Gardening club and born again tomatoes!

Lets hope the change in the weather doesn't mean we'll have a summer like last year i.e. a couple of weeks of summer when it should be spring, followed by four months of rain. Not good for vegetables, worse for tomatoes (which are technically fruit rather than veg). Even worse for people.

The next stage for the garden is to increase the involvement of the children, so that they can follow the growth and harvesting of the produce. I'd also like to start a veg gardening club so that children who want to increase their gardening skills and knowledge can do so. And so that they can be used as slave labour (just kidding PTA).

Watering is a proving a problem as the raised beds dry out very quickly - so I'm looking for volunteer parents who could keep an eye on things at pick-up or drop-off. Plus, plants in the greenhouse may need watering every day, certainly when it's very sunny. Please send me an email me if you can help.

During the mega planting day earlier this week (Monday), I kept meaning to check on the tomatoes still in the 'greenhouse' at Honeywell School, as they were in small pots and it was very hot. On Tuesday morning I realised that I had completely forgotten, and whizzed over to find ten 'dead' tomato plants. I should have taken a photo because two hours later, amazingly, all but one had recovered completely after being given a good drink. I've seen revivals before, but these really did look very dead. I'm thinking of filming the process - taking a plant and starving it of water, letting it 'die' and then filming the revival, time lapse style - and adding it to the blog.
We've grown over 100 tomato plants from seed; varieties include Tornado F1, Alicante, Gardener's Delight, Tres Cantos, Dutchman, Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter, Brandywine, Marmande, Cream Sausage, Mr Stripey Denar & Oregon Spring. You'll see in the photos the progress from tiny seedlings through to decent sized plants in pots. Last year I ended up with tons of green tomatoes, but hopefully there'll be plenty of time for ripening this year as they're so much earlier - sun willing. We've already sold quite a few plants to parents, to grow in their own gardens. Battersea, the natural home of the tomato!

Planting completed!

Took advantage of the early summer heatwave today and managed to get all the beds planted up ahead of schedule. Seedlings that would normally be ready for planting out in June were bursting out of their pots, so I couldn't resist -- especially as it's my last day off for a while. And if the weather suddenly turns nasty and the more tender plants (courgettes, squash and aubergine) die - well there's plenty more where they came from in the greenhouse at home.

Planted in Year Six's bed:
Five dwarf french beans
Nine peppers (various types)
Planted in Year Five's bed:
Three aubergines
Six tomatoes (various types)
Six clumps of wild garlic donated by the Hopkins family.

Baki turned up with a massive tube of industrial adhesive and stuck the
greenhouse together, so with a bit of luck it won't fall part the next time it
has a close encounter with a football.


Speaking of balls, the veg was getting massacred by flying basketballs during the lunchtime break, but after a round of negotiations it's been agreed that the goals don't need to be quite so close to the veg garden.
Finished off the day potting up about twenty or thirty tomato plants, from small pots to quite large pots. I'm hoping to sell them at our plant/veg stall at the summer fair on 28th June, but with all this sunshine they are way ahead, and might be enormous by the end of June - and many will be be fruiting by then. So if you want to eat delicious, freshly picked, organic tomatoes at home, now's your chance. And it's all for a good cause!

Belleville Garden - Story so far.

There wasn't an obvious place to situate a vegetable garden at Belleville School. Word had got out that I had built a vegetable garden at Honeywell Nursery while my son Lucas was a pupil there the previous year. John Grove, head teacher Belleville, asked me if it might be feasible to try something similar at his school, now that Lucas had a place in the Reception class. I was pretty keen to try, but after a look round decided that the only suitable 'green' area (the beds alongside Webbs Road) was hampered by the almost total absence of direct sunlight.
I reported back that the area most suitable was the main playground which had the drawback of being er, the main playground. There was also the possibility of siting a couple of large planters outside the Reception classes facing Belleville Road, enough to maybe grow some tomatoes and beans in. Having thought that would be the end of it, I was gobsmacked when caretaker Baki Gashi sidled up to me in the playground at drop-off one morning and said he had something to show me. A fence had been built around the 'quiet area' bordering the main playground, and Baki wondered if the enclosed area might be suitable for the vegetable garden. It seemed they don't hang about at Belleville! I said yes, especially if the tarmac could be dug up. This not being possible we went down the deep raised beds route. I thought that if we could built a separate bed for each year group it would encourge the children and teachers to get involved; so we ordered the seven raised bed kits from a company called 'link-a-bord, and the fun began!