10-10-2014: Getting Up to Grow on Kingston Hill

Welcome to your growing space

A quick notification to start with – we've had to cancel the bioblitz that was planned for this Saturday at Kingston Hill as we weren't able to get enough participants signed up this time around.

We do plan to organise this for next year instead, aiming for the warmer weather in May bringing folk out to the site.

This Wednesday we had great fun with our Get Up and Grow event at Kingston Hill and managed to dodge the showers that we had before and after the event which was jammy if I do say so myself!

Before we started clearing

The photo above shows how the beds had gotten a little overgrown this summer.

We left the main wild flower bed alone, concentrating instead on clearing and replanting raised bed 2; controlling the strawberries that had completely run wild over the whole of bed 3 causing a few issues for the bay and oregano that were squeezing their way through and filling in some of the gaps in bed 4.

Clearing and thinning out

We cleared out a lot of the extra strawberries with a lot going into the compost as it was too much for the volunteers who attended to take home. 

Planning and planting the new rows

We planted a mixture of radishes, chard, onions, spring onions, lemon basil and pak choi and put a couple of mini covers on a few to see if that might stop complete annihilation by snails! These should over winter with a little bit of weeding and care during the really bad weather.

We are always looking for volunteer gardeners, so if you want to sign up and help get these plants through to our harvesting in Spring email me today.

The rows were planted in mixed rows to try to confuse plant pests which might be attracted to large clumps of the same plant, with aromatics and onions hopefully masking the scent of other plants which is why we had to make sure that they were all labelled.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a variety of veg called Jane to go with our Tarzan radishes :)

After the planting and watering

We decided to leave in the tomatoes, just in case there as a little more sun!!!