Thyme out

Garden Organic is holding a three-day conference this weekend, so the gardens must be spick and span. I worked all last week in the Compost Display Garden putting in new woodchip paths and tidying the beds. It’s amazing how putting in a new path can make the borders look more lush. I tidied up the restaurant borders by removing thyme where it had seeded itself in every small gap, and replaced it with Cerastium biebersteinii, which is in full bloom at the moment with beautiful white flowers and silvery foliage.

We’ve got two weeks left to complete our diplomas so I’ve been working like a mad woman answering test papers. I’m becoming slightly daunted by the next plant identification as it involves learning 65 species. Put it this way, I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that I pass it.

On a brighter note, it rained properly over the weekend. I can almost hear a sigh of relief from the gardens. They’re looking so beautiful at the moment, I just don’t want to leave. And because I’ve had such a wonderful experience here I’ve decided to volunteer as a gardener for a month, finishing planting out and keeping up to my three gardens which I love.

Spring tidying

The plants are finally raising their first leaves above the soil, and the weeds seem to be arriving even faster! I’ve begun rearranging and weeding large areas of the Cook’s Garden ready to mulch over with compost and sow seed in parts. I must say it’s so satisfying to see the lovely bright green foliage contrast with the dark crumbly compost! The restaurant borders were looking quite tired so I began rearranging beds there too. Over the winter a few Hebes and Penstemon died leaving large gaps that I have filled with Thalictrum aquilegifolium (Meadow Rue), Calamagrostis brachytricha ‘Karl Foerster’ (Korean feather reed grass), Iris sibirica, Persicaria bistorta (Bistort), Leucanthemum superbum ‘Snowdrift’ (Shasta daisy) and Cerastium biebersteinii (Boreal chickweed). I’m quite proud of this planting and I’m really looking forward to seeing it all fill out before I leave.

I also want to make some minor changes to parts of the Compost Display Garden in the next week or two, mainly involving the compost bin area, which I will make more attractive by sowing some wildflower seed in between woodchip paths, leading to each bin. The green manure display is germinating fast!.. And all of my newly sown vegetables are well on their way to being planted out.

I’ve been juggling my diploma work with gardening and assessments this week, but have made a huge amount of progress. This Friday, our assessor from Warwickshire College will be visiting to assess us on our plant identification again. This time we’ll be looking at herbaceous perennials, mainly Geraniums and Primulas. We’ll also be assessed on sowing in drills and planting in Claire’s Shrub Borders.

Diploma Days

With the growing season starting, we’ve found ourselves with plenty of jobs to be assessed on for our diplomas. This week we’ve begun sowing our first seeds of the year and Andy our head gardener was kind enough to teach us his tried and tested method. I was surprised how little I knew. Seed sowing is one of those things that you assume is simple yet few of us do it right. You have to consider the amount of consolidation, depth of seed (and in some cases even angle of seed!) and last but not least a vermiculite covering to act as a mulch. Later we were filmed tying in raspberries in the soft fruit garden, which again wasn’t as simple as it sounds. After reducing a number of canes depending on crowding and how far out they are growing, you sew each individual cane around the central wire.

Last Wednesday we attended a one-day first aid course at City College Coventry, partly for our diploma unit on health and safety, but also to gain useful knowledge for day to day gardening safely. I don’t think a day passes without small cuts and splinters, so I now feel much more confident that I could deal with bigger injuries if they ever occurred.

Friday is going to be a big day for us. Our assessor from Warwickshire College will be spending an entire day with us assessing us on different tasks such as preparing soil and applying organic mulch, watering an area of plants in containers, caring for a planted area, sowing seeds indoors in containers, and collecting and preparing plant material for transport.

Pruning Madness

This week has been jam-packed with pruning of all kinds. On Monday, I began pruning back the Evergreen Oleaster tree (Elaeagnus ebbingei) in the Cook’s garden, so that I could easily reach (an thus eradicate) the weedy alpine strawberries below. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I looked at my watch and it was 4:30pm, and I’d not only pruned that, but also the Judas Tree (Cercis siliquastrum), a Purple Hazel (Corylus maxima ‘Purpurea’), five roses (Rosa rugosa), and two blackcurrants. Gardening is addictive, and I’m not sure why. All I know is that on some days I see so many jobs to be done that I end up fluttering back and forth between them at speed on some sort of ‘gardening high’.

The frenzy continued the next day, when we all learnt how to prune apple trees in the orchard. I worked with Matt on a small ‘Greensleeves’ apple tree grown on an M9 rootstock, which was challenging but so enjoyable. Every cut had to be carefully considered with a foresight of how it would affect it’s fruiting, and ultimately its shape. By the end of the day my confidence had increased, and I was able to make those big cuts, without wincing too much.

Matt, Claire and I spent a day with Andy (our head gardener) this week, so that we could all learn together a unit for our diploma on Plant Nomenclature, Identification and Taxonomy. We spent the day researching and sharing knowledge with one another, and had learnt a great deal by the end of the day. The next step is to identify sixty different species of plant around the gardens. So I think a great deal of revision is in order!

Worm Huddle

My first morning back at work (after a long Christmas break of naughty food) consisted of visiting each of my gardens and assessing any changes. Many plants had suffered with the frost, inside and out of the glasshouses, but the damage wasn’t too great. The worms in my wormery, however were behaving rather odd. It wasn’t that I expected to see them darting about the food scraps like it was summer, but neither did I expect to lift the first layer and find every one of them huddled together like penguins to protect themselves from the cold. It was quite sweet really, and made me wonder how they communicate with one another. I do feel sorry for the one on the bottom, though, suffocating.

I’ve begun digging bean trenches in the Compost Display Garden, which I’m completely new to, but the idea is relatively simple. In the winter months, or preferably six months before you plant out your beans (and outdoor tomatoes), you can add fertility to your soil by firstly dig your trench one spade’s depth and as wide as you need to (baring in mind how you’re going to plant your beans and if you’ve got enough food scraps to fill it). Next you line the trench with cardboard and then tip in all of your compostable food waste. I’ve read that you can also add a carbon contact such as straw but I don’t think its necessary. Just cover with soil and leave it to decompose for several months.

My seed orders are now finished for this year, a fun but laborious task, in which we trawl through several seed catalogues, and our own packets to find certain varieties. It’s very satisfying to have a list of everything to sow and plant throughout the year, and coupled with drawing out plans and sowing dates will hopefully make for a very organised year ahead!