Blog
28/02/24 Ha ha! Well it's good to have some time off from writing a blog only I and 7 others worldwide (Hi you in Germany)! read :D I hadn't realised it was over a year though! Well it's good to see you again.. ah yes you all have faces. I've got a very vivid imagination. Phew we've still got another day of February this year. It's all go at the allotment when March kicks in and I'm not ready. I mean there is always enjoyment to be had at the plot at any time of year, but I have to admit I've been hibernating this winter. And although I put my garlic and some random broad beans in a few weeks ago, and dug a pond, and planted 350 bulbs around the allotment, I've been on the back burner as far as energy levels go. At the end of last year I was inspired by my neighbour and finally sorted my ramshakle shed out. It now has a verandah no less, so I can get myself a rocking chair and a shot gun and watch out for those pesky wabbits. I don't know what I'm talking about; I love rabbits and generally all of my produce goes to the local wildlife. (hmmm...) Anywho, I do like the idea of sitting on a verandah outside my shed on a sunny day. I'm an artist (steady I heard that) Like a drawing artist. oh, that's what you said. Well, I've always wanted to spend time drawing at the allotment but generally have never had the time. Well Time, I'm making you! It's all about priorities! And maybe I could sell some pictures to justify it! Meh, we'll see.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure I had something interesting to tell you guys. Ooh other than I have plans to paint a mushroom mural on my shed. As I know you guys will read anything, I may document it here for your pleasure and amusement. Ah yes, that was it: This last year I've been studying soil biology (I am training with the Soil Food Web School), and just in the nick of time I reckon as the world is going crazy wanting to learn about soil health and what we, "Average Joe(sephine)", can do to help. And let me tell you you have all the power and can do a lot, easily, to help. And I'm very excited to announce I'm going to put on a workshop about the things I've learnt that I think you'll be interested in. I'm holding it in April please see deets on the news page. I'd love to see you there. TTFN.
29/09/22 Get some Cider insider yer. Thank you to everyone who contributed their time, effort, and skill to our cider making day.
Loads of lovely donated apples.
All ready to chomp up some lovely fruit for "easy" squishing.
Chomped fruit in the press and out the bottom pours the delicious smelling apple juice.
Wow! Four demi-johns full of apple juice ready to be fermented. Nice work guys!
22/06/22 Awesome Plant Sale! Thank you to everyone who contributed their time, effort, seedlings and smiles to the plant sale this year. It was such a lovely day and it is always good to see people without a plot coming on site and enjoying plants and the green outdoors together. And having a treat of cake and a cuppa! I'm trying to get hold of some photos of the day so watch this space. Until I do and if you want more, why not check out Enderby Open Gardens and come and have a browse around the allotments too. Enjoy!
25/05/22 The wildflower strip is finally breathing. The plants that have been living there for years but have been cut down to the ground continually are at last being able to grow tall and proud. So they're looking a bit scared! But check out what is there right now..
24/03/22: Ok I don't have much time today, so I'll start with listing the plants I've found and a few photos. Enjoy! And I hope you're as intrigued as I am to find out what's in there.
Grass: Yorkshire FogGrass: Perennial Rye-grassGrass: Annual Meadow-grassGrass: False Oat-grassGarlic MustardCleavers/Sticky WeedStinging NettleColt's FootCow ParsleySmooth Sow-thistle/Sun-kissPrickly Sow-thistlePurple Dead-NettleElephant's EarsCreeping ButtercupHedgerow Crane'sbillCommon Mouse-earCommon Dog-VioletIvy-Leaved SpeedwellCommon Field SpeedwellField Forget-me-notRagwortWood AvensWillowherb (likely American)Hairy Bitter-cressDaisyVarigated EuonymusCreeping Thistle
Here are just a few photos of some of the lovelies. We'll be keeping an eye on them all throughout the year so you can learn what they look like at each stage, as they all flower at different times. Those that are flowering now may die back and disappear until next spring, and others will keep flowering for months to come! What I'm most excited about is the grasses flowering as I know there are ones I can't identify vegetatively.
05/02/22: A Bit about why we want to leave the grass uncut
Grassland, if left to grow, unsprayed with chemicals of any description, whether that's to kill weeds (herbicides), insects (insecticides, ovicides, larvicides..most 'cides I guess!) or to feed the grass (fertilisers - these disrupt the biology of the soil) can support up to 1500 different species of insect! (I'm probably not going to be able to name that many, but I'll start here and I am asking for help from you guys too.) In regularly cut, manicured, excessively treated grass, you'll be lucky to find a worm. Well don't you want to know what grass looks like when it flowers! Don't you want to find out why we get so many other plants continually growing in what is supposed to be a monoculture of grass that makes up our lawns. Do they all naturally want to be together? Surely not! Well what will happen if we leave some grass to grow? Will something terrible happen? Or might we just help save the world?
It's no wonder really that insects are in such decline when you look at what we've done to their homes: Climate change aside, we have ripped up 97% of our beautiful country's wildflower meadows since the second world war. During WW2 a lot of the meadows were turned over to farming so we as in an individual country could be more self sufficient, relying less on importing food, but since then, when this was no longer of importance, the meadows weren't replaced and, horrifyingly, more and more meadows were destroyed to make way for even more farming and housing and industrial development. I think it is shameful the way we have chosen to use our land with no forethought for the wildlife that lived there beforehand.
Saying that I wasn't there and I haven't done anything about it since I have been about. So who am I to have a voice? Well what I can do is try to help wildlife in my little piece of world. And that's exactly what you can do to. It starts with a strip of grass here, a patch of weeds there, talking to your neighbour about making a small hole in the fence for hedgehogs, making a pond, leaving small buckets of water around for hoverflies to bring their babies up in. Imagine if we all did little thinks like this, apart from doing a lot of good for insects and other wildlife, wouldn't it relieve a lot of personal stress from constantly worrying about having to battle the constant onslaught of nature ?
I highly recommend (me personally, not the allotment society) having a look at this easy to read and understand report by Professor Dave Goulson telling details and statistics of insect decline. (Dave Goulson has also written some wonderful and captivating books on British wildlife and has a particular passion for bees... actually from reading some of his books I think he has a particular passion for many things, including apples!..)
And for further information I personally recommend the following websites, but I know there are hundreds more out there.
Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust: https://www.lrwt.org.uk/news
Leicestershire County Council: https://resources.leicestershire.gov.uk/sites/resource/files/field/pdf/2020/6/29/FS15-Insects-and-pollinators.pdf
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology: https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/news/action-needed-address-pollinator-plight
NatureSpot: https://www.naturespot.org.uk/content/leicestershire-entomological-society
05/09/21: Enderby Allotment Produce Show.
Check out the gallery for piccies of our wonderful prize winning produce. Yours could be there next year!
Not so much of a blog today, so perhaps .............hey, members, you could send in your own blog entry to fill a space! We are a community after all, why not use this space to talk about your vegetable and plant passions! (Now there's an idea! ;) )
09/08/21: It's National Allotment Week!
We would very much like to hear from our readers and plot holders about what having an allotment means to you.
For me it is a meditation space; a space I can sit in that I have created to escape from the world. Every plant on my plot is one I have nurtured which in turn graces me with delicious food, or it simply found its way there all on its own and wants to be there, enjoying the soil and that little area of ground on "plot number 16". I can sit silently and enjoy the wildlife and plants growing peacefully around me, or I can work up a sweat and wear myself out digging or building or planting or clearing. It's like a gym and a meditation retreat .. and mini greengrocers... all in one!
I don't get as much time to spend down there as I'd like or as it deserves (thank goodness nature works even without constant human interference). I have a busy lifestyle like most people and kids to take care of, but I still feel a deep emotional connection and value in having a space where I can grow food for us to eat and do so surrounded with other people who just want to do the same thing.
Send us your story to our email address enderbyallotments@gmail.com and we'll put it on our blog.
08/12/20: Make your soil a MEGACITY!
When you plant a seed at the allotment and you expect it to grow into the lovely carrot or cabbage in the picture on the seed packet, you are blindly going through the motions of being an allotmenter or "food grower".
If it a carrot grows to your liking, success! Job done, go home, eat carrot, same again next year. If the seeds don't germinate or the carrot has not grown to your liking, don't know what happened, maybe it was the heavy rain that weekend, but the mystical, magical process didn't do what it was supposed to do while we weren't looking, so... try again next year?
Stop.
Now let's look what's really happening while we blindly (albeit lovingly) plant those seeds and walk away.
Look at the environment around you. Where is the wind coming from? What is the light quality like? What other plants are nearby? This is where your plant will live. Look at your soil. Really look. How do you see your soil? Brown. Dirt. Mud. Makes your hands dirty. Somewhere worms and centipedes hide ready to jump out and give you a fright.
How about ALIVE! Rich. Biodiverse. A mega-city for helpful minibeasts, microbeasts, fungus, bacteria, carbon to build structure, nutrients to enrich.
Plants see all this life in your soil and they send out roots to interact with it; not only feeding from it, but giving back by exchanging chemicals and gases, tunnelling through it, breaking up hard ground and creating new air and water pockets. They create shade to cool the soil so it keeps a nice temperature for the inhabitants. The shade also reduces evaporation so less watering is needed.
Soil isn't just a medium to grow a carrot in, it is a whole living ecosystem that will communicate with the plant on an entirely intimate level.
When we plant a seed, we are not "growing a plant". We don't DO anything to build that plant, it does that all by itself. What we can do is help provide an environment for it to grow up in that will nourish it and it will enjoy. And in a very major way this means creating a rich and bio-diverse soil that will benefit from your plants as much as the plants will benefit from it.
If that's got your trowel trembling with excitement, keep an eye on this space where we will delve into soil and explore further what it is and what we can do to enrich it. For our plants and for the planet.
21/10/20: Are pumpkins are just for Hallowe'en?
Pumpkins are one of the oldest cultivated crops on the planet. At the end of the last Ice Age, agriculture developed in multiple continents isolated from each other, and in Mexico crops were grown not in monocultures like the Europeans did, but in biodiverse polycultures, and pumkpins were grown among beans and sweet corn.
Pumpkins originate from Mexico where the climate is much hotter and drier than here in Britain, but pumpkins are so easy to grow and tolerant of so many conditions that they are grown today on every continent (except Antarctica... actually I can't prove someone hasn't tried)
There are many wonderful and beautiful and tasty varieties of pumpkin and we grow one on our allotment specifically for fun competition to see which plot holder can grow the heaviest fruit! Check out the news page for this year's winner! The Italians have grown one variety, the "Marina di Chioggia", since the 17th Century for its superior flavour. It is a large, knobbly, green skinned fruit which looks more than a bit scary, like a very well aged blue cheese, on the outside, but cut it open and the plentiful flesh is a bright, rich orange which looks very inviting.
The picture here is of a pack of seeds supplied by Franchi who have been selling this variety for 237 years. Which makes you think they may be on to something.
5/9/20: What is this vegetable?! There were many delightful and interesting vegetables at the Allotment Plant sale last weekend, but one that I hadn't come across before and had all of us stumped was a pale yellow, nobbly, courgette shaped squash which had been donated anonymously. I couldn't help but buy one! (I still don't know what type it is so if you can enlighten me please send me a quick email!)
I didn't know how to cook it, but I thought a general rule of thumb with squashes is that if you roast them you can't go far wrong! So I rubbed it in ghee (just to keep the moisture in) and popped it in a medium oven until it started smelling nice! Which was about an hour and a half. After this, I let it cool for 10 minutes and then sliced it in half. I was bowled over by a beautiful delicious smell of sweetcorn! The flesh was light and fluffy, slightly stringy but soft and tasted remarkably like sweetcorn. The seeds tasted just like pumpkin seeds and I didn't think went very well with the sweet taste of the flesh, so I separated them, mixed them with salt and ground chilli powder and when they had cooled and dried I had them as a snack that evening with a cuppa.
It's vegetables like this that make me love growing food. You just don't find special varieties in supermarkets. Tasting the same old thing all the time, the same tasting tomatoes or same predictable carrots or potatoes, is boring. Grow your own unusual varieties and be surprised and delighted by a burst of bright, new flavour. You may find a squash that you want to grow every year for that anticipation of something special.
29/7/20: Plant Hunt extras. Hi, so let's find out what the warmer weather has brought out of the soil. There's Gallant Soldier, which as you may be able to guess from the photo is a member of the daisy family. It has only 5 white ray florets around the outside edge, and it grows quite tall and bushy. Common Orache (Atriplex patula) and Fat Hen (Chenopodium album) are two which look very similar until you look at their flower heads. Please see the diagram below. I also found Marsh Cudweed (Gnaphalium uliginosum) on my plot, which I found quite alarming to start with as I expected anything with "Marsh" in it's name to prefer boggy ground, but it grows in all sorts of ground. I do wonder however if it is still hanging on from when there was a river running across what is now my plot but has been dry for a very long time. If I dig down about a foot there is sand! Pineapple Weed has found its way in and I am very pleased to see Common Vetch. Vetch is a member of the pea family and puts nitrogen from the air into the soil through its roots, just like peas and beans do, so is very beneficial on the allotment.
28/5/20: Plant Hunt. So I thought I'd do a bit of a plant hunt on the allotment this month. I wanted to find out what plants are growing in the allotment that people haven't put there! So I wasn't looking for types of vegetables or fruit (although that sounds like a great idea for next month), I was looking for weeds! All those lovely plants that are free-spirited and grow all by themselves, almost as if nature intended it that way ...and something we can easily forget when we are focused on planting specific produce to eat and getting rid of everything that stands in its way.
I came across 52 species in 26 different plant families. (Don't you think that's crazy? - Not so long ago I only used to think there were about 5 weeds!) I know from remembering the weeds I saw last summer on the plot that there is the scope for many more to appear over the next few months, so I will keep my eye open and report back later in the year.
23/3/20: Not too late for garlic! This is a photo of last year's broad bean flowers. Aren't they beautiful? I don't know who the beetle visitor is but I think he looks good there. ...You may start to find, over time, that I'm not the greatest veg grower in the world as I tend to be more interested and accommodating for the "pests" than the produce. But I hope to bring you interesting and encouraging news. ...And thankfully I'm not the only one writing these posts! I do have news that I planted my garlic in mid January and they are now growing well - the leaves are 10-15cm high now. I believe there are still people planting garlic now for a later crop, so plant away dear friends!
15/12/19: Too late for garlic? I bought 3 garlic bulbs back in October for late autumn planting. But I was behind with preparing the bed, I wanted to manure and cover the whole bed beforehand so I didn't disturb the garlic once it was in the ground. Anyway, we had so much rain in November which made the ground so saturated I am now pleased I didn't plant in October as sitting in water would likely have rotted my cloves. So now I will wait a bit longer, let the ground dry out a little and plant the garlic in January and I will let you know how it goes.
14/01/20: Where Squirrels dare, I dare to follow! And I'd ask them to kindly leave my Sweetcorn alone! Those pretty creatures are not alone though, they have mice, pigeons and probably a queue of other wildlife all vying for part of the feast. I am not one for traps or poisons so my only saving grace was that this year lots of other people had planted sweetcorn too, so they were quite full by the time they got to my plot.