Quiet Area developments and new plantings

Click on images to enlarge
Major renovations of the 'Quiet Area' have begun. The idea is to make it less of a thoroughfare and more of a place for the children to go to read, play games and sit and talk. A new canopy is being built and walls are being painted a shade of olive green. Very calming!


Both access gates will go, to be replaced by a single central gate that will allow access from the lower playground through the veg garden along a path made from the new quiet area covering, which will probably be a form of artificial grass.
The upshot of this is that the strawberry bed [left] will have to go.....




.....so in order not to have to throw away the plants that survived the winter I've repotted about twenty of them into pots, and they seem to be doing well so far. These will be available for purchase if any parents fancy having a pot or container of strawberries in their garden or patio. The strwberries are famous for being very sweet although they do have a habit of disappearing, especially during break time for some reason.



[Left] This bed has been allowed to veg out over the winter and is half empty as the earth was used for topping up the other beds which have settled over the years. After a quick weeding job I planted two rows of potatoes. Hopefully these ´earlies´ will be ready in June or early July at the latest.





Of course the fox/foxes dug some of them up overnight, resulting in the new (chitted) growth getting removed. This will probably result in some of the new plants not growing successfully. Grrr.
Speaking of foxes, lets hope that the new single gate access will result in the Quiet Area becoming a fox-free zone! (Plea to Baki, can we not have a large gap under the gate so the foxes can't squeeze through?)



The earth from this bed has also been used for topping up the others, but prior to it being topped up with earth from the strawberry bed I added a layers of sand, then bark chip, then a layer of half matured leaf mould (real leaf mould takes two years to mature, ours has had one).



Keeping the pigeons off the cabbages been a bit of a battle over the winter, and I´ve added an extra layer of netting to keep the greedy #*!%*s at bay. Pigeons, this is your final warning: One more nibble and I´m reaching for the shotgun.





As mentioned in the previous posting I´ve dug a trench where the beans will grow and filled it with half rotted compost from the tumbling composter. Very smelly but great food for the beans and worms.
Speaking of worms, it´s almost time for holding another ´bring a worm to school day´!
Nature alert: Look out for the Lesser Spotted Crombie, seen in the area in the last few days!


Any Belleville parents who would like to get involved with the veg garden in whatever capacity please contact me.
Cheers, Jim Dutton.

Spring is in the air?

At last, after what has seened liked the longest winter ever, the weather seems to have changed for the better, making the idea of gardening seem much more pleasant!

I have a couple of egg boxes of potatoes chitting away in a sunny window, and have been about to plant them a couple of times when the night frosts have intervened. I'm hoping to get them into the ground on Friday, so long as the weather holds.

I'm also going to try a bean growing trick that I read about recently. The idea is to dig a trench where you intend to plant your beans, and fill it with half rotted compost. This forms an ideal supply of food for the beans which can be quite hungry plants. I'm thinking of growing the purple podded variety again this year as they were popular and easy to harvest (being purple, rather than green). It's also good fun watching them turn green when boiled or steamed.

The garlic and onions seem to be doing well despite the attention of foxes (who dig them up in their pursuit of worms). As usual the pigeons have nibbled the cabbages, which they'll do when there's no more easily available food around. They'll hopefully stop when the cabbages are bigger and the leaves they've nibbled can be removed and added to the compost.