Tagged

I’ve been tagged by Courgettes and Fennel. The rules are:

Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about yourself.
Tag six people at the end of your post linking to their blog.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

1. My favourite TV programme is the Mighty Boosh.

2. I trained as an Interior Designer, but have never worked as one.

3. I have an Abyssinian cat called Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

4. I am English but have lived in Scotland for 11 years.

5. My favourite place in the world is Trotternish on the Isle of Skye.

6. I have had my allotment 1 Year and 120 Days.

I am tagging:

Kennyhill Cottage, MuswellHillBilly, VegMonkey and the Mrs, Down on the Allotment, and Little Gems.

Help the bees

Have a look at this petition:

"The British Beekeeping Association has requested £8m for the government to fund 5 years research into Colony Collapse Disorder. The government has stated that no funds exist within the existing farming research budget.

Kept honey bees provide a significant percentage of pollination to food crops, fruit orchards and of course provide honey.

This fundamental research needs to be performed in order to protect the country bees before it arrives. As in almost all cases, being prepared for something reduces its impact for a fraction of the cost compared to being unprepared.

Currently only £1.35m per annum is available to the National Bee Unit (part of Defra), this funds all its statutory activities as well as research. If there is no money in the farm research budget, then money should be made available from contingency funds."

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/BeeResearch

http://www.britishbee.org.uk/bbka_research_campaign.php

flapjacks 2

They are still cooling, but I stole one to have with some vanilla ice cream and they are fab!

I ended up putting sunflower and pumpkin seeds in, as well as the raspberries. And it took nearer to 30mins in the oven, I think because of the added moisture of the fruit.


I'm looking forward to them being ready, I'm going to take some to the allotment next time I go to keep me going.

flapjacks

I'm getting my hand in with the syrup flapjacks today. Although I don't have any raspberries of my own yet I bought some local ones and am going to make raspberry flapjacks.

Well, I need to get my eye in before our raspberries come along, I wouldn't want to waste any of ours, so I need to do thorough tests!

I'll post some pics when they come out of the oven.

I'm doing 200g oats, 200g syrup, 100g butter, 100g sugar, and a small tub of raspberries.

Put the sugar, syrup, and butter in a pan and melt over a low heat. Remove from the heat and add the oats and mix thoroughly.

Then add the raspberries (or strawberries, or raisins, or chocolate chips, or pumpkin and sunflower seeds) and mix through.

Press into a shallow greased tin and put into a pre-heated oven (180°C or Gas Mark 4) for 20 mins. When they come out cut them into squares but don't take them out of the tin until they have cooled and hardened.

yesterday and today (and tomorrow)

Weeding, weeding and more weeding mainly.

You can now actually see between the rows of strawberries, and the rows of onions.



And the Jerusalem artichokes aren't having to fight with the docks.

The squash have got some room round them too now. And they are starting to form fruit, I'm very excited by the yellow ones and the round ones.

And I got the sweetcorn in, a block of 3 by 3 up next to the Kale, garlic, carrots, and turnips.


We got a load of flower seedlings into pots too. Tomorrow I need to get the salad out from the leanhouse, it is too hot for it in there and it will bolt if I'm not careful.

plans for the future

I've been on the allotment committee for a few months now and I'm getting involved in some plans for improvements around the site. We want to get more people involved in our site, and improve the visitor experience, the place is a bit of an eyesore at the moment, which I'm sure doesn't endear us to the neighbours!

We have already given 4 plots to make up 2 large community allotment plots with various groups using them, they have had the land for a while and the lead group have just raised money for landscaping and a cabin with a toilet, so should be able to start planting it out soon. Various other community groups, some local residents, and some local schools would also like to get involved more so hopefully we can get ourselves in a position to do that.

I'm on the funding team for our committee, and we have identified the things we want to fund, and some of the places we are going to apply to. Hopefully we can put together a good explanation of what we want to do and then get it funded.

One of the first things will be a healthy eating project with the community groups: the new beds that are going into one of the community plots will hopefully be meal themed, one for pizza, one for a kind of soup, one for a salad, so the people using it can really see a link between what they are growing and what they end up eating.

Along side that we want to do demonstrations of cooking in the plots, and also collect up recipes from all the different plot holders and make a collection out of it that we will aim to get printed. I'd love for us to be able to do that one, it will give a real good sense of community inside the allotment, and also give us something we can share with our neighbours so they can see what we are all about.

Here's hoping.

It is also a time for change and plans in allotments in general in Glasgow. There is a consultation going on about allotments: their use, provision, upkeep, funding, thier benefits, security, etc If you are in Glasgow then you can make a comment, the strategy documents are available as a pdf, and it can be responded to online. Links here: Allotment Strategy. Closing date 20th June for responses.

more growing, less typing

I've been neglecting this blog, so my apologies.

However, you will be pleased to know that I haven't been doing quite so badly on the allotment. It is still a running battle between us and the weeds, but we are winning in enough areas to have some decent crops going on.

So, a catch up post. In May things just kept on growing. I was away on Skye for a while, but everything survived my absence. The summer squash and courgettes went into the beds, the salad started filling out the bath and the peas and beans grew like crazy.


In June this first bit of June we have got our scarlet kale in, potted up our peppers and chillis to bigger pots, saw the Jerusalem artichokes shoot up, and loads of fruit and flowers appear.

The tomatoes have started to flower, the vintage wine and red robins are furthest along: the biggest and smallest fruit.


And the sweet peas have been planted to grow up the old metal frame we put in our flower 'meadow'.