Welcome visitors to the garden
The warmth of May has been a little too warm at times, giving us problems with watering as we have to avoid scorching the plants in the heat and bright light. Some of our spinach and salad crops have started to bolt.
In preparation for our October VegWatchers day, we were busily sowing pumpkin seed during May - enough to give us over 100 pumpkins in October. Our favourites are ‘Connecticut Field’ and ‘Jack O’Lantern’.
We've given each pumpkin its very own crater - a 30cm (12in) squared hole - filled with manure. The remaining soil is then built-up over the manure and three pumpkin seeds planted on top. After the seedlings have developed the weakest two will be removed leaving one plant per crater.
Some of our courgettes in the greenhouse have grown on nicely so have been planted outside after hardening off. This year we’re growing 'Nero di Milano' and 'Striato Italia'. Courgettes are popular with our Farm Shop customers, plus we use them at our Cooking in the Kitchen Garden sessions to inspire people with new ways of using them in the kitchen.
Inside the greenhouses and polytunnel our cucumbers - 'Burpless Tasty' and 'Marketmore' -have gone into the ground, followed by the aubergines (‘Bonica’, ‘Tonda Bianca’, ‘Pingtung’, ‘Black Beauty’ and ‘Striped Toga’) and chillies. We have planted tomatoes outside ('Tumbling Toms') on our schools plot.
We have also had some unusual but welcome visitors join us in the Kitchen Garden: a dozen scarecrows! They have been made by local schoolchildren as a part of a Heritage Lottery Fund project to encourage children to think about both crop growing and the heritage of scarecrows. It’s a lot of scarecrows for two acres but it’s fun to see what the children have made and for them to enjoy the the sight of their efforts displayed for us humans to see as well as the birds.
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