Courgette plants at ARU raised beds
It’s only been three weeks since our last gardening session but the raised beds definitely need our attention in the summer months. The herb bed looks much the same but we recently identified the plant Par-cel. It’s a cross between parsley and celery. It smells delicious and Stéphanie can vouch for it adding a lovely flavour to stock.
Nermin brought along some pea seedlings that she had grown in pots as well as two courgette plants. We’ve give the courgettes plenty of space and hope to enjoy the fruits of our labour this summer.
We planted some peas directly in the soil at our last gardening session but the ones Nermin grew were definitely happier. This may be because there were no snails around to eat them.
We moved all the broad beans to the raspberry bed and will create a shelter for them so that they don’t blow over.
If you’d like to join us at The Plot for a gardening session, please email Stéphanie or Geoff. You can also join the Facebook group.
Front garden creation at 37 Lawrence Way Community House
We joined the gardening club at 37 Lawrence Way and helped to set up the planters in their front garden. Thank you to them for this great day and to the YMCA woodwork group for making the planters. The Kings Hedges community will soon have fruits and vegetables growing at 37 for everyone to enjoy!
37 Lawrence Way gardening club is happening the last Saturdays of each month (11.00 to 13.00). Please visit their website and facebook for more information about them 🙂
Pink strawberry flowers at ARU raised beds
Anglia Ruskin University’s raised beds hosted a gardening session on Saturday the 14th of May. Erica, Nermin, Geoff and Stéphanie from ARU were joined by Sandra and Toni from Growing Spaces.
We discovered a strawberry plant in the herb bed with beautiful bright pink flowers. Apparently it’s a Pink Panda strawberry and is mostly grown for ornamental purposes.
The session started – as most gardening does – with weeding. Nermin and Sandra weeded the raspberry bed and Erica made sure that the dandelions in the strawberry patch didn’t spread.
And thankfully after the weeding, we did some planting. Sandra brought broad beans, mizuna and some young tomato plants so we added those to the raspberry bed. Toni also brought broad beans and some peas. We planted the peas directly in the soil and Nermin took some home to grow on the window sill.
If you’d like to join us at The Plot for a gardening session, please email Stéphanie or Geoff. You can also join the Facebook group.
forest gardening day 7/5/16
Early planting at Daily Bread
We had a nice time at Daily Bread Space adding soil in the raised beds and also planting beans and salad 🙂
We also harvested chard leaves and put them in the shop for free to everyone.
Gardening workshop calendar
We did a calendar of the gardening workshops in our spaces for the next months. They will be on Fridays at 5.30pm, except a few dates (in red). It will be each time at a different space. The link to the excel file with the calendar can be found at the end of the page.
We will try to bring extra tools, but if you have some small tools and gloves that you can bring on the session that would be wonderful.
No guardening experience required 🙂
Link to the excel file: planning_gardening
8 steps layer raised bed
How to make wonderful layer raised beds in 8 steps (the link to the pdf is at the end of the post):
Link to the pdf: Bed-layers-info-StepByStep
Radish popping out at Daily Bread Space
I sowed radish seeds a few weeks ago at Daily Bread Space and they are popping out!
We might have our first radishs in a few weeks 🙂
A frog at ARU raised beds
There are three raised beds on the Anglia Ruskin University campus in Cambridge, behind Peter Taylor house.
Geoff, Giuseppe and Stéphanie spent Sunday 10 April tending to the beds and created a new one too. One of the beds contains herbs (including chocolate mint) so we added some garlic as well as another rosemary bush, onions and some more mint.
Rebecca from Nightingale Park gave us some strawberry plants so we decided to create a whole new bed for them. The soil is heavy clay so we added three inches of leaf mould and compost to the area. We’ll add straw at a later stage to make sure the fruit doesn’t touch the ground and rot.
On one of our trips to the compost heap we came across this adorable frog. As you can see from the picture, he didn’t hop away and was quite happy to pose for a picture!
If you’d like to join us at The Plot for a gardening session, please email Stéphanie or Geoff. You can also join the Facebook group.