Cold

Gardeners will often tell you that one of the reasons they like to garden so much is that they like the feeling of being close to nature. They like to see the birds, the insects and all the other wildlife, and see the seasons change. It is definitely true that the more you garden, the more you become aware of the seasons, and the natural world. There are occasional days though, usually when my car tells me it’s –3°C, that I start to think maybe my desk is close enough to nature! That feeling does very quickly disappear though when I get outside and start work. It’s hard not to marvel at all these plants, from big old English Oaks down to little Primulas, that sit outside through the whole of the winter – while we’re all snug inside – and take everything the weather can throw at them, then happily grow away again in spring. There are even some plants, for example snowdrops and crocus, which seem to think this is the ideal time for some flowering! Without them, January and February would seem longer than ever.

Unfortunately though, there are some plants we grow that just haven’t evolved to cope with a British winter. We have quite a few of them here at Ryton Gardens, and they are kept in heated glasshouses over winter. One of those glasshouses is in the Vegetable Kingdom, and when I walked in today, I was greeted not with the lovely scent of the heliotropes, but with the smell of decaying vegetation. The heater and the frost had had a fight, and the frost won. The banana is looking very sad indeed, and later today I’m going to wrap it in fleece for some extra protection. Hopefully it works!

The Heritage Seed Library

Last week at Ryton Gardens was incredibly productive. We are very lucky to have some wonderful volunteers who come to help us, and thanks to them I’ve been able to plant out a large area with kale and cabbage to overwinter. Both the cabbage and the kale are varieties from Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library, and my plan is for this area to showcase some of the interesting veg they have to offer. The Heritage Seed Library is a living collection of veg varieties no longer commercially available, or in some cases varieties that never were commercially available.

So why do we do this? In order to sell seed of a variety of vegetable, it has to be registered on a national list. To register a variety on the national list is very expensive – there are two years of tests to go through, and admin fees too. This means that getting a variety to a marketable point is weighted in favour of large-scale seed producers able to cover those costs. Now, I have grown plenty of veg from the big seed companies, and they do really well, and taste lovely (any problems I’ve had can be attributed to my gardening ability). However, there are many varieties of veg grown locally, perhaps passed down through generations of a family, grown in back gardens and allotments, adapted to local conditions, and just as tasty. One or two amateur gardeners simply can’t afford to register these fascinating varieties on the national list, but we are interested in keeping these vegetables available, both for the home grower and to maintain genetic diversity. To quote a poster in our offices – “Diversity is vital to combat disease…Cures have always come from older varieties or wild relatives…If the old varieties vanish, how will we safeguard our food supply?”

Vegetables in Pots

I woke up this morning to a garden I would have to describe as “foggy”. Taking a quick and slightly chilly wander, I noticed webs everywhere, telling me that the spiders know it’s September too. It has since warmed up and it’s now 20C, but even so I get the feeling autumn is on the way.

The main job on the agenda for today was to plant up a lot of pots with a variety of veg and ornamentals. The idea is to show that you don’t need a large veg patch in order to grow something edible. One pot, some compost and some seed is all you need. All of our newly planted pots will be travelling down to Clarence House in London for the START Garden Party, a 12 day festival to promote sustainable living. Garden Organic will be encouraging people to put their used coffee cups to good use – pot up one of our seedlings and take it home to grow on!

Things are starting to calm down a bit in the gardens now. There’s no longer the feeling that watering is a full time job, and the weeds are (sort of) back under control, but the fruit and veg is still coming in strong. We’re on to apples now – in fact I’m looking at three crates and a shopping basket full of them sitting in our office right now. Needless to say they won’t last long.

Giant Vegetables

In my most recent video, I talked briefly about courgettes, and how they “just keep coming”. I thought you might like to see first hand what happens if you don’t keep harvesting courgettes at regular intervals. The courgette (I use the term loosely) in the photo was harvested whilst filming the video, and I am both proud of it and embarrassed about it at the same time! Reading around, I see that many other people growing their own veg are having gluts of courgettes, and are offloading them on friends and relatives.

I have also managed to grow some rather large kohl rabi, a variety called Azur Star. They look fantastic, a big purple sphere with cabbage like leaves emanating from it. Many visitors to the garden are asking me what they are; I remember it being the same back at the Chelsea Flower Show, where it seemed every other passer by would stop and admire them. I’d never heard of them until then, so in my mind this is becoming the year of the kohl rabi. Sometimes people will say things like “what are these strange…things, and what do you do with them?” Well, I’m told you can have them sliced or grated in salads, and they’re also good in a stir-fry. I’ll be trying the stir-fry option and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Some other exciting news – the arrival of our brand new ride on lawnmower! Last week we were all trained to use it, a slightly daunting task with its arrays of levers, buttons and pedals. However, once you get the hang of it it’s fairly easy, and it certainly makes mundane tasks like lawn mowing a lot more enjoyable!

My First Month

Hi. So, this is my first blog as a Seeds of Change Apprentice. I've been working at Garden Organic for a little over a month now, so it seems like a good time for an update. I've been given the Vegetable Kingdom garden to take care of, and during the first three weeks I spent a lot of time working with Lindsay, the previous gardener, as she handed the garden over to me. We did a lot of planting out, and spent some time going through her notes and plans while I tried to absorb as much information as possible!

In other news, the gardens team as a whole have been waging a small war against weeds, which insist on growing everywhere. And it doesn't matter how carefully you weed an area of soil, 5 minutes later when you look again, there will be more.

Claire, Helen and myself were also given the opportunity to work at the Garden Organic stand at the Chelsea Flower Show. The most enjoyable part was getting to see the "behind the scenes" bit during the breakdown at the end of the show. Chatting to other exhibitors and seeing how some of those amazing gardens are put together was worth the 19 hour day! We also got a lot of interest in our One Pot Pledge campaign, so hopefully there'll be even more home grown produce around for people to share with each other.

Helen, Claire and myself have also had a lot of fun creating our first video diaries. We spent several days in the gardens filming each other and trying to learn very quickly how to edit video. The results are here for all to see, and we've already got a lot of ideas for the next instalment!