Spring Update

It's that time of year again, the clocks have gone forward, the temperature's rising, new shoots are appearing all over the place - and I'm off on my hols for two weeks.
Today was my last chance for a session before going away and, amazingly, I found this lump of ice on one of the polytunnels.
It was a bitter night, but I'm fairly sure that from today the nights and days will be getting a fair bit warmer.

The garden is all set for the growing season, and here's a rundown of what's in each bed:

Bed One:

Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. They were being eaten by the pigeons, so we had to put nets up to keep them away.
The plastic bags are supposed to act as bird scarers.
Once these brassicas are harvested we'll turn this bed over to salad crops.


Bed Two:

Potatoes. Grown from chitted potatoes (old potatoes which are left in cool, light place to encourage growth of the little shoots).
I planted two rows of Pink Fir Apples which are a knobbly but very delicious potato. They are great in salads and can also be eaten hot. The Veg Growing Club members will learn about earthing up in order to increase the crop, once the shoots start appearing.



Bed Three:

This bed contains a fair amount of perpetual spinach which survived the winter. At each end is a pair of brassicas which were transplanted from bed five, which we emptied to make space for other plants to grow.




Bed Four:
This bed will be exclusively for strawberries, although at the moment there are still some swiss chard plants going strong.







Bed Five:
Two rows of garlic, one and a half rows of shallots, and half a row of onions. The garlic is grown from individual cloves, each of which will turn in to a bulb of garlic. The shallots are grown from 'sets' which look like baby onions. They split and you normally get eight or nine shallots from each set. I ran out of shallot sets so filled up the row with some onion sets from last year (Hopefully they weren't too old!).

The second picture shows an onion set in the ground ready to be covered over with soil.
In early May the Veg Club members will sow two rows of carrot seed. I've orded a mixture of heritage varieties including purple, white and red carrots, which is what they used to be like in them olden days.



Bed Six:
Brassicas, including cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower. These are covered with nets to keep the pigeons off. The cloche is merely being used for the same purpose as I ran out of netting, but it will be interesting to see the effect on the grown of those plants under cover.


Bed Seven:
In the main part of bed sic there are two tunnels, one containing little gem lettuce, the other two rows of recently planted wild rocket.






Along the west side of the bed, in both the large and small sections, I've built a cane structure ready for climbing french beans. We can then grow some dwarf beans in front of the canes. These shouldn't take too much of the sun from the climbers.
We'll also be able to keep the wild rocket growing, but the little gem will have to make way for the beans.


Other random photos [click to enlarge]:

Purple sprouting broccoli, cabbage, wild rocket tunnel, little gem.

SEE YOU SOON. HOPE TO HAVE THE FIRST VEG GARDENING CLUB WORKSHOPS IN MAY!

Snow bound

Snow covering the beds on 3rd Feb

Early winter thrills

We had an excellent produce sale last Friday and everything sold out in about five minutes, which was very gratifying and shows that Belleville parents quite literally have great taste [quite literally? - Ed]. We sold spinach, Swiss chard, chinese salad and pak choi.

Swiss chard 'Bright Lights' (right) which is a stunning plant (try some in your flower beds next year?) looking quite literally good enough to eat [Hmm - Ed].

For those who think the growing season is over...... The usual winter crops like parsnips are enjoying the mild weather (ours have all been harvested now) and the perpetual spinach is quite literally living up to it's name [what the ...!.? - Ed].


But the exciting thing is that the chinese salad is still going strong (including the Pak Choi) and the Winter Little Gem seedlings are doing well in my greenhouse and should be ready for planting out in a couple of weeks. I may even use a cloche for them although in theory they shouldn't need one. It's all soooo exciting [calm down -Ed)

[Left] Weird looking but delicious chinese lettuce, part off the the chinese salad collection that seems to enjoy the cold.

[Right] Winter Little Gem in the greenhouse

[Below] Parsnips picked in October

Wild Garden - The Big Clear Out

Today was an 'open day' where volunteer parents (and a teacher) cleared out the rubbish at the site and pruned or removed bushes that were in the wrong place or were inappropriate for the wild garden. Some were dying, some were covered in thorns. We also removed the really grim looking chain link fence and chicken wire that jst acted as a collection point for leaves and bits of rubbish. It's looking a lot better now (and lighter too) but more tidying up work is still needed before we start work on planting and erecting insect and bird houses. We'll probably have another session next Sunday.

Sauce, tools and the dreaded blight!

Green Team members Lara & Joe join Lucas to show off the giant Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter tomato

[Photo courtesy of The Wandsworth Borough News]

It's been a busy week for the Green Team who have also been invited along to a garden tool recycling project run by the Conservation Foundation in conjuction with HMP Wandsworth. The general public have been invited to deposit their worn out and damaged garden tools at recycling centres (such as the one near Wandsworth Bridge), and these tools have then been repaired and refurbished by prisoners at Wandsworh prison.

Belleville were donated a full set and it is hoped that these can be used in the construction of the wild garden which is due to be built before the end of the year (email me if you'd like to help with this project).

The cold, wet weather of a couple of weeks ago took its toll and blight swept through the tomato plants - we lost more than half of them. Blight is characterised by brown patches that appear on branches and stems and soon reach the fruit which would go brown and rot, given the chance. The disease spreads rapidly from plant to plant. In theory the plants should be burned and tomatoes shouldn't be grown in the same soil for three years to halt the spread of the disease. Nasty.

On a happier note the Cream Sausage tomatoes grew very well and I made a sauce based on an Italian recipe.














You basically heat onions and garlic, add the chopped yellow tomatoes, add a yellow pepper and when cooked, blend to make a sauce which goes well with pasta and fish in particular.



Currently the foxes are driving me mad and we've had to resort to physical barriers to stop them destroying the new crops [right]


The mini Indian summer has helped the surviving to tomatoes to ripen.

The giant Radiator Charlie Mortgage Lifter is no more. I ate it.
Almost all of it.

And it was extremely tasty which you might not expect such a whoppa to be. Up there with the Coeur De Boeuf that we ate in France in August. I added a little seasoning, extra virgin olive oil and a drop of balsamic, and wow, tomato heaven.
Served with grilled Haloumi. Yum. Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter was the success of the year, especially considering the poor weather. I'll be selling seedlings and small plants in the playground next April for sure.

While we're on the subject of sauce, we've made use of the surplus by making lots of tomato sauce, some spicy using chillies from the garden, and these have been sold in the playground for the PTA.
The most recent batch we made was a simple blend of tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil, a little balsamic vinegar and seasoning.