Down the allotment we are harvesting...

Gooseberries and rhubarb. We popped to the allotment this morning as another excuse to get outside and enjoy the sunshine. Our rhubarb plot is on it's third year now, and it's really taken off! We have far more than we can eat or even freeze! We've tried a few different recipes to the standard rhubarb crumble, the highlight definitely being rhubarb ice cream! Today I cut the rhubarb patch back a lot, leaving only the smallest, thinnest shoots on each plant. I wonder if it will encourage even more growth this year or not? 

Last year we planted a few gooseberry bushes, given to us as cuttings from another plot holder. We harvested a small handful this time last year. Today, Eden really enjoyed the task of picking the gooseberries (despite it being a prickly job!). We picked from just one bush, with more than enough to make a gooseberry fool for tea later. Looking forward to more gooseberries over the next week or two and much like for the rhubarb, I need to research some different recipes to make use of them! 

A new year on the allotment

I'm excited about our growing year ahead on the allotment. This will be our fourth summer having our allotment here in the Midlands. When we first took it on back in August 2012 it was covered in weeds upto our waists. Every year we seem to make a bit more progress in staying on top of the weeds. We've realised how important (and helpful) it is to keep the ground covered over when plants aren't being grown. The plot looks tidier, and more importantly the weeds are suppressed. The committee on our allotment are very strict about keeping weeds under control. 

Today was the first nice day of this year for the kids and I on our allotment plot. The kids seemed to appreciate the better weather down there! To my surprise they straight away got stuck in pulling up the surface weeds growing over our geotextile ground cover. 

The rhubarb patch has gone bonkers this year already! Previous years the crowns have clearly been spending their energies establishing roots and this year it seems to have really taken off. We cut 20 stalks to bring home, which barely made a dent in it at all. I'm going to need to look up some varied rhubarb recipes that don't involve the word 'crumble'.

I found some spare strawberries from last year lurking by the shed, so moved them to the end of our asparagus raised bed. I'm really chuffed that we have our first asparagus shoot! We planted 5 crowns last autumn, I hope the others start to show signs of life soon too. 

Finally, we put our potatoes in. Two rows of Charlotte potatoes, second earlies. Luke prepared the ground for us one evening earlier this week and Asher especially loved dropping the potatoes in the holes, learning about putting the shoots facing the right way up, covering them over and watering the rows. Asher at the age of 3 is a very hands-on learner, and his engagement in activities like this really confirm this for me. 

When we got home we made a 'rhubarb crumble cake' together and enjoyed it for our pudding for tea. Well earned after our work on the allotment. I'm looking forward to many more occasions spent down there this year. As the kids get older, not only are they able to help more (and as today showed, cheerfully help), but they can also learn so much along the way. 

Nettlefest

Today we visited a local community gardens for 'Nettlefest', an interesting event to celebrate Nettles! With having the kids and Viking our guide dog pup with us, we didn't make it to any of the talks or workshops unfortunately, which were all about how to utilise nettles, an abundant free resource! We were however inspired, and when we got back home Luke went out to pick some nettles and began making some nettle beer, convenient as our previous home brew is running low. 

There was lots of other things to do around the community garden. We visited the beehives:

Did some chalking on the pavement (and inevitably clothes!) 

We decorated biscuits, and Viking was popular with some of the other kids there. 

The highlight for us though was the pond dipping. Asher surprisingly caught 2 newts, before Luke caught a third. Eden was a little disappointed not to catch any, but instead she helped release them back into the pond, having a hold in the process. 

An enjoyable afternoon of family time together. 

Cabbages, worms and pumpkin beer

We nipped down the allotment this morning to pick some veg for the week. First time this year that it's felt bitingly cold outside, just as well we'd wrapped up warm although I need to find our gloves! 

The row of cabbages look brilliant, we've taken the netting off now. We picked the biggest one to eat this week. I also picked some kale. 

Luke dug up some more potatoes - some of our main crop potatoes are satisfying big. 

Eden found two worms - her latest outdoor fascination - love it!

Asher toddled around, saying hello to the next-door plot's chickens 

I harvested the sweetcorn, despite them not looking ready but I didn't think they'd ripen anymore now - disappointingly none were good enough to eat, we'll try again next year. The growing season this year was very slow to get started, at one point in the spring it was said the UK was a month behind what was normal, due to the prolonged cold and rain we had then. I think this is perhaps why our sweetcorn didn't do well, and also our winter squash and tomatoes. 

This year Luke's started some home-brewing. We have potato wine fermenting, sloe gin, and the first batch of pumpkin beer (there will be more considering we have so much pumpkin!) The pumpkin beer has been bubbling away rather ferociously in our dining room for the last 10 days, and is now ready to transfer into bottles for the secondary fermentation to begin. We took the lid off just now and it smells amazing! Just as you'd expect - a strong pumpkin smell, along with a strong beer smell. We'll leave it another 10 days now and then we can try it! Can't wait! Here's a pic I took of it just now:

Pumpkins!

A couple of weeks ago we harvested our pumpkins from the allotment. When we planted them, we added a special growing ingredient in an effort to be the winners of our family pumpkin growing competition - well that ingredient certainly did the trick! We had 8 pumpkins altogether, the largest weighed 4 stone! The two smallest were a stone each! 

Here's Asher proudly perched, on the day of harvesting them:

Last week, Luke carved the largest into a fairy house for Eden, and Eden had a go at carving too

We had A LOT of pumpkin to eat just from carving this one pumpkin! So far we've made pumpkin risotto, pumpkin bread, pumpkin and carrot soup, and pumpkin and apple soup, plus freezing some pumpkin purée for future. Next on the list is pumpkin curry, which we'll have later this week.

Oh and if you're interested in what the special ingredient was that we added at the growing stage......

Pigeon poo! 

Squash Painting

We have a glut of winter squash which sadly didn't ripen on our allotment this year. I'm not quite sure why, maybe we got them in the ground too late, or we didn't have a long enough period of warm weather. They're all white, when the should have turned green, and on tasting they're very bitter sadly. On the plus side, their colour lends itself very well to being painted! Yesterday we sat down with the kids and had a fun squash painting session. Even Asher, who normally is too occupied with climbing or his cars to sit still to paint, wanted a go! He picked his own squash from those freshly washed, brought it over to his chair, and used the pointy end of a paintbrush to make his own squash masterpiece. I'm a very proud mummy that he showed such an interest! Here's the results! The colours are so vibrant!

This one's mine!

Our neglected Poinsettia is flowering!

We have a Poinsettia plant in our dining room that we acquired either two or 3 Christmasses ago - we can't quite remember but it means we've had it at least 18 months now. Although the red flowers disappeared after the first Christmas we had it, we kept the leafy plant anyway as a house plant. Apart from the occasional water to keep it alive it's had no TLC from us. But lo and behold, this week the leaves are turning their signature red colour!

It's notoriously difficult to get poinsettia leaves to turn from their green to red for a second season. The experts advice that you keep the plant in the dark for 14-16 hours per day, ideally from 5pm to 8am. They need to be brought into the sunlight for 6 hours everyday. The temperature also has to be optimum. It requires these specific conditions for a couple of months before flowering occurs, so it's advised that you should start on 1st October to produce the red flowers in December in time for Christmas.  

Why our plant has suddenly decided it would like to flower now remains a mystery!