Category: allotments

Autumnal Splendour of our Winter Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 1, 2011

At our lottie site, Bowbrook Allotment Community (www.bowbrookallotments.co.uk) we have created gardens of the four seasons. The Winter Garden has surprised us with its exciting colours and textures during the autumn. Today we weeded this bed and mulched it with woodchip which as well as giving a tidy finish, should protect the surface from heavy rain, stop goodness leaching from the soil and keep down any late germinating weeds. The sun was out most of the time while we worked and shone through the grasses and dogwoods. Although I designed this as the Winter Bed it is showing itself off well in the autumn.

The woodchip was a long way off across the site so John, our lottie chairman, devised a double decker wheelbarrow carrying system. Good job there was no health and safety officer watching!

The miscanthus look amazing for most of the year and now in November their foliage is colouring up and the seed heads are aglow. They sway in the gentlest of breezes.

The dogwoods have been planted for their coloured stems which will be lit by the low rays of the winter sun, stems of red, green, yellow and black. In the autumn we enjoy the reds and golds of their foliage just before they fall. The white berries are a real bonus – little white dolls’ eyeballs.

As we worked we were entertained by small flocks of goldfinches, linnets and greenfinches which passed overhead with their high pitched calls breaking the silence. In stark contrast and much less enjoyable were the cronking of a pair of raven and the calls of a huge flock of gulls screeching away as they wheeled around like wild white kites against a blue sky trying to escape their strings.

Tags autumn, cornus, dogwoods, gardening, grasses

allotments community gardening fruit and veg garden wildlife gardening grow your own meadows natural pest control

October Working Party

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 22, 2011

Today we held our October working party at Bowbrook Allotment Community. We took advantage of a bonus day of sunshine and warmth. Lots of hard work and lots of laughter – a typical lottie working party day.

Soon the smell of cut hay permeated the lotties as we cut the meadow under the orchard trees. It was a warm herby smell as well as nostalgic. A true sense of the feel good factor.

Above, Dee and Wendy rake up the mown hay in the orchard and below Pete and Jude tidy the long grass from around the logpile. The logpile is there to attract beneficial insects as part of our organic, natural approach to pest control. We welcome ladybirds and their larvae, beetles and lacewing larvae as pest controllers and bees as pollinators.

Before cutting the grass I spotted this group of seedheads – alliums and knapweed. They had shed their seeds ready for next year but I felt I had to record this particularly beautiful and delicate clump in a photo before we cut them down.

Bulbs donated by plotholders were planted around the entrance and the car park, with daffodils going in the car park border and muscari in the gateway borders. The Spring Garden was extended and the Winter Garden path was topped up with chipped wood donated by a local tree surgeon. The final task was to trim the long grass and wildflower stems growing on the wildlife banks.

Tags fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden wildlife, organic gardening

allotments fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Autumn Planting on the Lottie

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 17, 2011

The undergardener and I spent a busy day at the lottie yesterday making the most of a warm bright day and catching up on autumn plantings. We weren’t the only ones as there were lots of plotters beavering away on this bonus “summer’s” day. It was a day of two characters with the brightness and warmth of the sun giving the pretence of summer but the calls of the jays passing overhead on the way to our great old oak in search of acorns hinted at autumn. The warmth and gentleness of the day encouraged lottie holders to wander around the green spaces and sit with their coffee on the benches. Talk with other gardeners was all of the lack of rain and the dry state of the soil. We have had no appreciable rain since mid-July. Turning the soil over sends up dust.

We prepared the ground by digging over the soil and adding a good 2 inch deep layer of compost. The ground was desperate for some organic matter to hold the moisture that the rains of autumn will hopefully bring.

We sowed broad beans, Aquadulca Claudia of course, planted onion sets, Troy and Radar, French shallots Giselle and three types of garlic, Lautrec Wight, Solent Wight and elephant Garlic.

Last year we planted just two cloves of elephant garlic to provide enough for planting out a row this year. They proved to be a real success giving us enough for a row and a few to cook. We look forward to discovering their taste – if it is a good as their gentle scents then they will be worth the effort of growing. They are strange crops though as they are not garlic at all but more closely related to leeks. As the photo below shows the cloves are a lovely golden colour when harvested and they most definitely look like garlic!

Tags autumn, elephant garlic, garlic, onions

allotments fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Scrumptious Scrumping

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 10, 2011

What a harvest! Today we harvested the “Scrumptious” apples from the tree trained over a garden arch and these two baskets of deep rosy apples weighing in at just over 11lb are the result. The taste is sweet and juicy and the flesh white with red blushing close to the skin.

Tags apples, fruit and veg growing, grow your own

allotments community gardening meadows Uncategorized

Mini Flower Meadow

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 27, 2011

This year we created a new meadow from scratch on the Bowbrook Allotment Community green spaces. The area was cleared of turf which we used on our loam pile and dug over removing as many roots of pernicious weeds as possible as we went along. We then rotavated the area and left it to let weed seedlings appear. As they did so we hoed them off.

We sowed with a mixture called “Pictorial Mix” which included annuals, biennials and perennials which were mostly British natives but we added other wildflowers were included to extend the season and add extra colour. The result can be seen below, but it did keep us on tenterhooks as the seeds germinated very slowly in the dry weather we have experienced here in Shropshire all year.

We have been so pleased with the result! It is the most photographed border on the site. Now in late September it is still showing some flower.

Tags allotments, community gardening, wildflower meadows

allotments community gardening garden wildlife meadows

Lottie Meadows

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 24, 2011

One of the most popular features of our green spaces at Bowbrook allotments is the meadow development. We have simply left some grass to grow long and cut paths through them to give the opportunity to wander, appreciating the sounds of grasshoppers, bees, hoverflies and the multitude of other insects, enjoying the sight of butterflies hovering over the grasses and the birds feeding on the insects and seeds and on occasion our resident kestrels hovering overhead and hunting the voles. Before the allotments were established the site was pastureland so the wildflowers that have appeared within our long grass areas are few in number, but we aim to improve this over the next few years by planting plugs of wildflowers.

Other areas have been planted up with wildflower seed mixes with varying degrees of success and this will be the subject of my next blog from my green bench.

Tags allotments, meadows, wildfloers

allotments community gardening fruit and veg grow your own meadows

Lottie Working Party

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 7, 2011

At the weekend we took part in a working party at the allotment. These are held regularly aiming to maintain the shared green spaces around the site. The main task for this day was to give the meadows and long grass areas their annual haircut. The photo below shows members strimming the turf spiral maze and mowing the long grass under the fruit trees in one of the community orchards.

Once the orchard has been treated to its annual trim it looks so flat and dull. The tall grasses always sway gently in the slightest breeze and attract insects and butterflies. Cutting these grasses down really emphasise that summer is coming to an end.

We hope next year to be able to plant plugs of wildflowers into the grass of the meadows and orchards. We have already planted bulbs in the meadows, daffodils into the one and alliums, muscari and crocus into the other. The photo below shows one of our orchards in early summer when the purple globes flowers of the alliums look stunning with the dainty yellow flowers of the meadow buttercups. This picnic is particularly popular with plotters when they take their coffee-breaks or wish to sit and quietly read a book.

Tags allotments, community gardening

allotments fruit and veg grow your own

Fruity Welcome

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 7, 2011

Today we harvested our two Red Windsor apple trees. They are miniature trees called “coronets” and we chose them to flank our front door, where they live in big, heavy, 24inch terracotta pots mulched with a layer of pebbles. One of the trees was a thank you gift so we bought another to make a matching pair. They seemed a far better option to the more formal possibilities – standard hollies, conifers or lavenders.

They are ideal for this position as they give lots of blossom early in the year which is much loved by bees and hoverflies and colouful fruit throughout the summer. Then today they yielded a 6 lb harvest of tasty looking fruit. The fruit is described as cox-like but we shall wait and see. The only problem with growing apples by your front door is that the postman thinks they are for him!

Tags apples, fruit., grow your own, harvest

allotments fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Busy Day on the Lottie

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date August 27, 2011

We spent a busy day up on the lottie yesterday, expecting the plot to be wet after 36 hours of steady rain at home. But even though the lottie is only 10 minutes away the plot was dry all but a dampness on the surface. The plot is divided into quarters by grass paths and we thought these may need mowing but the weather has been so dry that there was no grass growth at all.

The main task was to improve the soil in the one quarter – dig out a trench, rotovate over the bottom to break up the boulder clay, spread a layer of half-rotted straw in the bottom, fill the trench back in and finally top it off with a thick mulch of compost. We planted out more leek plants, about 80, into this, half Musselburgh and half Swiss Giant. We had already planted out some Swiss Giant weeks ago and they have made good growth. Our aim is to keep harvesting leeks throughout winter and spring – we eat so many of them!

In between the rows of leek plantlets we sowed Mooli, two types of chickory one for leaves and one hearts, turnip for autumn salads and some winter spring onions, both red bulbed and white. We also took the risk of sowing some carrots chancing the weather in the hope of some very late baby roots and some dwarf french beans for late autumn cropping.

So it’s fingers crossed now in the hope that the late summer and early autumn weather is benevolent!

Tags allotments, grow your own, vegetables

allotments community gardening grow your own outdoor sculpture

Super Scarecrows

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date August 17, 2011

We have a real champion creator of scarecrows at our lottie site, Bowbrook Allotment Community. Every year Mrs Anna as she calls herself, crafts splendid characters for us to enjoy. Last year we had a scarecrow version of Shrek but this year she produced three wonderful characters based on her family apparently. The old couple who doze in the shade under our sycamore tree are based on her parents while the pink beauty is herself 10 years from now. Incredible!