Here come the girls.. with carrots

The gardening club at school is back in full swing as you can see from the excitment from pulling and showing off the carrots, through the window! The seeds were planted more in hope than expectation at the beginning of July and they have produced some really nice specimens, as well as the funny multistemmed ones; proving to the children that gardening is fun as well as tasty.

The peas produced a  few more pods as did the beans.  The peas are almost at the end and I am not sure how much longers the beans will keep going.

The pumpkins are swelling, so far the slugs havent noticed; but we are not sure if we planted green skinned varieties or if they just havent ripened yet.  Chances are with this weather the pumpkins will keep swelling; but not so confident about any colour change.

Star parent, Charlie Ratcliffe of Warwick New Gardens has offered to put down weed supressing membrane for the floor of the polytunnel, if we can clear the weeds from there.  It will be a huge benefit to have the right sort of flooring in there, and all we have to do is clear the weeds and bark, which at the moment feels like a big task.

Happy Gardening !

Oh to be in England….

….Now that summers here ( to mis quote Browning)

Sitting in my garden at the end of a beautiful summer’s day listening to the doves cooing, watching the house martins and swifts swoop overhead, makes me feel glad to be alive.  With the school broken up for the summer holidays Hatton Park WI have taken over the Ferncumbe community garden; keeping a watchful eye on the plants and weeding.  Today 3 of us; myself Marion and Jo spent a pleasant hour weeding the beds and deciding what to sow.  As this summer is so topsy-turvy weather wise we thought it was worth trying a final sowing of peas, runner beans, carrots and beetroot; hoping they will crop in September and October.  It’s an experiment, if they don’t fruit in time, before the frosts and shorter days at least the space has been growing what we wanted rather than weeds.  We hope that having the garden planted and productive by the time the school returns will inspire both pupils and teachers to keep gardening through the year.

Whilst at the school we inspected the Ferncumbe Olympic tyres, and they are perfect, all blooming just in time for the opening ceremony on Friday.  The spinach is doing so well we pinched out the plants that were getting ready to seed, so it’s a productive area too.   It is only in the last couple of days that the sun has encouraged the marigolds to flower, so I don’t think the children saw the Olympic display before they broke up. I don’t expect it will last until they return in September, so these photos will be the evidence of the Ferncumbe Olympic tribute.

 

 

Suddenly watering is becoming a priority, for existing plants in the ground I am resisting the urge to water; if the plant can cope so far I am hoping it has enough roots to find water deeper down in the soil.  Of course this does not apply to containers, so my watering priorities are containers first (and only).

Let’s hope this better weather lasts, as gardeners it would be ideal if it rained at night and was sunny in the day, but at the moment, more sun than rain is a welcome change.

Happy Gardening!

Planting for the autumn

After the frantic activity of the last few weeks to redeisgn the garden and establish the Olympic tyres this week has been more of a stroll than a gallop; a chance to draw breath and appreciate all the progress we have made.

The Olympic tyres are OK, perhaps not fantastic; the bought plants for the blue and red rings are doing very well, and suprisingly the black basil has put on quite a growth spurt and is looking good.  The ‘problems’ are the marigolds, very lush but no flowers yet so rather green, and with lots of buds coming they should be good in the next week or 2.  Its the spinach that is not working well.  The plants are bolting – going to seed, and to try to stop them we are pinching out the seed heads, but they look lanky and leggy and quite poor compared to the other tyres.  We slipped some spinach seed in to the gaps in the hope they will  germinate quickly and fill up the gaps.  Otherwise I think we’ll be raiding the herb bed for some thyme or mint to give an immediate green carpet for the final tyre.

Elsewhere we planted the school initials TFS (The Ferncumbe School) with the spares from the Olympic garden and they are doing well.

Last week I went to the Schools Gardening event t Coombe Abbey where I was helping children to make paper pots and plant seeds.  As they were planting Peas and Sunflowers for September, we  decided to do similar  in the Ferncumbe Community Garden and have planted peas, runner beans, carrots, beetroot and pumpkins in the hope they will be ready to harvest when the children return for the autmn term too.  With all our lovely raised beds, its great to start using them.

We are hoping the school classes will get planting too, so they have fresh vegetables to welcome them back in the autumn.

Lets hope the rain keeps off this weekend so we can all enjoy our gardens, Happy Gardening!

 

Gardening the Olympics

As our tribute to the Olympic games the gardening club at school have planted the rings.  We used old tyres and laid them out in the shape of the Olympic rings and have planted up the centres with

Blue Lobelia

Purple Basil (its nearly black)

Red Begonias and a geranium, Yellow marigolds (not yet in flower) and Green spinach

To make life easier and to minimise any issues of contamination from the tyres to the plants we simply used 5 bags of compost, and planted in the compost bag in the tyres. Getting the tyres and compost in place

By rolling down the tops of the compost bags we were able to fit the compost to the tyres.  We broke up any lumps in the compost so it was ready for planting, then smoothed and firmed the top

Planting the lobelias to make the blue ring, we managed to find a blue tyre for this ring.

Planting the red tyre with the geranium and begonias

 

Now its all done, it looks like this and hopefully the foliage and flowers will prosper together to make our tribute to London 2012

Our Olympic Garden

In the vegetable plot, we have started planting the spare spinach and marigolds to make a display, more on this next week, when I hope some of the classes will have begun to plant their plots too.

All set for destruction

Yes we are almost there, the garden makeover starts next week, just after the Jubilee celebrations.  It was a baking hot day on Monday, when I moved what plants I could from the garden, these included Lemon Balm, Hellebores and many bulbs to give to Hatton Park WI for the Jubilee Flower beds, in front of Hatton Park Village Hall.

Last week the school eco group potted on the spinach and marigold seeds they had planted 2 weeks previously, they are growing on fine, as long as they are watered regularly.

The purple basil has not germinated at school, it may have been planted too deeply, luckily I had sown some at home as back up, and I potted them on this week.

After 1/2 term we will establish our tribute to the games of 2012 – our Olympic Tyre Garden, 5 tyres laid out as the Olympic rings with plants and flowers of the right colours in each one:

• Petunias for red and blue
• Marigolds for yellow
• Spinach for green
• Purple basil for black

Here’s hoping the plants all grow at similar rates, and the flowers all come together.  More on this in the next few weeks.

As its half term next week and the garden makeover the blog will skip a week and come back refreshed for the final 1/2 term of the school year.  There should be just time to plant some salad crops and pick them in the final 6 weeks of term, weather permitting!

Happy Jubilee!