Dig For Victory!

YOUR GARDEN NEEDS YOU!!

Are you a lower playground parent or will you be a lower playground parent next year?

Do you enjoy the vegetable garden?
Do you feel sad when you see the plants looking thirsty?
Would you like to earn the respect of your children?
Well now's your chance to help!

We're looking for volunteer 'drought wardens' to check on the garden at drop-off and pick-up time, and to water the garden if it looks dry. It would only take a few minutes although if you have longer to give the soil a good soaking, then that would be great. For more info see below:

The hose is easily attached to the tap
Don't water if the soil is already damp
When you water it's better to thoroughly soak some of the garden then wet the surface of the whole garden
Most veg require lots of water, but parsnips, garlic & onions need a little less when they are a decent size
The raised beds dry out very quickly and very deeply because they are laid on tarmac. It's a good idea to sometimes leave the hose on the surface of the soil while the water soaks in
Tomato leaves don't like being wet for too long, but on a warm and sunny day this isn't a problem
In order of water requirement: Potatoes, beans, courgettes and pumpkins, carrots, tomatoes, salads etc
If the gate is locked when you are finished you can leave via the school office

For some further entertainment try these excellent sites which are sure to give you a lift in these difficult times!
http://outonafunkytrip.blogspot.com/
http://skatalitesindub.blogspot.com/

Thank you for your kind attention - Ministry of Food

Courgettes in a pot

CLICK ON PIX TO ENLARGE

For anyone who bought a courgette plant at the summer fair (and there were quite a few of you), just repot into a large pot with compost, keep moist and find a sunny spot. My plant was grown from seed at the same time as the ones sold at the fair, but re-potted a week or two earlier, so yours should be ready to produce courgettes any day.

These shallots were grown at the school and will be for sale at drop off on Monday along with some bags of curly kale, one of the world's healthiest foods apparently!

How to grow leeks?

There are various ways to grow leeks but this year I sprinkled some seeds into compost filled 5" pots and transplanted the resulting seedlings (in big clumps) into one of the raised beds when they were a reasonable size. I dug these up today. In the photo on the left you can see how the roots have formed a healthy looking root ball.




At this stage (or before) it's a good idea to mark out your lines (with string?) and make your holes. These should be six inches apart and six inches deep and the rows should be around a foot apart.




I then shook out some of the soil (photo left).












The individual leeks then have to be teased apart (above) and then the roots and leaves are trimmed (right).
The leeks are then dropped into the holes and 'puddled in' (left) which is a gardening term used by the real experts. It means filling the hole with water, which doesn't sound as technical as 'puddling in'. This process settles the roots and fills the bottom of the hole with soil so the leek can get into growing mode again.

They look neat in their rows which I've covered with netting in an attempt to stop foxes digging them up. They look for disturbed soil which, because they are stupid, they hope might contain a chicken.

I'd actually grown four clumps of leeks so I planted the remaining ones at Honeywell Nursery (below right) with the able assistance of Sam Watson.

Bloomin' June

[Above] Veg Club member Javonte takes a look at the potato plants

[Left] Curly Kale, an early kids Veg Club project, grown from seed. They grow into spectacular plants and are a staple of the Able & Cole veg boxes later in the year. Ha!

[Right] Dwarf beans. There's one clearly visible in the middle of the photo. Behind the beans are the canes for the climbing beans which are just beginning to curl around the poles.

[Left] The clumps of leeks in the foreground are waiting transplantation to rows in one of the other beds. The wild garlic is ready if anyone wants some?

[Right] Onions, shallots and garlic coming along nicely. You can also just see carrots in the outside rows planted by a kind Veg Club member - just where I was going to plant the leeks. Still they're coming on ok. I've also sown five rows of 'heirloom' carrots in the first raised bed... yellow, cream, white and red. Anything but orange. They never used to be orange you know.

[Left] Pak Choi. I'll be selling some at pick up on Monday. I've tried it. It's very nice.

[Right] Pumpkin plants. Last year the butternut squash was a disaster. These are Halloween style pumpkins.

[Left] Strawberries. Everybody likes strawberries. Not sure if there will be enough to sell as they don't ripen at the same time. Although there might be, as there are loads more than last year. I think they taste better than the ones in the shops. Javonte agrees.

[Below] I'm quite excited about my tomato plant cage. I borrowed the idea from something I saw at the Chelsea Flower Show a couple of years ago. Their's was much better.
Don't forget to prune your tomatoes if you bought any off me. And put them in the ground if you can. And support them well with big canes. And feed them when the first tomatoes are full size. They should be great!
And if you could donate to the African school project on the left it might actually get built, as they've almost reached their target.

Veg tribulations

I was beginning to think it was easy. Plant a few seeds, watch the seedlings grow into plants, cut them down, sell them. And then along came the brassicas. If you look further down this page you'll see photos of nice pointy headed cabbages. I didn't have time to harvest and sell them. The sun came out and they bolted. Which means the nice pointy cabbagy heads opened up and turned into great big leaves. Which is fine, but not so neat and pointy and ace as what we had before.

Post Script I whizzed down to Honeywell today and harvested twelve cabbages in their pre-bolting state. They were planted a couple of weeks after the Belleville ones and as the weather has been cooler recently they hadn't had a chance to bolt. Phew.


Please have a look at the 'Just Giving' box on the left hand side of the page. If you click 'donate' you will see more details about the project. It looks like a worthy cause to me, and Danny Wallce is an ok fella.
Speaking of the Club, there's an after-school workshop this Friday 15th May for joinees. 1530-1700.

The Belleville Cauliflower Experience

The brassicas have been pretty decent so far, especially now four of them have turned into cauliflowers. They look great and need regular watering to keep them in good shape.
These specimens are up for sale on eBay (in aid of the Belleville Primary School PTA) . Just go to eBay and search for the Belleville Cauliflower Experience. You'd be mad not to.

The other thing you can to with caulis apart from keeping them watered is to keep the sun off the heads which stops them yellowing (not that that affects the taste). The one in the photo on the left below has had the leaves bent over to protect it.

The leek seedlings are doing well (I think). I started them in five inch pots and after they grew repotted to ten inch, of which we now have three. One of these I planted out into a bed I'm using as a nursery bed, which at the moment only contains some wild garlic. The idea is to grow them on until they're as thick as a pencil and then they can be planted out in their final positions, alongside the garlic and onions. Unless we sow carrots there first, which we may do as the garlic and onions might repel the dreaded carrot fly.


The Pink Fir Apple spuds have been earthed up nicely by some veg club members. Last year I underwatered the potatoes which produced the unsightly, but harmless, potato scab. Nice name.
However, when it comes to watering (club members take note) , please don't overdo it!

Post Easter Break

Two weeks away and the change in the garden has been fairly amazing. The chard and spinach has gone crazy, the onions, garlic and shallots [foreground above] have come through as have the potatoes (pink fir apples), the brassicas have gone crazy and the fox has dug up the climbing beans.









[Above] Purple and white sprouting broccoli, a delicacy to be savoured!
[Below] Onions, garlic and shallots on the left and a rather neat looking pointy cabbage on the right. A bargain at a pound!













[Below left] spinach ready for harvesting
[Below right] swiss chard in the foreground. It's about to be removed to make room for more strwberries.














[Left] Pink fir apple potatoes, just showing through. We'll earth them up when they're about ten cms high.

[Right] Little gem on the right and a new crop of wild rocket on the left.

I might be doing more after drop-off harvesting on demand. Look out for the emails!