Organic Vegetable Garden progress

April in the new garden at Squirrel’s Landing has been busy. We found a source for organic leaf salad seedlings (hooray!) and most of them have taken.

We had a very hot spell two days after transplanting, and had to find some quick protection so they didn’t frizzle up. We lost three in the process, but the rest are now close to harvest as you can see, which is something of a record – it will be four weeks from planting by the time we pick them next week!

A friend and colleague has opened up a brilliant new health store in the Redham Centre, called Creeds Super Natural Nutrition and customers have shown a huge interest in our organic garden, so we’re planning to take produce once a fortnight – as soon as they’re available. It would be wonderful if we could supply the whole demand, so we have our eye on renting an empty plot nearby to swell our supply.

Our beetroot have also grown very fast as the conditions have been good in the past month. Another row of seeds has gone in and as soon as the little bulbs form on the first row we’ll be thinning them and enjoying a delicious meal of infant beetroot and their leaves. Quite delicious with a splash of extra virgin and some Wineland Brie™ from Dalewood Fromage.

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Harvest from the Toddler Organic Vegetable Garden

Have you been ‘conditioned’ into believing organic vegetables can never look as good as regular ones in shops? Well if you have, then take a closer look at this picture. There’s a bit too much reflection coming off the packaging, but there’s no denying the cos and dark frilly oak-leafed lettuce is as good looking as any, anywhere! The only reason organic vegetables look so unappetizing is because they are not fresh. And the reason other vegetables keep their ‘fresh’ look is because of the harmful chemicals placed inside the plastic wrappers which give them a longer shelf live.

These vegetables were harvested from Squirrel’s Landing Organic Garden last Wednesday, and sold to a few lucky shoppers on Thursday. They were still crisp and beautiful and caused many ooh’s and aah’s from admirers. If you’ve been watching Cabbages and Cream since its inception, you’ll remember it all started at the beginning of March, and this is what has come out of the garden two and a half months later. You can track progress of the lettuce by clicking Organic Vegetable Garden Progress on April 22^nd.

Our beetroot doesn’t show up in this picture, but you can be sure it is utterly delicious, with strong, healthy leaves – nothing like the limp stuff in the supermarkets and big vegetable stores.

Read more on the topic: We want real food

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Organic gardening DOs & DON'Ts

Everyone’s going organic these days, which is very good news indeed. But there are varying degrees of ‘organic’ and if we want to achieve the results we envisage we’d better do everything we can to get it right from the start.

One aspect of the organic growing of vegetables we don’t hear enough about is soil management, and this is pivotal if we want good nutrition from the food we grow. People who instinctively know that the food they eat builds good or bad metabolisms will be sure that their soil contains as many of the trace elements and minerals which are needed for the plant to synthesize inorganic minerals in organic nutrients that our bodies can process.

So when you begin work on your allotment or just a small area of your back garden in order to grow real food*, have the soil tested for its mineral content, and if necessary, check with your nurseryman as to how to feed your soil before you begin planting.

Here are a few tips to get you going:

• Read as many articles you can find on feeding the soil first
• Make soil care a priority
• Make compost and leaf mould to feed the soil
• Make local sources your first choice
• Manage the whole garden organically - not just the fruit and vegetables
• Use organically grown seeds
• Control weeds without herbicides
• Consider the environmental implications when choosing materials for hard landscaping, fencing, soil improvement and so forth
• Say 'NO' to genetically modified varieties
• Make the garden 'wildlife friendly', encouraging natural creatures to control pests.
• Learn to distinguish pests from predators
• Collect rain water, and reduce the need for watering by improving the soil and growing appropriate plants
• Reuse and recycle, to cut down the use of finite resources and reduce disposal problems
• Play to your garden's strengths, capitalising on its particular characteristics
• Stop using slug pellets!
• Avoid the use of preservative treated wood

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Making your own compost

Many people feel that compost bins like these are essential in the garden when compost is being made, and it would also seem that open slatted wooden structures are more eco-friendly than plastic. But which is really going to make the best compost in the end?

Whilst there are no hard and fast rules in compost making, if you waited long enough, you don't even need a container! However, when you are pressed for time, containers will quicken the procedure, help to insulate the heap and keep it tidy and manageable.

Choose a bin you can place straight on the ground, so that worms and organisms in the soil are encouraged to interact with your waste and produce a good mulch. The bin must have a lid to keep out the worst of any extremes in weather.

A good mix of waste materials is vital to successful composting - don't use only grass clippings, and add plenty of leaves and some torn up cardboard, but no old magazines - the shiny paper does not break down well. This will balance out the nitrogen and carbon ratio.

Don't feel shy to have your compost bin showing in your garden - keep it tidy and arrange a few pots and containers around it with eye-catching flowers like creeping nasturtiums or marigolds to catch the eye rather than the ugly bin. The odd spade or fork lent against the bin also gives it a homely feel and seeing it on display will tell your visitors that you are serious about feeding your garden

If you prefer a more natural looking container, then a few old wooden pallets (scrounged from your local builder) will do a good job banged together to form a square container. Remember to build the compost straight on soil for interaction with worms and other organisms. The more worms you have in your bin, the better the compost!

All your kitchen scraps, excepting cooked left over meals, dairy products or meat will do a good job in your compost. Use up all your garden clippings too, and your weeds, but remember to keep out invasive grass roots which might happily reinstate themselves in your lovely compost and take over your beds once you spread the new mulch into your garden

Do you have some good compost making tips? If so, we'd love to hear about them - everyone has favourite way of making the stuff, so let's share them around.

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Vegetable garden growing pains at Squirrel's Landing

This week we put in a new bed at ‘Squirrel’s Landing’ because we’ve outgrown the first three!

• We’ve used the same process as before – first digging over the soil with a hefty pick, taking out all the stones and grass and then resting it for a couple of days
• Next we opened up 8 huge bags of ancient manure, completely aged and dry, and worked them well into the soil
• On top of that came a generous sprinkling of organic fertilizer pellets and bone meal
• More digging over followed
• With a good watering to get the soil evenly moist
• We then let the bed ‘rest’ for a week, with two more good waterings as there’s been no rain, and some temperatures in the 20’s
• Finally we planted out a long row of young strawberry plants taken from the six originals we cropped off last summer
  

The broad beans are in flower! This is a new surprise, as they are still quite young, but none the less are bursting with health and enthusiasm. All the seeds germinated, and as a result, the plants are quite close together and so giving one another some support. So far they haven’t been battered by the wind or rain, and if our luck holds, we should have some young beans in a couple of weeks.






The artichokes and rhubarb are growing very well – we had a crop of rhubarb with stalks over 50cm in length, so only needed a few for a hefty rhubarb pie. When we planted the artichokes we knew they were too close together, but hoped they’d grow slowly through the cold weather and give us time to get some new beds going before they outgrew their space. Instead, they’ve grown into huge plants at a record pace and will have to be transplanted very soon.

In the background of the picture you can see the asparagus fronds are dying off quickly. The stems will soon need to be cut back and the plants given their covering of well rotted manure which will send down nutrients into the soil over their dormant time. thinning them out will taken place before their new shoots form at the end of winter

As you can see, the bed we’ve just prepared isn’t going to give us nearly enough space – we’ll have to do it all again very soon if we want to sew any more beetroot and carrots. Let alone the lettuce, peas, tomatoes, cabbage and potatoes which the books tell us we can plant in June.


Watch out for progress reports on the strawberries...









More artilces on the Organic Vegetable Garden at Squirrel's Landing:

The birth of an organic vegetable garden
April Progress in the organic vegetable garden
May progress in the organic vegetable garden
May harvest from the organic vegetable garden

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In the Toddler Organic Vegetable Garden

In a month of glorious weather the vegetables at Squirrel’s Landing have had to be almost tied down, to stop them growing so fast! These beets have only been in the ground for two months and are now ready for a full harvest, so if you visit Creeds towards the end of the week, you may just be lucky enough to nab a bunch.

The leaves are simply beautiful and are almost pretty enough for a flower arrangement, but we’ve been enjoying them in salads and as a lightly steamed green vegetable for weeks. Full of good nutrition and bursting with flavour they are truly a wonder food, stacked with beta-carotene, iron and calcium.

Beetroot have higher sugar content than most vegetables but are also rich in vitamin C (we all need more), fibre, potassium, folic acid, magnesium and manganese. Enjoy them roasted or grated raw, and if you’re brave, find a recipe for borscht! In fact, why not ask us for one?

We’ve also been having fun with the rest of the garden and have at last laid down our plans for an Edible Garden. I’m very excited about this, as I can now indulge in a passion for a flower garden as well as passion #1 - organic vegetables. Of course the flower garden will also be organic, which is just as well, because I’m inclined to put marigolds, borage, nasturtiums and more into salads. But not foxgloves! Sometimes I forget which are vegetables and which are flowers – so many plants are worth experimenting with in the kitchen

The idea for the Edible Garden came from a book I picked up whilst book browsing the other day – and what a find it’s turned out to be! By Rosalind Creasy, it’s called The Edible French Garden. Of course! She has wonderful ideas and the photographs are outstanding. Why not find a copy and sit back in a cozy chair by the fire with a cup of something hot, and indulge!

If you like the idea of starting a similar garden, look on page 19 for a sneak preview of how The Edible French Garden at Squirrel’s Landing is going to look... and keep up with the Real Food section of Cabbages And Cream for updates.

More articles on Squirrel's Landing Organic Vegetable Garden:

Organic Vegetable Garden Progress

Birth of an Organic Vegetable Garden

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Organic gardening sites that I find useful

Here are some great sites that I find useful for finding new ideas for my organic garden.

Dig my Plot - Growing vegetables & fruit organically on an allotment : a
natural approach. What to do guide is updated monthly. Interesting
ideas and tips for everybody including Getting Started, Companion Planting,
Identifying Weeds, Herbs, Crop Rotation.

Organic Gardening Magazine - loads of ideas and useful information and a great magazine to subscribe to

Kitchen Garden - unfortunately not organic, but you can get loads of useful stuff like when to plant tomatoes or how to get rid of snails without hefty poisons, and more

Dalewood Fromage – really nice organic cheeses – I especially love their Brie with fig – its utterly sublime

The Soil Association - the ultimate in ‘Saving the Planet’ – my all time favourite publication, utterly dedicated to helping farmers who care about the land

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Birth of an Organic Vegetable Garden

A brand new organic vegetable garden was born recently at Squirrel’s Landing. There’ll be frequent postings to keep you up to date on how it progresses, so make sure you visit us again soon. This is how the early preparation went in order to put minerals back in the sand and soil:

Our topsoil was thick with invasive grass roots, making it impossible to dig over, and we had to bring in a Bobcat to chop off the matted and dead topsoil which has been hijacked by invading alien grass for three generations

• Then we cleared out bits of stone and some deep sunken roots which would have sent up more grass shoots within days


• A thin layer of loose soil was exposed, under which hardened clay has made it impossible to fork over. We tried sinking a stake in to hold up a fence but it was useless, the prongs of the fork just bent! This was when we realized just how much work is ahead of us.


• We have to manufacture top soil from scratch in order to make it arable!


• A layer of well rotted manure went down first followed by some dried grass clippings taken from the plot next door where a team of workmen recently spent the morning mowing. It will help make a base for our new topsoil and the remains have been set aside to feed our new compost heap


• After that a layer of good topsoil was salvaged from the boundary which is where a natural stream runs, and the soil looks quite healthy


• Then another spreading of manure and some of the so-called 'compost' from the local nursery came next, and a hefty dose of organic chicken manure in pellet form to add concentrated nitrogen into the mix


• Lots of watering followed, after which there was much digging and forking over and leveling of the whole area


• This new topsoil will lie quietly for two weeks, with a little tilling and lots of watering in between, when we will be ready to set the paths and plant some seeds

We’d love to hear from you so visit us soon for further news of our brand new organic garden, and we’d love to hear from you about your ideas on growing organic vegetables.

Don't forget my Organic gardening DOs & DON'Ts

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