by Philippa | Apr 20, 2014 | Allotment
This recipe served two but is easily scaled up or down and can use lots of things you might bring home from the plot. This weekend we came back with the last of our leeks which have been a great crop this year as well as a tray of purple sprouting broccoli which has been the most successful we have ever grown despite an inauspicious start. But there is no reason why you couldn’t use other veg, such as spinach, chard or peas as alternatives, depending on what you have available and what you like to eat.
Knob of butter
Splash of olive oil
2 large leeks, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Leaves from a few sprigs of thyme
150g orzo
1 tin of cannellini beans, drained (or flageolet or butter beans)
Bunch of sprouting broccoli (or other veg as suggested above)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp cream cheese
Handful of grated Parmesan cheese
Block of halloumi cheese, sliced.
Melt the butter with a splash of oil over a medium heat. Add the leeks, garlic and thyme and cook down for about 10 mins until tender. Meanwhile add the orzo and the beans to a pan of boiling water for about 8mins. Halfway through this cooking time add your broccoli or any other veg you are using to the boiling water. When done, drain and add to the leeks with the lemon zest and juice and a generous amount of seasoning.
Heat a frying pan to medium high and fry the halloumi in a splash of oil until golden on both sides. Stir the cream cheese and Parmesan through the leek, bean and orzo mix and serve with the halloumi on top. Enjoy!
adapted from a recipe appearing in April 2014 issue of Delicious magazine
by Philippa | May 27, 2013 | Allotment
I managed a cheeky few hours on Wednesday this week. But something was telling me that maybe this wasn’t a good idea as it became a very weird visit! Firstly, there was a headless (needless to say dead) bird on one of the beds. I had to be brave and get rid of it. No sign of the head yet-I’m a bit dreading it turning up somewhere!
Second weirdness was the discovery of a giant buried egg! I was planting some carrots (early market, flyaway and autumn king) and beetroot (boltardy, golden, forono and barbabietola di chioggia) and gave the beds a good raking first. I uncovered what at first appeared to be a large potato, although there was no associated greenery. On closer inspection it was a large egg, entirely unbroken and buried quite deep. I left it on the surface as I carried on planting, while a magpie eyed up the egg and eventually pecked into it-what a stench! So that got a flinging too! Later research indicated it was probably a goose egg buried by a fox for snacking on later.
I retreated to the greenhouse so I could catch up on some seed planting. I planted all of our courgettes (yellow jemmer, zucchini and floridor) and our squash (butternut, metro pmr, Turks turban, crown prince, bon bon, autumn crown, marina di chioggia). I also started a few larger pots of herbs, parsley, thyme, coriander and green and purple basil. A few last pots of melon (watermelon charleston grey and Blenheim orange) and spring onions (white lisbon and red) and then the final fright was a huge hairy spider in the greenhouse! A sure sign it was time to pack up and go!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 26, 2009 | Allotment
Another glorious summers day in Manchester arrived today. Oh no, hang on, sarcasm is quite difficult to do in a blog! It’s pretty much been non-stop rain today so we didn’t get much done. Handily enough though we don’t really have a lot to do anyway. Allotmenting is a pretty curious beast – just at the point you think it’s going to be all hands on deck for the summer, well that’s the exact point when you don’t have to do very much. We had a bit of weeding to do and the plants in the greenhouse needed a good watering and that was about it really. The greenhouse plants seem to be doing really well – we had our first tomato and sweet pepper on Saturday.
We had another good harvest – plenty of runner beans, potatoes, salad leaves, cucumbers (we are currently a bit overrun with them), a few courgettes, thyme, mint and chives. The courgettes are proving to be curious things. We have four plants and the two yellow courgette plants are going great guns producing quite a few fruits (I had a quick discussion with Pilla, and we *think* it’s a fruit) the green courgettes are proving a little more stubborn. This is despite the fact that they have lived side by side since the first leaves appeared. Why the difference? Who knows!
Some of our garlic has flopped over so we took the opportunity to dig one up see how it was doing – and it’s actually a pretty good size. We’ve left it drying out in the greenhouse, I’ll try and take a picture next week. Pilla had some Treasurer duties to attend to by signing up a new plot holder and that was pretty much it – we were home for lunch. In the depths of winter we would have loved a few allotment days like that!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 19, 2009 | Allotment
Exciting times at the allotment this week – not only did we harvest almost more crops than we could carry, but Pilla got to use her new trug:
As you can see it’s pretty full up. I have to admit that the trug is quite useful – and it looks the part when Pilla is carrying it, I’m just not sure I can pull off the look! The full list of it’s content is:
- Sugar snap peas
- 3 yellow courgettes
- Runner beans
- Dwarf French beans
- Broad beans
- 3 types of lettuce
- 2 cucumbers
- A handful of carrots
- Thyme
- Raspberries
Sunday was exciting for different reasons – there was a lesson from Bob and Walter on how to prepare vegetables for the annual show. The first weekend we spent at the allotments was at the annual show last year (you can see that here) – and we did wonder if we might have produce to show this year. We probably will, but won’t be challenging for a prize (we had a sneaky peak at Debbie’s onions and shallots and they must be about three times the size of ours) and unfortunately Pilla’s appeals for a category of our own for wonky vegetables was rejected!
After the show meeting we braved the rain to rattle through our list of jobs. I added a few more strawberry runners to the first bin I cut holes from last week. We have two of these to fill and thankfully our strawberry plants are going crazy producing runners for us to use. Using these bins will give us an extra half bed for other things next year and we should have lots more strawberries than this year. Pilla was busy digging up our bed of shallots – they had got a bit of a pounding in the heavy rain this week and didn’t look likely to recover and their leaves had been yellowing for a while. We got a pretty good number from them but they are pretty small – they are currently drying out in our spare room.
We also planted out the remaining habenero chillies, melons and some more basil and sowed more of our lettuce varieties. We didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures today – a lot of the time we were hiding out in the greenhouse sheltering from the rain. I did manage to venture to the front border – the dahlia’s that Mike from work gave me are looking great. Back in the greenhouse we are about to have a glut of peppers, we have four plants and each one probably has 10 peppers on it. We also have our first proper chilli growing – finally!
In between rain showers (actually just when the rain got a bit lighter) I planted some green manure in the bed vacated by the shallots and Pilla planted our some more radishes. We were pretty damp at this point so called it day.
by Neil Wilkinson | May 25, 2009 | Allotment
I’m not sure where we would be on the allotment without the bank holidays – we spent two days doing allotment jobs and half a day shopping for allotment goodies this weekend. In fact, we got so much done this weekend that I think I will temporarily leave the descriptive posts we’ve been doing behind and try listing everything we got done instead.
Saturday
- Fed chickens and opened up the coop
- Bought bedding plants, flowers and organic slug pellets from garden centre
- Bought replacement trowel (my digging is so fierce I broke the first one on the very first use. Plastic and metal is no match for me) and water butt irrigation system from B&Q
Sunday
- Planted out the cauliflowers
- Planted out the lemon thyme, french thyme and oregano
- Moved the greenhouse shelves into the shed and had a general tidy up both shed and greenhouse
- With Tom, built netting around cauliflowers to protect from woodpigeons
- Set up drip irrigation system to the water butt. This should make watering our greenhouse plants a bit easier. (More information on this another week I think)
- Pilla and Nic weeded the plot
- Pilla and Nic planted out some of the bedding plants
- Neil planted out the new flowering blue scabious (sounds horrible, is very pretty)
- Pilla added some of the slug pellets
- Put chickens to bed
Monday
- Planted out all of the remaining bedding plants together with the marigolds from Sharon across the front of the plot, into two old hanging boxes we had and across the rear of the plot
- Created hanging boxes for flowers & possibly tomatoes
- Planted out three lavender plants
- Planted out runner beans onto the new munty frame
- Potted on two cucumbers to their final pots
- Potted on kale, basil, two sets of courgettes and more tomatoes
- Put dahlia, french beans and some basil into the cold frame
- Thinned out all the carrot containers
- Thinned out lettuces
- Added more manure to the poo pile
And finally done. Phew! We also have another job to do after this weekend – build somewhere shady and cool. So much of our time has been spent being cold over winter I think we completely forgot how hot allotmenting can get. We have nowhere shady to hide and I think we should try and resolve this, particularly after a little bit of sunburn for both of us yesterday in spite of our suncream!
Special thanks to Tom and Nic for their help on Sunday and for the refreshments they brought, particularly the banana muffins! Allotmenting is much more fun with friends.
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