Into the hive

Today we had a big tidy up in the garden and a nice visit from Ian, our mentor bee keeper who talked to us all about our bees and the amazing way in which they work. He explained how if you lose your queen bee, another one will soon be chosen, so its not something to worry about. Another great fact he shared was the way that the bees communicate to each other. They really do perform the bee dance to let their fellow workers know where the best flowers are. They dance around in a figure of eight style and dictate through angles which way to fly on leaving the hive to find lots of tasty pollen. In addition to this they vibrate and wiggle at a certain rate which indicates the distance at which the flowers are located in relation to the hive. That's pretty amazing directional advice and all through the medium of dance!

The garden getting a good tidying. We cut so much grass we could have made hay!

 The queen bee herself Jan, checking the frames for Queenie

Bees working away in a Ian's demonstration glass window frame

Watching and learning

A whole lot of bees, buzz buzz

The Edible Terrace

After a couple of months of hauling soil up 3 storeys, contending with urban pigeons and struggling with windy wet weather the Edible Terrace at my office is finally growing. The idea of the project is to see how much food we can grow on the un-used section of the roof terrace and to inspire my colleagues about urban food growing whilst also creating a nice green space which can be enjoyed throughout the summer. We are trying to source materials for free and make use of items in the local area that would be doomed for the rubbish tip. So far we have made mini-greenhouses out of pallets and plastic sheeting, used cable reels as planting containers and collected thick tubing to harvest rain water. Here is what we have done so far...

How the space looked at the beginning with our first mini-greenhouse on the right

Terrace transformation

The beginning of our climbing wall of beans, peas and edible flowers

 Safe and cosy out of the wind inside mini-greenhouse number 2

 Cable reels recycled from the electrical store across the road making a nice home for courgette plants

Salad bed with rocket, lettuce, mizuna and chard made from old pallets

Blooming beds

So, the two new beds that we set up on our Volunteer Day at Cordwainers Garden back in February have come on leaps and bounds. Here are a few photos to show what we've got growing in them.

 The dye bed with a front border of Calendula Officialis or good old Pot Marigold. We have also got some madder and wode and some other dye-tastic plants popping up now the weather has warmed up.

 Our potager style bed with bean/pea tripods, onions, salads, squashes, beetroot, broccoli to name a few.

Pretty flowers on the sweet peas which had been grown over winter. They had a bit of a slow start, but soon got going and are now happily climbing up the tripods and providing us with an array of beautiful little flowers.

Love your garden!

This weekend was our Volunteer Day at Cordwainers Garden and what perfect weather we had for our day of hard (but enjoyable) graft. With a newly hand crafted garden sign, an abundance of bunting and a table full of delicious refreshments the Cordwainers crew along for a great army of keen volunteers set to work. There was turfing and digging, and hammering and nailing, and shoveling and wheel-barrowing leading to the creation of not 1 but 2 new large growing beds. One will be used for the college students to experiment with growing natural dye plants ("It's all about sustainable fashion these days don't you know?") and the other will be used as a training bed for the urban growing classes and workshops we will be holding over the coming months. In addition to this a great deal of maintenance work was done on the rest of the garden getting the beds ready for Spring planting. 3 cold frames were also constructed making use of recycled corrugated plastic ("re-using is where its at, recycling was so last year"). Fueled by multiple rounds of tea and cake and a magnificent lunch of gourmet soup and sandwiches the 40-strong team of helpers worked away happily throughout the day to transform the garden and blow away its winter blues!

Before, a lonely patch of grass

Work begins on bed number 1 for dye plants

Tea amd Cake time... food for the workers

Sunbathing ladybird

Energetic climbing snail

Working away

Bed 1 complete!

More turfing and digging

Bed number 2 nearly done

Bed 2 done...home time!

Cordwainders Volunteer Day

Come and join us at Cordwainers for a day of garden fun.......

Putting my back into it, again

I had planned on writing this before but as usual other things got in the way. During a spontaneous trip to the countryside for what I was hoping would be a nice break inevitably turned into getting roped into helping extend the vegetable garden. Talk about allotment creep, this will be the 2nd extension in 6months! Oh well, there is always something else to grow and try out and its nice to have green space to easily do this. It must just be a coincidence that plot extensions always seem to coincide with my visits!

So with the plot already marked out I set to work taking off the first layer of turf. With the soil being predominantly clay and rather solid I decided against my initial deep bed double digging plan. Documented below are the steps I took to  dig out the new patch. Compost and sharp sand was also added to break up the heavy clay and give a nutrient boost to the soil.

1. Mark out the area you wish to cultivate. Be reasonable by setting a manageable size, remembering you can always extend later!

2. Using a spade or turf cutter (if your lucky enough to have one) remove the top layer of grass. These turf layers make great topping layers for keeping heat inside compost heap in the colder months

3. Now, you need to dig and break up the soil. Thus will depend on your soil. I chose to tackle the area in strips, digging about 1.5 spades down and loosening the clay clumps

4. For each strip/area dig/mix in a good amount of sharp sand and compost . This will also depend on soil type but for a 2m square plot you want about a wheelbarrow each of sand and compost.

 5. Do this for each strip/area of your marked out plot until you have covered the whole area. You can use your spade or rake to level out the finished area and there you have it, a new bed ready to go!