8th November 2020 - Lockdown 2 - Day 4 - Seeds

It is that time of year when thoughts turn to the crops that are to be grown next year. Already in the allotment we have planted some broad beans and some winter onions and garlic for next year, and indoors there's a planter with salad leaves and some radishes which hopefully will grow in the warm house and provide some salad during winter. 

The onions and garlic have grown a bit since this photo was taken, and there's been a few times I have had to put them back into the ground as I think the local blackbird pulls them up!

We get the bulk of our seeds from D. T. Brown as they are decent value for money although there's a few from Thompson and Morgan and from Nicky's Nursery (the mini sweetcorn from the latter were especially good this year!)

We are going to try Cylindra Beetroot rather than Boltardy next year as the crops over the past couple of years (of Boltardy) haven't been very big, and we found a few years ago that the stripy varieties (Chioggia) don't grow at all to be honest. The Spinach Beet was especially productive this year. We forgot to order turnips last year and they generally grow well although you have to be quick before they go to seed, especially in dry weather. 

Potatoes, more onions and peas will be bought in the new year when stocks become available. One wonders whether there will be a glut of seed potatoes on the UK market early next year due to the problems with exporting them after the cliff edge of the end of the Brexit transition period. I pity the growers who have, over many years, built up good exports only to find that political bluster, misinformation and incompetance have ruined successful businesses for little gain and much harm. Seed and plant imports in general may well be affected due to the new barriers in accreditation and certification that are springing up at the end of the year as well as increased costs which will be passed onto the consumer. 

So, apart from leek seeds, which I forgot to order and will easily be obtained locally, we've almost sorted the seeds for next year!

7th November 2020 - Lockdown 2 - Day 3 - Red Kites

Overnight, the fog has descended and outside is really looking like a grey soup again. Despite the cold we took a cycle ride to York, but even the local rooks were sitting it out in the trees! 

Last Wednesday was however a much better day and a cycle ride up past the Towton Battlefield (War of the Roses 29th March 1461) was in glorous sunshine and relatively warm for the time of year. A field up there had been ploughed and numerous Redwings and a few Fieldfares were taking advantage of the soil life that had been uncovered. I have found these birds to be quite skittish when they see people, and difficult to photograph though I do remember one especially close up view of a Fieldfare one very frosty January morning in a tree by a footpath. 

Just a little further on, on the way down to the Crooked Billet pub, a Kestrel was mobbing a Buzzard and you could hear the kestrel's alarm calls as it dived at the Buzzard. Now, I know that crows attack Buzzards, seeing them as a threat, and indeed a couple of crows were doing just that, but I have never seen a Kestrel do this and one wonders what the perceived threat was to the Kestrel. Maybe it was territorial, although again Buzzards will generally go for larger prey than Kestrels and also often go for carrion rather than live prey.

Just on from this confrontation, two Red Kites were perched in a tree watching the world go by. 

Some years ago now, some of these birds were released as a reintroduction from Harewood House, north of Leeds and over time they have bred and spread out and are now a common sight. They regularly come to check us out at the allotment, gliding over majestically, scanning the ground for any carrion or other food. The speed and agility of these birds, often seen when a pair are displaying or sometimes I think just amusing themselves, is a fantastic sight, and one which twenty years ago you would have had to go to Wales to see. 

They are birds just as comfortable in urban surroundings as in rural areas, and I have seen them frequently over suburbs in east Leeds. One time there were six of them swooping around over the top of a busy roundabout, sometimes quite low over the busy traffic!

6th November 2020 - Lockdown 2 - Day 2

This morning I looked out into the first real proper fog of this Autumn! Living not too far from the river, we often get thick fog at this time of year. It took all morning to lift properly so I waiting until the sunshine this afternoon to potter in the garden and the allotment. At the end of the day though there are definitely hints of the cold of the coming winter. 

In the lean-to greenhouse next to the house, the tomato plant and the gherkins have finally expired with just a few little tomatoes and one gherkin left. So, these have been cleared out and the perennials that are overwintering in there spread out a bit, along with a few broad beans that were started in here last week, five of which have now come up. I am not sure whether to leave them in here or harden them off yet, might be tempted to leave them as an insurance policy for the ones that have just germinated in the allotment, although in general these are hardy plants. Indeed, one survived outdoors in the allotment in the extreme winter of 2009/10 where it got down to -17 degrees Celsius! 

The Phlox plant that I got from Woodend Nurseries in Great Preston near Leeds the other week has decided to flower! I planted it in a large tub by the front door, covering the compost with straw as a mulch, so it obviously is a happy plant, but it is actually November so it is obviously a little mixed up! 

With the fish tonight, we had another home grown parsnip, sliced thinly and deep fried. This one though was quite an unusual, and dare I say, rather risque! Tasted nice though although took a little while to prepare because of the shape!

5th November 2020 Lockdown 2 - Day 1 - Allotment Update

Well, we're back in lockdown again here in England, although the rules are slightly less strict than first time around. So, for me it is back on furlough for at least the next four weeks. 

Today, I popped up to the allotment for yet more apples, we have been blessed with an abundence of apples and indeed pears and soft fruit this year. The Falstaff minarette apple is nearly finished now, as has the Chiver's Delight but in the past few days the Gala, always a late ripening tree, is now in full swing. I have had to put a large net over the Falstaff as the birds do go for them as the weather gets colder. I saw Redwings on a wild apple tree yesterday on my cycle ride. 

Indoors, the remaining pears all decided to ripen at once so I spent an afternoon peeling and chopping and made five jars of pear compote. There's still a few in the fridge, they are very ripe though!

Although there hasn't been a frost here yet, it has been getting quite cold and so it is time to protect the Meyer Lemon tree at the allotment. Maybe you would expect this plant to come indoors in the winter, but we've found that it suffers from scale insect indoors, which we haven't been able to get rid of by any organic means. So, over a year ago now we moved it to the allotment and within few weeks there were no more scale insects, so it was obvious that there were predators in the allotment that took care of them! 

Being in the allotment does mean that it needs protection during the winter and last year we wrapped it in plastic which meant it was protected from frost. This year we have used bubble wrap as we have three lemons on the tree and so we hope that this extra protection will be enough to help them survive until Spring. There's a layer of straw around the roots as well. We have left a gap at the front of the pot where there is just soil so that rain water can enter the pot, although we do water it a little too. 

Despite being early November, with no frost as yet the nasturtiums and marigolds are still creating a pretty show at the top end of the allotment where the onions were earlier in the season. Whilst they have to be contained to avoid swamping the crops, they act as a magnet for pollinators and other insects, and even when they die off with the frost they act as ground cover over the winter and rot down as mulch. 

This is the first of this year's parsnips! There's a row in the same patch as the onions were and the nasturtiums above. Our favourite way of cooking them is as parsnip chips, deep fried in the chip pan. Cooking in smaller batches is best, too many in the pan sends them soggy rather than crispy. 

Nature notes - Autumn 2020

 We've had some lovely nature encounters this year and this past month or so has been no exception. Last month we had a Common Darter Dragonfly in the allotment sunning itself on the fence for instance, and at the weekend we had a kind of Mayfly inspecting the bug house on the same fence. 

In the back yard one morning last week this White Lipped Banded Snail (Cepaea hortensis) was very slowly working its way up the metal gate, still dripping from being in the foliage below. 

Also in the yard we have a lot of Garden Spiders (Araneus diadematus), one of which has made its home in an old water butt that we are turning into a planter for a minature apple tree!

However, the most interesting sightings in this past few weeks have been away from the house and the allotment. In Collingham, a village about fifty minutes cycle ride away (at my speed anyway!) a Hoopoe (Upupa epops) became a local celebrity for two weeks as it pottered around the cricket pitch there, even being in local and national media. 

Last week, whilst out cycling near Catterton near Tadcaster there were eight Whooper Swans (Cygnus Cygnus) in a stubble field and they were also there last weekend too. These birds are winter visitors, mainly from Iceland and usually I have only ever seen them flying over on migration here, in fact a flock flew north early in March straight over the house. 

These birds have much more yellow on their beaks than such as the Mute Swan which is a resident bird and are bigger than the much rarer Bewick's Swan that also comes to the UK in winter. They are also noisy in flight. 

You can read about when we saw Whooper Swans in Iceland here 

Autumn in the Allotment - Part 2

 One thing which has been a nice problem to have in the past few weeks is what to do with all the pears that we have harvested, especially as they seem to all want to ripen at once! (there's only so many pears I can eat!)

So, with the help of one of my go-to preserving books (The Preserving Book  - DK/Soil Association) I have been bottling pears for use in the new year after the remaining stored ones have been eaten. 

The pears were washed and peeled and chopped up and put into sterilised jars. A thick sugar solution was boiled up to pour into the jars and then the jars were heat treated in the oven. 

We've also been making Kimchi using this recipe which appears to be relatively foolproof - though I was rather surprised to get a decent result on the first time I made it! Whilst it is fine to keep the finished kimchi in the fridge for two or three weeks, making sure that the ingredients are fully submerged, we've found that boiling the mixture up and putting in sterilised jars means a much longer shelf life although the intensive flavour does reduce quite a bit by doing so. 

It will be soon time to make another batch as there's three more cabbages ready in the allotment now!

In the same patch in the allotment the very last sprigs of summer broccoli are available but then there will be a gap in this until the purple sprouting broccoli is available in the new year. A handful of beetroot and the last of the spinach beet are also available to pick. Next year I am going to try a different variety of beetroot as the variety Boltardy haven't done that well for a couple of years to be honest so I am going to maybe try Cylindra which the plotholder of a neighbouring allotment has been growing successfully this year. The "Italian" varieties don't work very well in our allotment at all. 

It will soon be time to make pumpkin/squash chutney. The method I use is documented here  but this year I won't be able to go to my parents' house to use my mum's big jam pan - this pan did belong to her mother and was saved from being turned into raw material for the war effort! I do two different chutneys, one ginger and one spicy, with to be honest a general guesstimate of the spices required but it all turns out fine every year. The spicy one is great with a mature cheddar. I also sometimes make a courgette and onion chutney, in fact I am currently eating a jar from 2017 which again has a bit of a kick to it and has gone well with Davidstow Cheddar. I made rhubarb compote earlier in the year. 

Finally, I bought a new English Lavender bush for the allotment this year as the old one looked as if it had reached the end of its useful life (it has since regenerated itself aftera thorough pruning back!) and whilst the new one is still small, I've seen bees on it all summer and into autumn, the other day there was some kind of carder bee for instance. I also have a couple of lavender plants for the yard which are in pots right now, one of which was looking very sorry for itself outside a small Sainsbury's supermarket during some hot weather but has revived happily in the back yard!

Autumn in the Allotment - Part 1

One aim we have had in the allotment is that we can always find something to pick from the allotment at whatever time of year, or failing that, there is something in our stores that came from the allotment. All of the onions have been in store for a month or two now, and just recently we have been picking the borlotti and ying yang beans that have been drying on the plants. This year, we did get a little mixed up with these and found that we had planted some climbing ones on open ground and some non-climbing ones under the swing frame! We constructed some more frameworks from hazel sticks from our pruning of the hazelnut tree early in the year.

I have though now made sure that I know which beans are which in the bedroom where I have them laid out on newspaper for drying before we pod them and put into jars. The beans are aesthetically pleasing! There's still a few more yet to pick and I am just waiting for a few more dry days to finish the job. We ate some with tortillas at the weekend, also using home grown onions, a handful of home grown tomatoes supplanted by a can and a home grown clilli pepper, among other bought in ingredients. 

The little pot Meyer lemon tree that has found freedom from scale insect - now it is in the allotment - is flourishing. There are at least three lemons on it and there's some more flowers but it probably is too late for those to be pollinated. As you can see in the photo, we have started to protect it against the cold and shortly I think it will be wrapped up for the winter. I have also put some straw into the pot, again for protection against the cold but also as a mulch to stop weeds. The lemon is against the back fence which has a hedge that the holder of the neighbouring plot has planted and also is south facing, so it should be fine for the winter as it was last year. 

The strawberry patch around the lemon has now been fully weeded, but again there's a few strawberries with flowers! We are pretty sure they are standard strawberries rather then remontant ones! 

The minipop sweetcorn harvest has come to an end now, but we have at several bags now in the freezer. We use these in stir fry dishes and at around £1 for about a dozen in the supermarket, shipped or flown in from south east Asia, this is a very economical and indeed emission reducing crop to grow in the allotment. We start them off inside in toilet roll tubes folded over at the base, filled with compost and then warmed and sterilised with boiling water, allowed to cool a bit and then the individual corns are put in. Once big enough in May they go into the allotment with a mesh over to protect them, and then by late August/September they are giving three or sometimes four cobs per plant. 

This is the top end section of the allotment which this year has been used for onions and garlic (now harvested), leeks (in the rear central area, parsnips (left hand side) and carrots in the tyre stacks nearest the camera. We've had quite a lot of carrots already and so the remaining ones have been given a break for a few weeks to grow bigger and also protected from any frost in the next few weeks with straw. The tyre stacks also keep the soil warmer and we have in the past harvested carrots right through winter. 

The nasturtiums and calendula are still providing food for the bees and other pollinators that are still active, and - although the plants can get very enthusiastic in their bid for world domination - provide good ground cover. Even when they have been hit by the first severe frosts and die off the plants rot down as a mulch during the winter