs/deer/pigeons/rabbits since we left today):

Peas ( a lot - can you overdose on peas in a pod?  We'll hopefully find out soon)
Mange tout
Borlotti beans
French beans (my faves)
Broad beans (no black fly yet)
Runner beans (from John, every year, they are a hundred years old these beans)
Onions
Shallots
Lettuces
Carrots (in three places, surely the rabbits aren't clever enough to find them all?)
Parsnips
Beetroot
Radishes (I always plant hundreds at once and most of them get too chewy - I've done it again this year)
Garlic
Potatoes
Salsify
Scorzonera
Raspberries
Gooseberries (these are getting eaten by small humans already - yuck and leave them alone, I want big ones)
Chard

and then there are the cucurbit family, fighting their way out of our bay window and soon to be planted if the weather stays good...

...today we also saw several frogs, a steam train and five hot air balloons, so all hobbies were catered for in full.

November produce

It was so sunny and warm today that I ran off to the allotment instead of doing the things I was supposed to be doing (packaging things up - I'm not a machine...).

It occured to me whilst there that I am now harvesting loads more than I did all summer.

Today I picked:
Rainbow Chard
Peas (late sowing and they tasted bitter, but harvested they were)
Kale
Parsnips (big ones - hurrah - I couldn't wait any longer to look)
Alpine strawberries
Carrots
Cape Gooseberries (not ripe and probably never will be as it was such a cool year, but maybe in the bay window...)
Grass and clover (for the guinea pigs, I'm not a forager)
Brussels Sprouts

and all the winter onions and garlic have started growing properly now, keep coming sunshine...

hoarding

We had such a bad start to growing this year.
In the spring I had decided to grow lots of different types of squash, because I love eating them and I also love hoarding them at the end of the summer.
After tending the baby plants in the house until the end of May I finally released them into the wild, only for the slugs (often the size of small snakes) to devour half the plants as well as all the cucumbers and green courgettes - they left the yellow ones!
Most of the squashes that survived have turned out to be 'Festival', obviously a slug proof variety, so although I have a teeny tiny squash harvest this year, it's very colourful and my hoarding instincts are fulfilled.
Now we just need more logs and a big bag of wool and we are sorted for winter.  Simple pleasures.

nature prints

I've been really enjoying the outside world again recently and so all the new lino blocks I've carved lately are heavily influenced by this...no change there you may say and that would probably be true, but I think this year all my prints are showing neatly ordered gardens and flowers, delightfully organised potting sheds and immaculate rows of veggies to balance with the wild, weedy abundance of our allotment..

living vicariously through other gardens...

Last year I posted lots of photos of my allotment on the blog (or at least bowls of things picked from it...) but this year only people interested in slug farming and mildew would find them noteworthy.

There are lots of things trying to grow and with a blast of sunshine they WILL all make it before the end of the summer, but for now I've only been taking photos of other peoples gardens, people with staff, hothouses, special micro-climates, bog-gardens and special ways of dealing with slugs.

time for a siesta...

The best thing about this really hot weather we are having is that you can't do anything in the middle of the day.  We have slipped seamlessly into the summer pattern of busy morning, sit around all afternoon and then allotment after tea, once it's all a bit fresher.  That means that we have also all started going to bed with muddy feet too, but I think that is all part of getting back to nature and is perfectly ok.

As it only stopped raining and being freezing last week we are ploughing on with the winter digging, only now the ground has baked hard and the crust needs a serious implement to break through it.  Extreme gardening. We did have the first ripe strawberry of the year today though, although one between four doesn't go very well, or very far for that matter...

(I've just popped this print into my Folksy shop as well, by the way)

free food

This year a lot of plants have appeared in our garden and allotment that have self seeded.  Once I recognize what the seedling is trying to be I tend to just leave them to get on with it unless they are really in the way.  It's also really interesting to see when they naturally germinate, especially when compared with the ones I am trying to force to grow in little pots way out of season.

This year there was so much self seeding going on that I can only put it down to a complete lack of weeding meaning that everything was pretty well established before I got there.  We had five or six sunflowers in the garden, which had much bigger flowers than the ones we lovingly grew on a windowsill.  We now have five well established alpine strawberry plants which have fruited solidly for the whole summer and are still going now (the one in the swede patch is a little hard to get to, what with all the netting, but worth it for that taste).

And we have tomatoes.  Literally hundreds of cherry tomatoes, mainly yellow and mostly growing in what was the pea patch.  They are sweet and delicious and out performing everything in pots in the garden.  Now we are on a full tomato diet as they will end as soon as the weather turns and people are starting to complain about tomatoes with tomato sauce for dinner again...I love it because they taste great and are all free...

...so I have 'sun-dried' several trays full in the oven, put pints of yellow pasta sauce in the freezer and tonight we have made yellow tomato ketchup.

printing and vegetables

We've picked a lot of things from the allotment and garden because, quite frankly, the weather is rubbish.  A busy week or so ahead and pretty uninspiring weather forecasts have led us to believe that the veg would be better off at home, in the warm and dry, despite needing a little burst of sunshine to finish off ripening...

That means I have to share my printing space with hundreds of green tomatoes.

I feel a print coming on...

preparations for winter

We have rearranged our house in readiness for winter - sofas are now both in the room with the stove, dining table and pretending to sit round it and have meaningful discussions banished to front of house.  We are ready.  We are eating tea sitting on the floor waiting for the temperature to drop...

Hopefully we will have a couple of weeks to wait, as we are still picking and digging at the allotment and the elderberries and tomatoes are nearly ripe and we've got a whole list of things we haven't yet done this summer but will be cramming into the next two weeks, but then...

ello design

WEDNESDAY, 17 AUGUST 2011

Folksy Wednesday Wishlist #8

After a week off, the Wednesday Wishlist returns with a veggie theme! My grandparents used to have a lot of vegetables in their garden; tomatoes, potatoes, runner beans etc. so this blog is inspired by them and their love of gardening/vegetables :) enjoy

Melanie Wickham Lino Prints  /  Sixteen Eighteen

Bumbleblue  /  Sunshine and Snowdrops

Great to have my Allotment teatowel featured by Leanne on her blog feature "Folksy Wednesday Wishlist", this week all with a veggie theme.  Yummy items, especially love the peas in a pod, have a look at the whole selection here.

allotment museum

The children have a plan to turn our house into "half house, half museum".  I think we will achieve this with no problem as the whole place is filled with small collections, each vital and important to the owner and we have an ever expanding list of 'interests and hobbies' between us (buttons, crazy bones, real bones, dead insects, pets, pieces of rock which look a bit like toffee...).

We all work hard at the 'Allotment Museum' though... as official allotment weeder I often find the piece of treasure, which is then taken and washed in the trough by the self-designated curator, taken home and put into the right section and then labeled by the official sign-writer...

Today things have taken a turn though - we found four pieces of treasure for our museum collection in only one hour and signs have been made for the front and back doors of the house...

I have a slight fear that I might be charged an admission fee when I get back tomorrow evening...

plotting...

Lovely morning spent digging things up in the searing heat, listening to grasshoppers chirping and ladybirds bustling about.  Then had a sudden huge need for ice-lollies, so had to leave...

I've spent the rest of today mucking out my studio ( a regular task for all artists surely? ).  This was a little more urgent today as a cat managed to leap through the impossibly high window, knock over the weedy plant specimen on my desk which dominoed into the binoculars, fish mobile, toy baby changing kit, japanese doll and clean pile of washing that had found a home on my chair (where HAD all these things come from???)...everything covered with soil, cat hairs and a few claw marks where the sneaky feline had obviously been scrabbling amongst the chaos...

Good job I've been working on the downstairs table recently because the upstairs one was in such a mess - therefore no real work involved in cat crisis - phew!

Will be getting my own back however, as soon as the culprit is identified from the large amount of evidence left behind...

bloomin' bloomin'

The flowers at the allotment are looking many times better than those in the garden, probably due to being just left to get on with it instead of constant fussing and watching for those in the garden (well that and a lack of foraging poultry which the garden is now filled with).

This is a very good thing as I imagine that passers by will find their eyes drawn to the glorious blooms rather than the very spiky weeds that I'm too scared to tackle (this is probably wishful thinking as most seasoned vegetable growers have weed detecting radar and several of my allotment neighbours spend all day, everyday mooching about on their plots...)

We've also been making good use of our 'Cobb' oven now that the days are warmer and lighter and having a hot, filling lunch/dinner after a day of thistle menacing is proving vital.  You are meant to be able to roast a whole chicken in one, although we haven't tried that yet, but we did cook some of our christmas dinner in it last year...

guess where I've been today...

...not too hard to guess on a sunny day in the middle of the growing season...

Today was a good picking day - lots of raspberries, although none made it home, radishes, salad, one giant onion, some herbs and the very first broad bean pod (although I probably should have waited a few days as they really were baby beans).

I also gave the gooseberries a good squeeze.

Maybe by Wednesday...

there is always room...

I have an allotment - that is where I should grow food.  I have a teeny tiny back garden at the back of a terraced house and two energetic children -  that is where they should play when we are at home...

Today, I 'accidently' planted 10 tomato plants (with another 10 waiting for hanging basket space).  I'm sure they won't take up much space when they are fully grown....

...and I couldn't help but put out another tub of salad leaf seeds to replace these when they go over soon...

...and I don't think I ever did get round to pruning the giant black elder bush that the previous owners planted in a much too small garden (maybe because I want the flowers and then berries for a bit of cordial?) - so along with currants, plums, cherries, strawberries, kiwi fruit and quails there is not much ground left for playing on - lets hope they've had a busy day at school - gulp.

amazing things

often the smallest things, or the tiniest details are the most amazing and easily overlooked...here are some of the things that caused the most excitement here this weekend...

an unlucky dragonfly...

 now preserved in our newly established 'dead insect museum'...

it was found here, at Bristol University Botanic Gardens, well worth a visit if you are in the area...

a teeny, tiny quails egg ( and they are fairly small to begin with) - shall we fry/poach or boil it????

and 'Cabbagy' the butterfly has at last emerged in our bathroom, having been spotted ooching down the window late last summer, making his/her tiny cocoon just above the toothbrushes and then sitting out the winter...

...of course, I haven't done any cleaning for the past six months in order to preserve the perfect habitat and when released Cabbagy flew right over the top of our house and off in exactly the right  direction for our allotment...



I didn't take all of these photos - I was not present when the floating dragonfly was discovered...some were taken by Sam who is currently advertising me, what a happy coincidence!

bumper berries

After all these holidays those of us with allotments should be way ahead this year - gulp.

At the moment I'm dreaming of thistle roots, having just turfed all my baby peas out of their spiky nursery in order to dig it over for the THIRD time this year...at this rate I'll have perfect soil by September, with not a crop to show.  Move over thistles and bindweed, the potatoes are coming.  My new tactic is to plant more potatoes than we will eat in our lifetimes in the spiky end of the allotment and then ignore it....

The lovely end of the allotment is doing well (if you don't count zero precipitation thus stopping all germination) and there are an exciting number of berries on their way this year - hurrah.

allotmenteering

We've ended each of the last few days with a visit to the allotment, once the 'cool' of the evening arrives, to recover from days crabbing and rockpooling, playing with friends at the park and cycling miles in the sun.

Today we took fish and chips (with mushy peas) and ginger beer.

Even without rain the weeds are flourishing but once I plant my courgette and squash jungle out they will not stand a chance - the lounge is fast becoming a no go area as the seedlings turn into plants, you can almost hear them growing and indoor watering is starting to take nearly as long as outdoor...