Tim Prater

We are on standby waiting for the raspberry plants to arrive.  The hedge plants arrived Saturday afternoon, they will need planting this week.  The weeds are still growing, and so we are still weeding!  The leaves continue to fall, and we continue to collect them!  When the nursery children came along this week to bring their compost, we had a good look at how the leaf compost was doing.  Just under the surface, steam can be seen rising from the pile, and it is almost hot to the touch, great for warming up cold hands! 

So many people came by the garden on Wednesday morning to say hello, I think we spent most of the time chatting, which is great!  More and more are bringing their veg peelings for our compost bins which is a good thing, and we ask that it goes in any of the plastic bins, not the wooden ones.

We are on the lookout for any pieces of spare marine plywood, minimum 60cm square so that Eddie can repair the herb boxes that are currently in a sad state.  Please get in touch via this address if you can source some.

On Saturday we planted the two Heritage apple trees bought at Brogdale in October.  Freddie kindly bought the trees for the garden, and came along with her sister, to help plant them.  The trees are in memory of their mother, and all the apple pies she used to make for picnics on the beach.  Let us hope we can carry on the tradition.

On Sunday, some of us are off to a hop growing course…… more about that next week!

What’s next?

• Get the hedge plants in ASAP!

• Begin to put in the wind shelter posts.

• General weeding of identifiable weeds

• Paint the bird boxes

• Collect leaves

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We are ready for the hedge plants to arrive, as soon as they come, they can be planted.  The pea shoots are starting to appear, and are now under some fleece protection.  Luckily the birds have so far not bothered with the newly planted onion and garlic so once they establish some roots we will not have to worry about them being dislodged from place.  We even have a rose in flower.  It seems incredible how things will still grow at this time of year.  We have plenty of winter salad leaves, but not many people feel like eating salad when the weather is colder! 

The broad beans the nursery children planted are now showing well above the soil, and they have been visited, probably by a fox, that has been digging looking for worms to eat.   They have had to protect the area with a criss cross of strings and sticks.

Worms in the soil are an indication of the good health of the soil.  We have noticed more worms since the wetter weather, and having added compost.  Stinging nettles also show rich soil, and we seem to have plenty of them springing up!  Many people have commented that the vegetables grown on the plot have such a rich flavour, and this is due to the fact that that they are far more nutritious than commercially grown food on an intensive farm system.  After the war, as farms became larger, using herbicides and pesticides, and depleting the soil; the fruit and vegetables produced are becoming poorer in nutritional value, so today we would have to eat six times the amount of fruit and veg to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals that our ancestors had.  Unless of course you are lucky enough to be able to buy or grow organic……. food for thought.

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Luck was on our side this week and the sun was shining at all the right times!  Hundreds of garlic cloves and onion sets have been planted by dedicated planters on their hands and knees…. Even more leaves collected, paths laid, compost heaps turned, and a smoke tree planted near the banana.

The elephant garlic planted by the nursery children has started to sprout.  Growing these will be an interesting experiment as the bulbs have been in suspended animation since last year, with nowhere at the time to grow; they should have been planted or eaten by this time last year, but spent the winter, spring and summer in the fridge to see if they would hang on until now to burst into life.  We shall see around June next year if they have succeeded with their mission!

This is such a good time of the year for things to establish themselves before the winter sets in, and we are awaiting a big delivery of hedge plants and raspberry plants.  Without warning they will arrive in bulk on the doorstep and it will be action stations to get them in the ground before they dry out, as they will arrive bare root, no pots, no soil, but dormant and cheaper!  Although the leaves are gone, the roots will get a chance to cosy down into the soil ready to explode into growth in the spring – that is the theory.

The autumn sunshine enables seeds to sprout, and they have to take their chances.  They are up against the frost, being stood on, or dislodged by the gardeners hoe.  Many seeds have come from the last season’s crops and flowers, they are a free bonus as they can be brought on and established for the next season.  The thing is being able to work out what is an unwanted pesky weed and what is not…. That is a skill, and so we shall have to see what will try to establish itself and if we can manage to, at times, refrain from hoeing everything in sight and allow them to come through!  Picture below shows just how many seedlings are popping through at any one time!

The woolly blankets have been made and drawn over the more tender established plants for winter cropping, and prevents the birds from taking an easy meal.  Protection can be down to minus five degrees, so let us hope we will not have to test that!

What’s next?

• Set out exactly where that hedge is going to go

• Keep collecting fallen leaves

• Protect the sown pea shoots

• Check for any dislodged onion or garlic sets as birds can pull them up

• Check all covered crops for mildew – remove any rotting leaves and weeds.

• Weed the weeds!

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