Allotment report 28/6/18

It is hot! And dry! The allotment needs watering with a hosepipe every two days and some things in containers every day.

This is the pea and bean, courgette and cucumber patch. For some reason, the past two years haven't been good pea years at all, or it could be the sparrows....

We've had the old swing frame for some time and this year it is black-eye and kidney beans and cucumbers that are being trained up it.

At the back are the supposedly Autumn fruiting raspberries which get going round about now....

This is the part where this year are onions, leeks, parsnups, carrots (in the tyre stacks again), the asparagus bed, sweetcorn (behind the tyres) and there's some Cosmos flowers just getting going in between the onions, as the onions will come up very soon - in fact we've had some already.

At the back are blackcurrants and raspberries, and the Gala minarette apple tree. Also in the soft fruit area are a grape vine, a minarette damson, rhubarb and comfrey, the latter of which the bees have been really enjoying!



Two more patches are at the top end. The first one as you come in the gate is potatoes this year, Red Duke of York and Desiree as for some reason I couldn't get Sarpo this year, shame as they were very heavy croppers last year. The other patch has now got turnips, radishes, beetroot and broccoli and cabbages in, with some blueberries in tubs, the cornflowers which have now finished and two minarette pear trees.

Elsewhere in the allotment are a Chiver's Delight and Falstaff minarette apple trees, the strawberry bed which now needs replacement, there's a hazelnut tree at the back too as well as blackberries growing in the hedge.

6-Spot Burnet Moths - the importance of Wildflowers

On her cycle ride yesterday my wife found a huge number of 6 Spot Burnet Moths on a wildflower patch just opposite the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve at Askham Bog. This was bordered on all sides by roads and cut through with a path but was teeming with moths and bees and some butterflies.

So, this morning I set off with her and one of our daughters to see for myself!

The moths were rather busy and to be honest weren't taking much notice of a digital camera being pointed at them!

The last time I saw these moths - in nowhere near the same numbers was on orchids in the sand dunes near Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland.

There's been quite an explosion in wildflowers along the verges near where we live this year, probably due to the late Spring and everything happening at once.

There has been some active planting of wildflowers, and the Highways Agency have planted a lot along the A1/M1 link road, the cowslips and ox-eye daisies being particularly appealing this year.

Signs of life in the allotment!

Popped up to the allotment for a bit of a tidy up this afternoon, as - for a change - nice weather coincided with me not having to work or having other plans for a Sunday afternoon!

Anyway, there are signs of things stirring, though with snow forecast this week maybe they ought to un-stir for a bit!

 This was a surprise, wallflowers planted last year - biennial of course - but didn't expect them to be flowering so early in the year!

Should be a lovely display if the frost doesn't do for them.

 These are the catkins on the hazelnut tree - this tree has had a bit of a traumatic life in that half of it is in the the next door allotment and when this allotment was being made over by the landowner after being vacant for a long while they chopped the tree down on that side just leaving our side to grow. This was rather annoying as for the first time it had produced hazelnuts that summer. Fast forward a few years and hopefully producing catkins for the first time since means that it is going to produce some nuts this year. If we can catch them before they drop into the undergrowth...

Rhubarb showing itself, Twitter today has had various pictures from gardeners showing rhubarb so maybe it is a coordinated sprouting across the country! Maybe not, just coincidence! But, this rhubarb was originally a offcut of a plant grown within the Rhubarb Triangle in West Yorkshire and so is pretty much the real thing as far as rhubarb growing goes!
I once did a summer job on the farm (Oldroyd's Farm) that has been on TV and in the news for promoting rhubarb and getting the protected place of origin status for Yorkshire rhubarb. 

Bit of an onion theme going on...

Today has been a bit of an onion day both in an allotment sense and in a culinary sense.

Firstly a trip to the allotment to see how the overwintering onions and garlic are getting on. Found, as usual, that the blackbird has probably pulled one up thinking it was a worm, so replaced that in the ground.

Overwintering these 'Japanese' onions - grown from sets - means that by the end of June we will have onions ready to pick, store and cook from the allotment.

These onions are the main crop from last summer that are still storing well in our utility room, though occasionally the strings slip and the door catches on them!

It is a single glazed room so it doesn't get that warm which is ideal for long term storage, in fact we used to have potatoes and apples in here until we needed one end of the room converting for a downstairs toilet.

Today we had cottage pie, and homegrown leeks and onions went into this. Also added were carrots (still going strong in the tyre stacks at the allotment) and a homegrown parsnip diced up and boiled with the carrots. 

Has Michael Gove had a "Road to Damascus" moment?

There's been plenty of coverage on the news about Michael Gove's speech to the Oxford Farming Conference and his visit to the Oxford Real Farming Conference , a summary of which can be found here .

Now, not so long ago, he was taking aim at the EU Habitats Directive and saying that laws restricting development near protected habitats could be slashed after Brexit , and when he was wanting to reform the education curriculum, (although this was denied) climate change would have been dropped from Geography lessons. Also, Gove voted for a levy on energy from renewal sources and voted against an amendment that would have forced oil companies to always have an environmental assessment before fracking, and indeed with the Government when they originally proposed to sell off national forests (proposal was subsequently withdrawn after a public backlash)

Now, it seems as if he's a paid up environmentalist. Whether what he has read in coming into the DEFRA has changed his view or whether this is just green spin with no substance we'll need to wait to find out. However, elsewhere in Government there is the drive for fracking, the slashing of feed in tariffs for renewables, the freezing of fuel duty for road vehicles and the year on year increase in rail fares, the stated aim for "cheap" imported food under new trade deals (cheapness comes at a cost somewhere whether it is in animal welfare, worker payments, environmental damage etc). Though to be fair Michael Gove has stated that he doesn't want to water down our high animal welfare standards as a sweetener for trade deals.

The way in which the Government has failed, despite repeated court orders, to deal with air quality is also cause for skepticism, and there's those on the right that outright deny human caused climate change. There's the omission (and I think this is still the case at present) of the precautionary principle when considering environmental impacts from the translation of EU law to UK law.

So. Do I trust this government? In a word, no, but at least there's a bit of leverage here to hold Michael Gove and indeed the rest of the government to "leaving the environment in a better state than when they found it" and a "green Brexit".

What can we do? Well writing to your MP does get some attention, I wrote to mine about a number of concerns as regards such as the precautionary principle and translation of the habitats directive in the Brexit legislation etc and I received a response from a government minister! Also, joining forces with campaigning organisations on specific issues, signing petitions and indeed showing examples from your own life to encourage others and show benefits to the environment. 

Parsnip wine

Just before Christmas I got around to bottling some parsnip wine that had been quietly maturing in a demijohn in one of the bedrooms (there's demijohns lurking in at least two bedrooms!). This one stopped fermenting a little while ago but I have not had chance to bottle it, but to be honest parsnip wine benefits from plenty of time to mature anyway. 

Note to anyone thinking parsnip wine - what ??? It actually does taste like wine - seriously, when I first did this about 3 years ago I was so surprised with the results! 

Pretty clear wine although as you get near the bottom of the demijohn it is harder to keep the silt from getting sucked up the tube!

The method I used to make the wine is here :

http://www.cashandcarrots.com/2013/03/parsnip-wine-making-part-2.html

Bottling etc here

http://www.cashandcarrots.com/2013/06/wine-tasting-and-bottling.html

Now, this year's wine has turned out quite sweet, and has indeed mellowed with age. Bottles from a well known soft drink often available in pubs are the right size for a couple of glasses, the wine is a lot stronger than 'normal' wine so probably not best to drive or operate machinery afterwards!

First pepper of the year!

Exactly as it says in the title!!

These are pepper plants that were brought inside at the start of November, and have provided a few ripe peppers since then.

This will be popped in a curry tomorrow.







Today's home grown eating: Sprouts from the allotment (accompanying a pie - with local meat) from the butchers round the corner from the house), pumpkin chutney (on a Wensleydale sandwich), Blackcurrant and raspberry jam (on breakfast toast)