We had a fantastic  day with plenty of  chopping, crushing and pressing apples  and  now  have  15 litres  of  juice on its way to being cider. Everyone who helped  will  get  a share of the cider when it’s ready.  Check back soon to hear about our  wassailing event  and see the pictures in our Gallery

Here are our forthcoming events and activities at the garden: 

Every Sunday

Produce sales – range of crops- whatever’s ready, just picked.

 

5^th October 12 – 4pm “Bug Hotels” –

• Building structures to attract and house a range of invertebrates
• Active learning session for volunteers, led by experts.
• Tools and gloves provided but please wear strong shoes/ boots
• Joint project with Network Rail, London Wildlife Trust

 

12^th October 3 – 5pm – garden review meeting

Opportunity for volunteers and members to give their views on how well the year has gone, planning what we might do next year – practical and innovative ideas for crops and improvements wanted.

 

19^th October 12 – 4pm Apple Day

We are looking to top last year where we had apples from 12 locations – and we’ll be making cider this year. Event to include:

• Plans for new improved press.
• Anyone who brings apples contributes to preparation or pressing will have a choice of taking juice home – or waiting to collect cider later in the year.
• If you want juice bring your own clean (ideally sterilised) container.
• Recipes and cooking demonstrations of autumn produce – jams, chutneys etc (dependent on produce available).
• We will have a map of the borough showing where the apples come from

 

26^th October 12- 4 pm

Volunteer garden sessions – seasonal tasks preparing for winter

 

November / December

Volunteer garden sessions every other Sunday (dates to follow)

11- 3 – early start to take account of shorter days

We sell our produce straight from the ground every Sunday to raise  funds – so if  you want really fresh vegetables and some unusual varieties pop in and see us 12 -4pm – and of course we’re always looking for volunteers and members!

August is the hight of the growing season so we will be harvesting plenty of crops  –

• Potatoes
• Tomatoes  both with unusual varieties
• Runner beans and purple French beans
• Golden and red beetroot – golden beetroot is sweeter, softer texture and the leaves can be cooked like spinach.
• Possibly courgettes and salad veg

Volunteer tasks will include harvesting, weeding, thinning out crops where needed. Don’t forget our compost workshop on 31st!

After a late start, accommodating the Alice in the Rookery production team in our bothy, and some heavy rain we had another successful volunteer gardening day.

There were many beans –  runners and purple French beans – to harvest as well as potatoes and beetroot, for which there were willing buyers amongst our visitors.  We also thinned out our strawberry bed  – the plants like it so much they keep growing. We have to thin them out to encourage them to produce fruit.  3 weeks out in the summer whilst our paths were laid meant  we also had some very unruly tomato plants to tie up. As ever there was plenty of weeding to do too!

We had time to sow some extra crops  to fill in the  harvested vegetables – carrots for the autumn and spring onions, as well as some extra French beans to see us into the autumn. As a treat  the volunteers got to share the  figs from our own fig tree – very tasty they were too.

 

Next week will be more harvesting – Potatoes, more beetroot – red and golden, plenty of beans and we expect the first  of many tomatoes – all sorts of unusual tasty varieties.  there’ll always be weeding and if the sun keeps shining we’ll have to water too!

See you next Sunday?

 

 

We are delighted to launch our new website! We’d love to know what you think… If you have any comments or suggestions then don’t hesitate to let us know. Over the coming months we will be using this blog to keep all of followers up-to-date about what’s going on in the garden and our plans for the future so watch this space!