Lola Roja and sunflowers

Lola Roja on a sunny July evening, the beans being received in the kitchen, sunflowers showing over the school wall on Wakehurst Road, and tons of Gardener's Delight cherry tomatoes, on the vine. They'll be in Lola Roja in about a week!
[Click on the photos to enlarge]

The plan is to replace the summer crops (such as salads, tomatoes, courgettes and beans) with winter crops - probably in October. These will not only include the usual brassicas (brocolli, cauliflower, cabbages etc), but also winter salads such as Winter Gem, and perpetual spinach. I think swiss chard is also a winter survivor, but will have to check to be sure.

Holidays, foxes and tapas

There's a fox (or foxes) at work in the garden. This morning I had been gardening for a few minutes when one climbed out of one of the raised beds and sauntered off. Looking a bit miffed.
Every time I use the organic fertiliser he digs up the watering pots (which is where I sprinkle the fertiliser) and digs holes in the soil. I believe the fertiliser uses chicken manure which would account for the fox's interest. I've tried to fox-proof the veg garden, so volunteers are advised only to use the gate near the greenhouse, and please make sure both gates are closed when you leave. And look out for foxes on arrival!

Well the holidays are here and there's lots of work to be done before we go away to France for a couple of weeks.

Having harvested the potatoes there was a whole empty raised bed to fill. Rather than sowing seeds I planted all of the sunflowers left over from the competition and I added a couple I had grown myself because I couldn't face seeing them die in pots that are too small for them. I then planted three or four tomato plants that were also stuck in smallish pots. These should lead to us having a continuous supply for some months as they were sown much later than those that are fruiting now. If the weather holds out there's no reason why we shouldn't have tomatoes up to October maybe.
Some of the bigger tomatoes are ready to eat now (see pic below), and the first of the cherry tomatoes (Gardener's Delight) are ripe too. The latter are super sweet and will probably all ripen when I'm away, darn. I keep meaning to mention to harvesters that they shouldn't be over-watered as that makes the taste too, er, watery.

The onion bed also has a big space where the onions were. I'll sow some oriental salads there.
For later in the year I have ordered fifty brassica plug plants from dobies.co.uk. These will save loads of time and effort and are relatively cheap. I've also sourced a variety of other winter season goodies including Winter Gem seeds which allegedly produce a crop of Little Gem lettuce through the winter months. I'm traditionally rubbish at brassicas. They should really be planted in concrete like soil and you don't get concrete like soil in raised beds because it doesn't get trodden on. Although I suppose there's nothing to stop me climbing up and stomping around once they've been planted.

The strawberries have shot out lots of runners and I've pushed some of these down into pots with a view to having some nice strawberry plants to sell cheaply at the Sunday sales (see pic right).

Next week I'll sow some more spinach and swiss chard which should appear in early August and be ready to harvest around three weeks later.

An exciting development is that we have started supplying the Lola Roja restaurant with produce. Today we provided a huge bag of french beans, wild garlic, wild rocket, tomatoes & onions. Co-owner Cristina is a mum at Belleville and all proceeds will go to the PTA. In mid August we will start the Sunday sales, as we should have enough produce to supply the restaurant and parents. If you haven't tried Lola Roja you should, it's amazing. And now they've reduced their carbon footprint. Couldn't get much more locally sourced veg!

Aghh - common scab!

So, end of term and our first disaster.

Dug up the remaining Desiree potatoes today and found that many of them had a nasty scabby thing happening. Looked it up in the book and it's 'Common Scab', the least serious of all potato problems in that the disease is only skin deep. Peel them and the remaining spud is fine. Took the decision not to sell the affected poatoes, but donated them took caretaker Baki's family (and kept some myself).
In the photo below you can see the scabby bit on the large potato to the right. Click on the photo to enlarge.

Produce sale tomorrow at pick up time in the main playground:

About ten bags of onions
Three or four bags of wild rocket (recommended!)
French beans - about five bags? This weeks top tip: Kids love them!
One bag of courgettes
Two bags of potatoes
Some spinach and swiss chard

The tomatoes are suddenly starting to ripen and we should have quite a lot of red ones in a week or so. Oh, and the aubergines are seriously flowering and there's a decent chance that they'll produce over the next few weeks.
Would like to get sowing seeds asap but working for a living seems to be getting in the way.

Might have to buy an automatic watering system. Now that would be cool.

A brief look back

Sunflower competition result and latest sale

[above]
A 'Brandywine' beefsteak tomato, claimed to be the world's tastiest! An old Amish heirloom tomato dating back to 1885 and passed down from generation to generation.

We had eighteen entries into the sunflower competition, most of which have survived and prospered. They were replanted into pots of roughly the same size.
The winner of the first prize of £5.00 is Joseph Lewis (RL) with the runner up prize of £3.00 to George C (RT). Also commended were Aiden O (RB), Jake Horring (Yr 3) & Oliver GB (1c) who each won one pound.

The latest produce sale went really well. I thought there might have been too much harvested, but once again I was delighted by the response from the parents. We actually had to limit people to only one bag of any type of produce, and we still had quite a few people turn up to find everything sold out.

The mixed salad leaves with wild rocket was the one thing I managed to sample (at Peter and Judith BBQ).
Being sold straight out of the ground it needed a good wash and a minute in the salad spinner, but assisted by Judith's salad dressing it was excellent.
Rocket and salad (left); first tomato to turn red, a 'Marmande' (below) ;
wild garlic, not seen in the shops very often! (below left); shallots, small but perfectly formed (below right). Oh, and results of the poll show a preference for growing shallots next year, probably with onions as well. We've dug up lots of onions so far and have left the most recent batch to dry on the fence (bottom pic) in time for the next produce sale which is on Monday 21st July at pick-up.

First produce sale and french bean news

Check out the poll to the right of this column. If you highlight the results you can see where the votes have gone so far. The vote is for whether you'd like us to grow onions, shallots, or both next year.
We had our first sale of produce on Wednesday 2nd July and everything sold out in a flash. I think we sold about twenty five bags of potatoes, Swiss chard, lettuce, onions and shallots. And two courgettes. Some ended up on my plate (see photo above). We would have had a few beans to sell but someone (me) forgot to pick them. I think it was because Year One children came to inspect the progress of their onions, which they seemed to enjoy for some reason, and I was distracted. I grew the shallots elsewhere in case you were wondering.

If you bought a tomato plant and the leaves are starting to go yellow then it either needs putting in a bigger pot with some compost, or else it needs fertilizer. Even better than re-potting, is putting it in the ground as that's where they really like to be. I've just bought some Miracle-Grow Organic fertilizer which smells much like chicken manure pellets, but comes in a more manageable form.
The race is on to get the first ripe tomato, and so far it's RB class in the lead. Their Tornado F1 plant is obviously getting plenty of sunshine. I just repotted it (see pix) as the leaves were yellowing. May have left it too late, we'll see. Coming second are the Marmande tomatoes in the individual square raised bed in the vegetable garden (see photo in previous blog if you're really sad).
Remember not to overwater the tomatoes. Let them dry out before watering. This improves the flavour and makes the roots work harder. If it's all going very well you could consider pruning off some of the leaves, the idea being that the plants energy will then be diverted into the tomatoes rather than the leaves.

It's interesting to see the difference between the tomatoes in the raised beds and those in pots like these Tornado plants. The ones in the raised beds are massive in comparison!
One tip for anyone watering the raised beds: apparently parsnips like dryish conditions so maybe only water if they look like they are wilting, or if you know for sure that they haven't been watered for ages.

Below: The dwarf and climbing french beans have really gone crazy. The other day they were tiny and next time I looked there were tons to pick. And the more you pick, the more are produce! We'll be selling these in the playground on Monday 7th July at drop off - and there should still be plenty more for Fridays produce sale.

Latest crops

Cream sausage tomato (above) Onions on the fence and the potato digging children.
Potatoes just dug up. First of the beans.



Marmande tomatoes just beginning to ripen. Rocket (below). Butternut squash (below left)