Speed Greening: Winter Garden Day at Cordwainers Garden

Despite a few blustery showers to begin with, we were lucky with another sunny day for garden volunteering down at Cordwainers Garden. Teams of people got stuck in with various different tasks including bagging up soil, clearing and planting a new bed, cutting kindling with an axe, weeding rogue areas, collecting leaves for leafmould, patching up the shed and clearing out and re-arranging the composting corner. Fuelled by an almost continuous supply of tea from the storm-kettle (powered by wood) and a delicious spread from Cafe Morningside we got a huge amount done. We even dug up and relocated an enormous Calla Lily which had planted itself rather annoyingly in the dye bed.  It was great to have a mix of old and new faces at the garden, to share some of the heavy lifting and chat about Starwars and science fiction (!) over lunch. Thanks to all our hardworking volunteers, the garden has been given a new lease of life as it braces itself for the cold months ahead.

First volunteer of the day, a huge worm

The rains clears and the sun comes out to warm us up

Duncan gets to work on patching up the pallet shed

Emma and Shamima clearing the ground and planting up a new area in the front garden

Jane weeding and tidying the wildlife bed and Jonathan bagging up our fresh compost

Star of the day, the storm kettle

Delicious spread made by Cafe Morningside

Bags of fresh compost for each bed, Christmas has come early!

Having a break and filling up with lots of food

Lots of mmmm sounds

Cutting up dry woody thing for storm kettle kindling

Last teabreak of the day!

This Winter Garden Volunteer Day was organised by Cordwainers Grow as part of our Speed Greening project supported by Team London.

Roof gardening at HOL, Hackney

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!

Small but mighty microgreens

If you love the idea of growing your own greens so that you have a constant supply for summer salads without having to pay for the bagged variety let me introduce you to the microgreen. The microgreens are simply green leaf plants which you can harvest at a very young age. This is because their seed leaves - the first sprouting leaves - have the characteristic flavours of the herb or salad. This means that you can grow them in as little as a few days. They can be grown in just about any container and many don't even require soil.
You can also grow them indoors on a windowsill so perfect for the fair weathered gardener or for those who don't have any outdoor space. There are a whole range of different microgreen seeds available such as watercress, mustard, broccoli, alfalfa, basil and rocket to name a few. You can fashion a growing container out of any container type thing you may have lying around for example tins, plastic milk bottle cut off or plastic food trays.

Line your container with a little soil or damp piece of kitchen towel. Sprinkle some seeds (quite a few as they are only tiny sprouts and don't require too much space) and cover with a lid or piece of paper until the seeds have sprouted. Then leave them open to the light. Wait until the sprouts are a few centimetres tall and then they are ready to harvest. This usually takes between 4-8 days. You can sew different varieties to ensure a continuous supply of tasty little greens.

Micro-greens are so small and compact that you could even have some growing in a small container on your desk at work and add to your lunch for a fresh green kick. The possibilities are endless, hooray for microgreens!