September and October in the garden October 25, 2024

It’s been a busy few months in the garden, from bumper harvests to lots of garden defenses – our volunteers have certainly been working hard!

Harvest time 

The harvest has been coming out of our vegetable garden for a while now, and we’re still doing well for produce – thanks to funding from the Neighbourhood Network Scheme, we’re delighted to be able to provide hot lunches every day for our volunteers as part of an initiative to promote healthy eating and lifestyles. Our cucumbers, tomatoes and potatoes have been supplementing the veg content and we’ve barely started to get our courgettes and squash yet.  

Mouse defences 

Admittedly, many of these are running rather late due to mice eating pretty much all of our large seeds earlier on the year. Our sweetcorn was actually sown offsite just so we could guarantee they wouldn’t be scoffed before they had a chance to emerge. Fortunately, one of our gardeners came up with the genius idea of gently laying dried holly onto the seed trays before covering with a propagator lid, which seems to be working with our autumn sowings of beans and peas. Evidently the mice don’t like the spikes! 

Quite a few of our summer flowers are holding up well despite the sullen thump of autumn that landed a few days ago. The sunflowers are standing up to the suddenly cold nights and there are a few that haven’t quite popped open yet, so we’re hopeful that we will continue to enjoy the sunshine they bring for just a little while longer.  

Autumn leaves are falling 

I suspect we’re all keeping our fingers crossed for a warm spell as the nights begin to draw in, but we’re already preparing for the fall of the autumn leaves by sieving out last year’s leaf mould and compost so we have somewhere to store them all. It’s astonishing how much we have, but it’s a continual source of amazement to me how far a ton of mulch doesn’t go when spread onto an ornamental bed. Our rose beds were the first to benefit from a good mulch and we used well over four ton bags of compost. We’ll be giving them a good winter prune soon to prevent wind rock and then we can look forward to a good showing from them next year. After all the hard work, it’s the least they can do… 

Some of our volunteers also worked on creating a lovely bower over a refurbished bench in the wildflower area. We have further plans for the bower – we’ll be planting honeysuckle and other climbing plants over the top of it. They’ll be a great food source for the local insects, but should also make it a lovely peaceful spot for volunteers and visitors to enjoy the wildflower area.  

Puddling of mud 

A big project we’ve undertaken recently involve the ongoing improvements to our ponds, which you may recall were mentioned in a previous month’s post. The rill between the two ponds was losing a significant amount of water so the volunteers have gone above and beyond in removing the concrete base as part of our plan to refurbish it. We’re currently sieving an awful lot of clay soil at the moment so we can use the old fashioned technique of puddling – compacting wet clay to make a solid and (mostly) waterproof base for the rill. 

This technique has been used for hundreds of years, is environmentally friendly, avoids disturbance or contamination to the pondlife and means that we can avoid using a plastic liner (and repair it without too much expense or difficulty). The downside is that we will have to wait for a dry day to be able to make a start on laying the base, so that area of the garden won’t be as ornamental as you would normally find it for a while.  

Despite this, we’re hopeful that we can continue to make the gardens a colourful place to visit over the colder months and the volunteers have successfully sown a lovely range of plants including primroses, polyanthus and wallflowers – so keep an eye out for those appearing in the beds and on the sales area in the coming months!