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!

Taking is nice but giving feels so much better

Since September I have been volunteering at a series of Give and Take Days organised by the charity Waste Watch. The aim of the 3 month campaign running across 7 North London boroughs was to encourage the reuse of unwanted items within the local community, divert reusable items from landfill and improve community cohesion. For each of the events, which were held within schools, churches and community halls, emphasis was placed at a local level but for me the idea represents a very global issue. It occurred to me whilst volunteering that the Give and Take Days highlight one of the biggest problems we have in the world relating to resources. When people talk about resources they often refer to the concerns we have regarding the shortage of materials left in the world. However, in my opinion, the problem lies within the spread and distribution of resources. This was shown through many examples of people attending the Give and Take days. To generalise, there were those who came purely to give large amounts of good quality items they no longer needed (perhaps because they could afford to upgrade to a newer model) and there were others who came in search of second hand items that they may not have been able to buy new from the shops. It was a refreshing experience to see resources in a positive light and to celebrate what people do have and what they can give to others who have less then them. Totting up the weights of items at the end of the day showed us how many tonnes had not only been saved from a landfill site but also how much had been redistributed within the local area.

As you would expect from any free-for-all event there would quite often be a bit of hustle and bustle at the beginning of the taking session. For busy events we had to use the decorative bunting to create a starting line to hold back eager attendees who with their eyes peeled for prize items were chomping on the bit as they waited whilst the minutes ticked away until taking began. This gentle ruckus helped to keep us volunteers on our toes and also developed our crowd control skills. Although all the argy-bargy behaviour was resolved with the greatest professionalism, we couldn’t help but be amused by some of the mild disputes that occasionally broke out. Thankfully, the few “but I saw it first” misunderstandings were calmly negotiated and settled amicably for all parties.

As a volunteer it was very rewarding to see large volumes of items being redistributed and passed on to new homes. On one occasion, deciding to  make the most of a quiet moment at the donations table, I went for a perusal of what had been left after the initial rush of taking. Whilst leafing through a couple of old books a young girl came up to ask me if she could take a book. I replied enthusiastically that she could take a handful if she wanted but she informed me that she only needed one. When I asked her about the book she had chosen - a Jacqueline Wilson classic that I remember pouring over excitedly as a teenager – she remarked:

 “ I am taking it for my little sister because they are her favourite books and I didn’t have enough pocket money to buy her one for her birthday.”

For me, this sums up the whole aim of the Give and Take days, giving all that you can, taking only what you need and being grateful for what you have received.

Pond Opening @ Cordwainers

Today was the official opening of the pond which Doug and Charlotte created at the bottom of the garden. We celebrated by launching a paper frog, cunningly crafted by Jan, which floated, hooray! A great sunny day for gardening and also enjoying lots of homemade yummy cakes, scones and ginger beer.

 Enjoying the afternoon sun and garden in all its glory

 Little girls "Get it, get it" maybe they wanted to kiss it and turn it into a prince ?!

Harvest Festival at Regents Park

 Twas a lovely sunny day to celebrate a very successful and bountiful season at the Allotment Garden in Regents Park.

 Colourful flowers in bloom in the bed we planted at a training session earlier in the year with green manure

 Keeping everything in order and warding off garden enemies

One of the beds of squashes all intertwined and climbing over each other

 

 Wood-burning oven on hand for all the bread baking and pizza making

Possible the biggest and most finely crafted loaf I have ever seen

 We were spoilt will so much delicious food all sourced from the Allotment garden. You can't get more fresh or local than that!

Squash and ricotta mixed salad, yum!

Taking advantage of the kids activities on the 'Make you own Scarecrow' table. Keeping this one to watch over my window sill plants as think she's a little delicate to brave the cold nights outdoors.

Claire helping with the final straw-trimming to finish off scarecrow

Colours from the garden

A range of roots I dug up today, particularly happy with the 3-fork fat carrot which made me laugh. Must remember to keep sowing radish seeds throughout September to keep a steady flow of little roots as we traverse through Autumn.

Big Pumpkin and little Butternut Squash. I was very sad to find that some garden animal (definitely a fiend and not a friend) has dug up the pumpkin plant at its root and ravaged it to the point of no repair so I am hoping it will ripen on its own since it has already started to go orange on its bottom. If not, it will be a controversial green Halloween lantern.

Ah, pretty, pretty, pretty. The Nasturtiums are absolutely thriving and are happily climbing their way all over my patch, while other flowers including a few Calendulas are sadly starting to run out of Summer time steam. The late planted Borage is now also offering plentiful supplies on delicate blue flowers. I'm going to freeze them in icecubes to have in the homemade ginger beer!