Lost and Found in E11

the blackberry harvest 10th September the cucumber harvest 8th September the plum harvest 12th September the pumpkin harvest 7th September

Stepney City Farm, Stepney Way - 11th September, 2013.  I found this pumpkin patch at one end of Stepney City Farm. I admired the ways in which it was growing, along the ground, up, along and through the fences. There were varieties of pumpkin I have not seen before.

I started visiting this allotment 10 years ago and I still don't know the names of most of the plants growing here. There are plants I have been aware of for these 10 years, which I recognize consistently and am familiar with in various ways. Other plants have appeared more recently which I am a lot less familiar with. The environment is dynamic and in a state of flux to some degree and I expect the inhabitants to change. I think I should and certainly could have identified more plants in a decade of gardening here. I regard my lack of knowledge of the proper names of the flora and fauna here as a personal failing; that it is indicative of superficial involvement despite the relatively long period I've been visiting the site. This year I have been trying to increase and improve my knowledge of the site's flora and fauna. The effort seems to be involving more struggle and difficulty than I imagined, perhaps because I have not engaged in the task with much, if any, discipl...

7/9/2013 - Field Study's Man in E11 gets to work on Bed 5, Plot A of 'the farm'. This was one of our sub-tropical beds for the 2013 growing season. The raised bed was host to pumpkins (from seed saved in 2012), 3 Sisters (pumpkins/climbing beans - kew/sweetcorn), lauki (from Organiclea organised seed swap ). The raised bed has an area of c. 10 square metres with a heavy clay soil base and a slightly low pH. The bed was also treated with rockdust in February. The bed was planted in early May, using a temporary polythene covering for frost/wind protection.    The plants are beginning to die off. The pumpkin plants are showing various signs of stress The stems are beginning to die back from the pumpkin fruits. Some of the fruits have been damaged/affected by pests and diseases. Slug damage. Slug. Harvesting, weeding, light digging - leaving lauki in at end of bed. Leaving in some self sown American Land Cress. There are al...

The Shard, from Jamaica Road, 5th September 2013. I was enthralled by the crystalline brilliance of The Shard this morning as I cycled west along Jamaica Road, heading for the hills of Hampstead and Highgate. The glare of the sky piercer was accentuated by what I believe to be smog hanging heavily over the city. Hazily (not clearly), to me, the sun's rays were diverging as they were reflected, if not beamed, from the exceptionally vertiginous landmark. Neighbouring buildings and various passersby may not have had the concerns other parts of the city had. For a moment I wondered if there might have been heat in those reflected rays and who and what might have been on the receiving end of them. If the hazy atmosphere was due to smog, rather than just fog, it may not be so absurd to have imagined those smog cutting rays raining down on City Hall wherein, air conditioning working to the limit, those responsible for regulating air quality were/are getting uncomfortably hot unde...

Cucumber - 4th September I will take this as a sign of the beginning of the transition from summer to autumn; a cucumber plant 'giving up the ghost' after a growing season of quite prolific production. The cucumber plants in the polytunnel have been marvellous for the spectacle of their abundant growth and the flavour of their fruit. There are yet still more cucumbers to harvest although I doubt there will be any new growth and that this weekend will see our final cucumber harvest of 2013.  Some of the other plants in the polytunnel are still growing with remarkable vigour - the 'lauki' shown in the picture above is maintaining it's tendrilous domination as the cucumbers wilt away. Why though, despite the vigour of the lauki plant as a whole, do its fruits or gourds die off when they get to some 5-6cm in length?  The mini gourds appear fine for a short while and then they turn yellow, soften to a mush and fall off, leaving the stem like a bu...

viscous/gravitational/inertial/inertio-gravitational As Field Study's Man in E11, I have been immersed (lost) in the fluid dynamics of honey this past week. Our honey harvest or extraction for 2013 is very nearly complete and I can report we have a yield of 62Kg from our apiary of 2 hives. Both honey bee colonies were left at least 45Ib/20Kg of stores to which they can add for the autumn and winter. Last year we did not harvest any honey and we also chose (by necessity?) to feed the bees through the autumn and winter because the stores were so meagre. I'm pleased with this yield and I like the flavour and other qualities of the honey. One of the other qualities of honey that appeals to me is the viscosity of the liquid and how it behaves when poured. Here is a selection of images from the extraction and jarring process.  a frame of capped honeycomb from a beehive we sliced the wax capping off using knives heated in hot water the wax capping was saved t...