Tomato action!

Yes, we have no bananas, but we've got these tomato plants, last few remaining.




Tiny flowers about to appear! Treat 'em well and they turn into tomatoes. How do they do that! Have planted four plants in the school garden so far.

Strawberry cage

Fed up as I am with foxes and pigeons messing with me plants I´ve built a little cage - or at least some sticks with netting attached - to protect these stawberry plants. Fingers crossed!

Spring harvesting

In the foreground you can see the nasturtiums which we planted in order to attract blackfly and greenfly away from the runner beans. The beans themselves were grown by year one students.




I salvaged strawberry plants from the bed that was removed to make way for the new quiet area entrance. Most have been sold but the last few will be for sale on Friday at drop off, in the upper playground. The pots have been placed amongst the garlic plants.





The cabbages are fairly small then!






















Broad beans are almost ready for harvesting.














The potatoes are the ´first early´ type, so we should see the plants flowering soon.








These lettuces were sold yesterday. Mine had a few tiny slugs in amongst the leaves. Very nutritious!







Onions in the foreground. The leaves are delicious!

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.

New plantings for winter

As you've probably noticed most of the plants (tomatoes, chillies, courgettes, squash etc) have been dug up and consigned to the composter. All that remains are the purple podded beans (the success of the year) and some nasturtiums.
The present mild spell has created a window for planting new crops to occupy the beds for the winter season. A visit to Terwins Seeds on Bury St Edmunds market provided some very handy plug plants: cabbage, broad beans, pea shoots and lettuce, all of which were a decent size, which should see them thriving before the temperature drops. The idea of planting now is that the plants should establish themselves and grow very slowly over the winter, giving them a head start when spring arrives in March. It should also mean that the broad bean growing tips avoid the curse of greenfly, as they are small and at their most vulnerable before the greefly season.
Still to be planted are the onions and the pea shoots.

I was helped yesterday by Simon from The London Cycle Workshop and his friend Sue. To tell the truth, I sort of messed about while they did most of the work - I could get used to this supervising lark! Sue planted an entire bed of (Solent Wight) garlic while Simon planted broad beans and lettuce. We are hoping to hold a cycle workshop where Belleville pupils can bring their bikes to school one Sunday and learn about bike safety and how to clean and look after their bikes. Could this be the birth of the Belleville Bicycle Club?

We were watched by the new addition to the Belleville Veg Garden, the beady eyed Alberto. His job is to scare off the foxes (ha!) and to keep a look out for strawberry thieves.

This fleece is there mainly to keep the foxes off the beds. They like to dig for worms and slugs which apparently make up a major part of their diet.

New fence

We have a new fence at the Belleville veg garden. We´ve given it a couple of coats of rustic looking wood preserver and a good sandpapering. There´s now a bit more room inside the fence so that larger groups of children can visit the garden more easily, as we hope to integrate with the school carriculum more fully this year.



[Left] A highly trained craftsman gives the fence a coat of ´Eco Preserver´

[Above] Skills like these don´t come cheap you know!

While we were on our hols in France the garden had a real growth spurt! The beans in particular had done really well. They are the ´purple podded´ variety chosen because they show up so well and are therefore easy to pick. They also seem not to have attracted a single greenfly/blackfly which is a huge advantage. Although purple when picked they go green when boiled, something that goes down well with the children.
The courgettes also went crazy and some turned into marrows. The tomatoes and sweetcorn are now ripening and the squash are growing rapidly. The tomatoes are delicious and, as happened a couple of years ago, the Radiator Charlie´s Mortgage Lifters are set to be enormous (and delicious!).
Next year we really need to make sure produce gets picked in August so we´ll be looking for volunteers! Pick your own localorganic veg. Can´t be bad.
I´m hoping to have some produce for sale in the upper playground at pick up next week, either Monday or Tuesday.

[Above] The finished fence looking quite sturdy