Category: grow your own

Bubble Wrap Duvet

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 7, 2011

Today we woke to the first frost of the year. My phone tells me its minus one. It’s only a thin weak frost but a useful reminder of how lucky we are to have gone this far into the year without one. Last year we had our first in September and that was not unusual. It also made us feel a little smug that we had got round to giving the greenhouse its duvet of bubble wrap at the weekend. It takes 100 metres of the large bubbled wrap to get the inside safely wrapped for winter – it is the only time I regret owning such a big greenhouse!

Bubble wrap is always so hard to fix up and always looks a mess but it does the job. We used a combination of black gaffer tape and the little plastic fiddly fixings specially designed for the job.

We moved under cover the peppers, chillies and sweet, growing in bags to hopefully get a few more fruits from them as well as the potatoes in their bags planned for cropping in December. We then had the time-consuming task of bringing in any half-hardy plants in pots such as aeoniums, begonias, echeverias, Euphorbia mellifera, salvias and summer flowering bulbs.

As a belt and braces procedure we take cuttings of some of the salvias, as well as bringing the parent plants in, as they often fail to survive through the winter even under the protection of the greenhouse.

This Salvia with its stunning red flowers which have an added cerise hue in sunlight only started flowering in late October so we could only appreciate its glorious flowers for a few weeks before bringing it into the greenhouse. If the first frost had come at the more usual time in late September or early October presumably it would have failed to flower this year. fingers crossed now that we can keep it through to warmer times.

Tags aeonium, chillies, greenhouses, grow your own, peppers, salvias, winter protection

garden wildlife gardening grow your own

Greenhouse Pest Control

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 22, 2011

This has to be the greenest method of pest control any gardener can have in the greenhouse. He is one big frog! We are so lucky to have not just frogs but also toads and newts to help rid the greenhouse of slugs and bugs.

Tags frogs, garden wildlife, greenhouse gardening, organic gardening

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 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

fruit and veg gardening grow your own permaculture

Permaculture Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 4, 2011

We recently visited the permaculture garden of Wade Muggleton and his family in South Shropshire and what a wonderful garden it is, full of interest, attractive and so productive. Every inch of space is used and productive on several layers – tree, shrub and ground. The front garden is home to fruit from strawberries at ground level, through gooseberries, including a deep red fruited bush with intense sweet taste, and on up through cordon apples and finally up to apples grown on trees. The star of the front garden though was the Japanese Wineberry with its bright orange and red colouring and textured stems – and they had a sweet, rich taste.

The back garden of this ex-council house overlooks beautiful rambling Shropshire countryside, which can be appreciated from a well-placed bench. Chickens roam freely and contentedly under fruit trees amongst a wildflower meadow. The most striking tree was a pear which bore deep red fruit which Wade was unable to name as it was bought cheaply without a label, but he could tell us that it tasted as good as it looked.

The back garden contained everything a good organic garden should – water butts, comfrey plants, small wildlife pool, compost systems, and a small greenhouse. Examples of original ideas in recycling could be found everywhere, such as a shower cubicle as a coldframe and a plastic container that housed a mini-square foot garden.

Wade talked to us about permaculture, about optimising your productive space by prioritising which crops you grow, choosing crops for richness of flavour and encouraged us to play the percentage game by realising that we could not be totally self-sufficient but every bit we do builds up to reduce pressure on the wider environment.

Tags fruit and vegetable growing, grow your own, organic gardening

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

fruit and veg gardening grow your own

Apple Arch

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date August 19, 2011

We have trained a Scrumptious apple tree over an archway over the path to the greenhouse. Starting with a one year maiden whip we trained it over the arch pruning it as a cordon and within three years we were harvesting heavy crops. The only problem we encountered was when the main trunk was snapped off in heavy winds when it was heavily laden with fruit. But we learnt our lesson and from then on always tie it in as it grows with much stronger fixings.

In the photo the redness of these delicious and attractive apples looks great behind the yellow saucer shaped flowerheads of the fennel and the metallic blue globes of the echinops.