Monday, February 1

Not so glorious mud

If we were hippos or some other such creature we would be wallowing in the muddy soil on our allotment. As we are no such creature we are not enjoying the conditions at all.
The general appearance is typical of winter on the plot. Things look bare, bleak and unloved with smatterings of winter vegetables waiting to be harvested.
It's when you get close up that the true state of this year's ground is revealed. The photo below is of our parsnips bed. If you watch the video taken when we harvested a few roots last week you will appreciate just how muddy it is.
We expect the ground to be wet during the winter months, but this year things are rather extreme. Goodness knows how long it will taken for the soil to be workable again.
The reason for venturing to the allotment site last week was to gather a few vegetables. There isn't much on offer at the moment and what is available is anything but in pristine condition.
If everything had gone according to plan we would have had enough brassicas to see us into spring. Unfortunately, the weather conditions have conspired to throw a spanner into the works. Cabbages and cauliflowers have either given up or have become soggy messes. There are one or two cabbages that are worth trying but, as you can see from the one on the left in the photo above, the leaves are spoiled well into the cabbage heads.
Sprouts too have suffered. Something has gouged holes in them. We're guessing that the culprits are slugs - we can't blame wood pigeons as the plants are under enviromesh. Again lots of the outer leaves need to be removed leaving some small sprouts to hopefully enjoy.
The bed of leeks looks OK but, as I've mentioned before, the weather has spoiled these too. We took home far more parsnips amd leeks than we needed for the next week so we have cleaned them off and frozen them. It's not something that we would choose to do, we would prefer to harvest them fresh but with the conditions as they are we can never be sure when plot visits will be possible. It's times like this when having an allotment three miles away rather than growing vegetables outside your back door is a distinct disadvantage. With lots of waste on the vegetables it’s also difficult to judge how much useable material we will be left with.
I've mentioned before that as well as planting over wintering onions as sets we planted some seed sown plantlets. Well the planlets were a complete failure as can be seen above. I used up a row of sets on this bed too. The remains of the sets can be spotted if you look carefully but I doubt that they will produce anything.
Fortunately the other bed of sets are growing as expected. These were planted eight  days before the plantlets and left over sets so did the earlier planting make a difference or were the leftover sets the poorer specimens?
In the past we haven't had much success with growing garlic and I was ready to give up trying but, you know how it is, I relented and planted a couple of bulbs. At the moment they are growing well but will they bulk out and will they form cloves?
Our local garden centre had onion and shallot sets in so we ordered some and some dahlias. We used click and collect as this way we could pick up our order from the car park without venturing inside.
We had intended to add more colours to our dahlia collection last year but with lockdowns we never got round to buying any.

Now, onto how we used some of our vegetables last week. 

Thursday I made a vegetable bolognese  which used carrots, onion and tomatoes from the freezer.
On Friday I took green beans, peas and some basil from the freezer and used them with some onions to make a Thai green vegetable curry. I'll have to make this again when we have our own courgettes. I couldn't find  the recipe on the Internet so I've copied it here.
On Sunday I made a Quinoa pilaf which I think I have mentioned before but this time I used our onion, carrot, frozen peas and frozen green beans. I added a few mushrooms. I usually substitute stock for water in recipes to improve the flavour so in this recipe I used vegetable stock.
The quinoa that I used was a mix of red, black and white grains.

My gadget for this week is  a mini whisk. There's not much to say about it really, it's just very useful for whisking small amounts such as an egg for glazing the top of a pie.
Ruby had an eventful week as she went to be clipped. Her groomer usually comes to the house but due to Covid restrictions we took Ruby to the groomers house and then picked her up when the groomer rang to say she was ready. 
We also took part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch but more on that later

On the vaccination front it appears that there will soon be five viable vaccines in our armoury which I think is incredible in such a relatively short time. Let's just hope that the vaccination war that reared it's head last week cools off and we can get back to the important task of fighting the virus rather than one another. Has anyone had their jab yet?

Harvest Monday is back up and running on Dave's Our happy Acres blog so I have linked to him this week

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett

28 comments:

  1. All this wet weather is frustrating, such a shame to see the damage it causes to the veg. At least some of your onions look like they'll survive and your garlic look good. We've decided not to try sprouts this year, as the slugs always eat so much of them.
    No vaccine date yet...

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    1. Hopefully you will be given a vaccine date soon, Belinda. If only we could vaccinate our plants against slugs.

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  2. We are dealing with super wet soil conditions here too. And last night we got a bit of snow to add to the mix. Oh well, there's not much we can do about it except to dress warm and wear waterproof footwear!

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  3. The wet weather is so annoying when you can't get any work done. Let's hope we'll get fine weather soon. We've had our Covid jabs today.

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    1. Good news about the jabs Margaret. I think I should be some time after the middle of February

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  4. Reality check time of year! And some time to go before the conditions are likely to improve. Just as well we've got those seed catalogues to feed our dreams for the coming season. Are you planning on being self sufficient in alliums??

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    1. We've just about run out of last year's onions, Mal - just a bucketful left as one bed failed, but we managed right through the 2019/20 season. We don't usually buy any leeks. One bag of the onion sets is for a friend.

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  5. I had one good year of garlic and nothing since; I've given up. My potted dahlia has decided to bloom and cheer up my winter. No vaccine yet.

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    1. If my garlic fails again this year I’ll give up, tpals (maybe) I’ve also ordered some bulbs to plant in spring.

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  6. It's so disheartening when you've grown winter veg and the weather spoils it, it's just so muddy everywhere at the moment. We're forecast snow again through the night and into tomorrow, I hope it doesn't hang around. Ruby looks very pretty with her new haircut. I really wish we could get Archie trimmed, I can tell he feels so much better in himself when his coat is short. I hope everything goes well for Ruby on Wednesday, I remember Archie going for the snip, he cried all night long when we brought him home from the vet's. It's so distressing to see them like that but it's better for them in the long run.

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    1. It is disheartening, Jo but that’s gardening for you. I hope the snow isn’t too bad especially as we have to get Ruby to Morley early Wednesday morning. We’re dreading taking her as it is. To make matters worse we can’t go in with her and have to hand her over in the porch. She’s having keyhole surgery which is supposed to provide a less painful recovery.

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  7. Oh Sue I know exactly what you mean about allotment mud 😭 I like the look of your vegetarian bolognese. I'm eating wholewheat pasta these days which I find much tastier. My husband had a text from the NHS on Friday and has an appointment for a vaccination on Wednesday morning. It is the first time he has ever looked forward to getting a jab 😂 I'm in the next priority group down i.e. 5 so hopefully it will be sooner than later. When do you and Martin expect to hear something? I am just so grateful for all the brilliant work done by scientists to get us to this stage.

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    1. Martyn’s in group 4 and I am group 5 like you, Anna even though there are only 5 months age difference between us

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  8. I have heard about all the rain over your way. So sorry that your allotment is not doing so good this year. You work so hard for good veggies and then the weather takes over. Bah.... Ruby is such a cutie.

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    1. Snow here today, Lisa so that will add to the sogginess.

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  9. Yummy... looks so delicious!
    Your row of leeks looks so healthy, have you any tips on growing leek?
    I can't wait to see your Dahlias blooming

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    1. I have written how we grow our links here on this page
      http://ossettweather.com/glallotments.co.uk/growing%20leeks.html’ this page Endah. The leeks are in the ground a long time.
      I can’t wait to see the dahlias in flower either.

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  10. It's not easy, is it? Soul destroying, and I am sorry you are not reaping the full benefit of your hard work. I had to give up on growing food when I was a carer and could not give the garden the care it needed, so lost more than I gained. I hope to begin again this year.
    Those mini whisks are very handy, but I went off mine a few years ago when Nigella pops one out of her handbag saying she won't leave home without it!

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    1. I can assure you that I don’t carry mine in my handbag, Deborah.

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  11. It's great that you are still harvesting veggies despite the weather and slugs. I hope your garlic grow well. Ruby looks very smart and those meals look delicious. That little whisk looks handy.xxx

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    1. I hope that the garlic grows too, Dina

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  12. Not having an allotment or growing vegetables/fruit, I never fully appreciated the problem with winter wet soil, Sue. Wishing you better weather with good growing conditions for 2021!

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  13. I've stayed off my plot due to flooding in areas, some of it went right up to the shed but it is draining down quickly so that's a positive out of a big bag of negative. I'll do a sun dance and see if it helps us all x

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  14. So many areas experience weather extremes. Our rainfall is woefully deficient--less than three inches since October 1. We should be getting three inches a month in December, January and February. Thankfully, we received the Moderna vaccine ten days ago and await the second vaccine near the end of February.

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  15. Dahlias look wonderful. So does the garlic.

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