Its been a much quieter week this week on Plot 33, with all the hard work making sure all was spick and span for last weeks event im happy to say there wasn't much in the way of weeding to be done (as long as you ignore behind the greenhouse). So we've mainly just been watering,  harvesting and cooking our produce. 

The blackberry continues to be very productive so i thought  id ask around for some more adventurous recipes to use them and was given one for Blackberry Siroppo a fermented blackberry syrup.  It is delicious if a little scary to make, you leave the berries in a shallow dish at room temp and mash twice a day for 2-3 days how it doesn't go moldy i don't know but it does bubble away (sorry no photos but it did look pretty) then strained and boiled with sugar. to me it smells like red wine and can be made into a drink, eaten with yogurt or ice-cream  

Now does anyone have a recipe idea for  the mountain of courgettes???

During the week was really busy getting the plot ready for our event on Saturday 28th August ...which was a a bit of a celebration of our small grant from Get Creative (https://getcreativeuk.com)to buy some tools so we can extend our participatory activity. We invited people who have been involved(including other allotment holders) or have expressed an interest in Plot 33 to come along to have a nosey, participate in some activities and partake of some soup and cake made (as far as possible) from allotment produce. 

In preparation there were trips to the dump to get rid of the rubbish we are pulling out of the top end of the site. We are clearing and digging it out to create a lovely space for our bespoke shed/compost toilet. There was lots of weeding and general tidying/sweeping of paths and the area around the greenhouse...it looks so much better. Wonder Women helped a lot and finished off some of the fence painting.  We attached Wonder Women's decorated tin can planters to the fence. 

Saturday dawned beautiful and sunny. We arrived early and set up the site using some flags and bunting made in previous projects and installed the more recently finished Mysterious Moth banners. Chris from Wonder Women came early too and while we set up some creative activities and the refreshments she harvested some tomatoes, apples, courgettes, petit pans and cucumbers for people to take away. In spite of being bank holiday we had 23 visitors over the day, 10 of which had never been before. All the soup (Golden Tomato and Shallot & Rosemary) and the Chocolate Courgette Cake disappeared. It was a really lovely day and we are very inspired by peoples comments and suggestions.  This was us dipping our toe in the water to see what worked and what didn't. We are definitely going to organise further events. Watch this space!

last week on a particularly rainy Tuesday while sitting in the greenhouse Anne and i thought we would cheer ourselves up by remembering all the things we've planted and harvested during our first 8 months on plot 33 (much better then going out and continuing to clear and level the ground for the new shed) We made a list with 40 different fruits and vegetables on it then patted ourselves on the back and went home it was a very full week last week :)

As part of the Greening Stoke Project I was given the opportunity to draw a set of doors for one of the entrances into St Marks Church in Hanley which had temporarly been boarded up during restoration.
Saturday 17th June, I joined Anne and Rachel up at St Mark's church for the Greening St Mark's event where I met Lynne and Rev. Phillip and discovered more about the church and it's restoration which was really interesting. 
It was a busy day, Rachel and Anne were also running art workshops for visitors to decorate their own tin can planters, planting seeds and plants to take home and adding some bright new additions along the gate as well as two planters beneath.
During an earlier vist I had taken a few photos of the doors and drawn some sketches making a stencil to paint with. With help from Rachel, Anne, Kim and the lovely sun the outlines were painted and dried quickly.
It was always going to be difficult to incorporate every aspect of the church so I started with the shape and structure of the other doors. I was immedietly drawn to the arched nine segment door and the colour pink from the other doors.
To decorate the doors, I added white roses, a symbol of peace and hope for the future, slowly growing around the door and a dove ,who act as messengers and are symbols of love, peace , in a significant place above the door offering guidance and shelter. I included the smaller animals interacting underneath to reflect the sense of community.
More than anything I wanted to create a friendly, welcoming entrance for people to enter through.
I really enjoyed working as part of the team and meeting some lovely people.
Thank you Anne and Rachel and everyone involved for the oppourtunity.
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So things have been crazily busy for the past month and we seem to have missed a few posts! We've run our first public drop in workshop since the pandemic started, a greening workshop at St Marks church (there's a post in the pipeline about this). Anne has set-up, invigilated and taken down an exhibition. We've collected a shed kindly donated by Allan and got it back to plot 33 ordered wood to make a few repairs to it before we put it up. Run banner making workshops and written 3 funding bids. Plus run our weekly Wonder Women session at the plot along with the day to day maintenance that takes place on an allotment weeding, watering, harvesting and planting and very occasionally we've just sat and had lunch caught our breath and marveled at how quick pumpkins grow. 
so here are some photos for you to enjoy and we'll try and keep on top of the posts 
​promise  

monday 19th July this week is set for the heat to continue with expected temps of around 27 - 29 degrees celsius So the first thing Anne and i did today was water everything in pots and newly planted. our plot (like most of stoke on Trent) is on heavy clay its had a lot of  organic matter over the years so while the top can get bone dry and crack, an inch or so down there's still moisture available for the plants.  This being the case we dont worry too much about watering established plants.  After watering we weeded and hacked back the buddleia (its too big  for the space and covers the path) and started summer pruning the Apple tree. Then after hiding in what little shade we could find we harvested potatoes, garlic, onions, spinach and the first of the soft fruit. ready to cook up for the wonder women on Wednesday,  Potatoes are traditionally followed by leeks in a crop rotation so this is what we did and managed to get most of them in the space we had created. I love planting Leeks its a little different than most other plants you dib a hole and twirl your bare root leek seedling into it then water the hole which fills it with very fine soil giving you nice straight white leeks in a few months time.  

wednesday 21st July it was almost too hot to do anything today! but a few wonder women braved the heat to join us on plot 33 Anne and Reannan painted the fence in the shade of a gazebo while the rest of us continued to make some banners for a project we are working on.  Then we enjoyed  a lunch of frittata made with the potatoes, spinach, onions and garlic, and some disaster biscuits for dessert
ok im not the best baker by a long shot but i thought i could manage some biscuits using the lovely blackcurrants picked on Monday. Alas the oat biscuits recipe could not cope with the extra moisture added by the 250g of currants i snuck into the mix and produced a soft flapjack/ granola ish  something that while tasting delicious no way resembled a biscuit and the group polished the lot off with some greek yogurt   

Friday 23rd July its cooled down today but the wind has picked up so yet again it was a case of watering pots mostly (Anne has popped down most days to water the greenhouse some time watering twice a day) but today i was on my own most of the day as Anne has to set up an art exhibition in Stoke.  I continued to paint the fence and pick some more blackcurrant. Fingers crossed we still have gooseberries next week as ive just found out Bingo the fox is partial to them and has stripped next doors bushes Anne arrived just as i was finishing off and in time to pick the first cucumbers and courgettes.

Monday 5th July Anne and i had a tidying up day today gathering up our once neat and now scattered pile of topsoil and moving it into old compost bags ready to take to a  greening workshop in 2 weeks time and the rest into a dumpy bag. then working around the compost area chopping down the long grass and removing the flowers off the dock plants that have sprung up at the top of the plot to stop them spreading any more

Tuesday 6th not an allotment day but eagle eyed Anne saw some lovely doors in a skip so we went and asked if we could have them to use in the shed build. The answer was yes so 3 trips up Hartshill bank and back down carrying our prizes  

wednesday 7th rain doesn't stop play for the wonder women! we all meet up at plot 33 and had a lovely creative afternoon designing a banner for a local event then the rain let off so we were able to have a meal made from produce from the plot including a delicious Rhubarb cordial to drink

Friday 9th  bit of a funny day today not much time spent on plot 33 but lots of greening related work going on  we had a trip to the tip to get rid of some bits of wood that are just too far gone to use, turning compost, and watering as well. but most of the day was spent at a local church St Marks Stelton and at our studio getting ready for a greening Stoke workshop on Saturday 17th July

me and Lisa painting boarding ready to  brighten up and green St Marks

Monday 28th June

Rachel and me digging, planting and harvesting today and what a harvest! 
Potatoes, broad beans, lettuce, rhubarb and Spring onions. And not forgetting a handful of wild strawberries and a few red currents that hadn't been eaten by the birds.... shame, as they are tasty.

Wednesday 30th July
Wow! there were 10 of us ( Wonder Women) on site.....the weather was good and we were a hive of activity. Clearing paths, digging out the nasty roots, removing staples from reclaimed wood, fence painting and illustrating the wildlife on the compost bin blackboard.
The reward made with our produce: Rachel's spinach and feta pastry bites, new potatoes and of course, a lovely salad mix. 
Banjo the fox paid us a visit admiring her portrait by lisa

Monday 21st June
Bit of an Up and Down this week the poppies and sweet peas have started to flower and the broad beans are ready to harvest. We tidied the greenhouse and put the cucumbers, loofah and aubergines in their final places.  Standing back its hard to think we only started this part of our journey in January 

But we had noticed some of our onions leaves had grown curly and i didn't think much about it,  but after seeing an article online about allium leaf miner i had my suspicions about them and after digging the worst one up found some pupas confirming the worst. if we want to grow any alliums now we'll have to net them with enviromesh as the flies are tiny (for more info on leaf miners go to  https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=643) but the space created by the taking out some of the onions meant we could plant out the celerica so thats all good. 
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 Wednesday 23rd June 
​four legged friends. I could tell you all about the creative things we did (painting the fence) or the Gardening (planting out more pumpkins and some other bits and pieces) or the food we had (broad bean dip) but the whole session was stolen by a visit from Dino the dog and at the end by our resident fox after she tried to steal my gloves Dino didn't notice he was flaked out after a busy time sniffing everything and having a lot of fuss off everyone

Friday 25th June it rained and we eat lunch and chatted  with Marg (who had come for a visit) in the allotment hut we didnt take a photo so here's one of the flower boarder instead

 Monday came and after we had been on a bit of a jolly to order soil and compost from the lovely guys at Acres Green in Caverswall(Its arriving on Friday!) we installed a bit more fencing, kindly donated by our next door neighbour, Mike. We built the 4th side of the compost heap so it is removable to enable us easily to move the compost from one stall to another. We transferred the rotting compost from stall one to stall two and the aim is to move it and therefore turn it over every two weeks which should speed up the rotting process. We need lots of compost! Bit more weeding (always) and of course watering.
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Another beautiful Wednesday for Wonder Women at Plot 33. Lots of weeding in the flower bed. An old water tank has sat, full of weeds and other delights, challenging us to do something with it. We finally bit the bullet and cleared it out. It will make a great planter for a pumpkin and maybe some herbs. We harvested a lovely salad of leaves, herbs and a sprinkle of marigold petals  (lemony tasting) to go with the delicious crustless quiche Rachel had made.  

,A half ton bag of topsoil and a half ton bag of compost were delivered on Friday to the allotment gates. We had to move it all the hundred metres from the gates onto the allotment straightaway. Firstly because it was blocking the gates but also if left, it could become a free for all! So armed with 2 wheelbarrows and 2 spades we set to work. It took some effort but it was very satisfying and it's great to know when we need it, it's there. We immediately filled the water tank (after filling partially with some rotting wood), and added some more soil/compost mix to the no dig bed. Then we sat and recovered with well earned cuppas.