Filed under: News
Front garden from above
Filed under: Doing, Learning, Planning, Thinking | Tags: fan, fruit tree, grapevine, pruning, training, trellis
When we first cleared back some of the undergrowth in the back garden we discovered an old grapevine stump that looked like it was dead. To our delight it started to sprout a tonne of leaves a few months back so todays job was to start training it up a trellis into a fan.
There is some good advice here – http://www.realenglishfruit.co.uk/content/treetraining.htm
Grapevine at the start of day
Grapevine after haircut - we cut it back to just two leaders
Grapevine with leaders tied to trellis ready to grow into a fan
Filed under: Doing | Tags: cauliflowers, nasturtium, peas, potatoes, rocket, young m27 apple tree
Okay so it is my first growing season which means just like your friends who bore you with baby photos, I have to upload photos of stuff growing.
Sure I am not going to win any awards for photo journalism but THESE THINGS ARE GROWING IN MY GARDEN!!!!
Young cauliflowers planted amongst rocket on the rear raised bed
Potatoes growing alongside an apple tree and nasturtium
Yes, they were as tasty as they look!
Loads of the turkish food places around me leave used oil drums out with the trash and I have taken quite the fancy to their bright colours and patterns and begun collecting them (I have seven different sorts so far!)
They make nice planters…
Newly planted tomatoes in oil drum
So we now have quite the tomato patch in the front room…
Tomatoes take over the front room!
Filed under: Collecting, Learning | Tags: ladybird, larva, larvae, photo, picture
Just in case you are as clueless as me – here is a picture of a ladybird larva hanging out in the sun in the back garden. They are our friends - eating aphids and generally looking kinda badass.
The pond has been getting a little moody so I thought I might buy it a present to cheer it up:
For forty pounds I got a solar powered water oxygenating pump from eBay. It seems to be a standard budget option and it is no frills, only working when the sun is beaming but with the addition of a bit more pond weed too, the pond is now starting to be a bit less grumpy. Pretty sure it was a good investment but I haven’t seen anything similar elsewhere on my wanders to compare it to…
Filed under: Doing, Learning | Tags: apprenticeship, growing communities, Ida Fabrizio, robin grey, ru litherland, sara davies, Sophie Verhagen
I am now half way through my appenticeship working on the urban market gardens at Growing Communities – this photo was taken today after an epic harvest.
Quite how I managed to get three months into the apprenticeship without mentioning it on the blog is a mystery but I have been so busy learning the names of leafy green things that my mind has not quite been on the money in other areas :-)
The fellow front left is Ru Litherland, the head grower, and the person to whom I now owe a huge chunk of my knowledge about plants, especially salad growing and pruning fruit trees.
If you don’t know anything about Growing Communities can I recommend you have a peek around their website – http://www.growingcommunities.org/ – as part of their weekly fruit and veg box scheme they run the only pieces of organically certified land inside the M25 to produce mixed leaf salad and other bits and bobs.
