My Garden

 As we enter into the month of June the garden really begins to flourish - our vegetable beds are packed with maturing crops, crops nearly ready to harvest, new tender crops and we begin to experience our first harvests.

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The cold weather this Spring has meant that sowings are off to a slow start, in fact ‘up north' soil temperatures only reached 4 degrees Celsius last week so we had to postpone our planned outdoor sowings activity. We have begun warming the soil and are carrying out an experiment to monitor what effect placing plastic on the beds has. We are recording the temperature in 2 beds (daily), one bed is covered with polythene and one has been left exposed to the elements. I am curious to see how much difference it makes as I am a big believer in warming the soil.

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It’s that time again………… early February and every kitchen gardener is itching to get outside and sow their first seeds of 2010………..but mother nature is slightly against us as not only are my raised beds far too wet – but also ever so slightly frozen, so unless things change quickly I’d say its going to be at least a couple of weeks if not longer before I get back on the plot. I am very lucky however; as I was given a greenhouse last year and have started to make indoor sowings of more Broad Beans and Peas, as like Paul mine look very sad indeed. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they will start to perk up again when the warmer weather comes, but have made back up sowings aswell – just in case!

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As I arrived at school this morning the first question I was asked was ‘Can we garden in the snow’? The thought of gardening seems quite ridiculous to many of the staff; the crops we planted last Autumn are still hidden under a thick layer of snow and the ground is still frozen. I however have a few indoor gardening sessions for them to choose from so that children do not miss out on their gardening time.

Potato chitting – This year we will be growing 4 early varieties of potato; Swift, Rocket, Charlotte and Winston. Early potatoes are a good choice for schools as they take 12-18 weeks to harvest so fit nicely within the school calendar and guarantee a harvest before the summer holidays. You might also like to consider planting a heritage potato variety especially if you are linking to any Dig For Victory or historical topics. I encourage pupils to ‘chit’ (sprout) their potatoes before planting. Read More...

I was pleased with myself at the start of December. At my allotment and in the 15 schools I work with in the south of England, I had ensured next year's early harvests by sowing Japanese onion sets ('Senshui Yellow'), peas ('Meteor' and 'Feltham First'), broad beans ('Aquadulce Claudia' and 'The Sutton') and garlic ('Solent Wight' and 'Marco'). I had even taken steps to avoid the mice at my allotment eating the seeds in the ground, as they did last year, by sowing the peas into gutters and the beans into coir pots and keeping them in a cold frame on my patio.  These had grown so strongly in a mild autumn to have been planted out by the end of November

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