The Garden this week

Well, the polytunnel is full again - with all the plants we're rescuing from drowning and being munched to oblivion by the slugs.

Our tomato plants are coming on a treat and are very happy in their growbags.  It's one of the more positive aspects of the garden this year.  We've had Aire Valley in, who have started on the jungle that is our overgrown grass, and it makes such a vast difference with just a bit of grass cutting.  The sun  was out this afternoon, but a downpour just after lunch, has made everything dripping wet and we are not kitted out in the right gear and would get soaked.

We have just started the preparations for The Cookridge and District Horticultural Society's Annual Show, which we have entered for the last 2 years.  The first year I didn't attend, but last year I did and was cross with myself for not doing my homework as there were lots of classes we could of entered apart from our Veg Box (which won 2nd prize, I might add!).  I made copious notes and promised myself to do better, so I'm in the process of galvanising the troops and enter everything we can.  The teachers are SO going to love me - NOT!  The approach of end of term is frantic enough as it is, without me adding to the mix!  I am hoping to enter a Veg Box again, a display of herbs and do a display showing our work in the garden this past year.  The Show is on the first Saturday after we get back, so it's hitting the ground running then! Not the best of timing, but we always get there!

Volunteers Wanted!

From September, I am looking to build a team of dedicated volunteers to work in the garden.  I need a team of about 3 or 4 people, to help me and the children do the planting, digging, sowing, harvesting and general maintenance especially watering.  No experience is required, just enthusiasm!  If you're interested, please contact me on 0113 3862500 or catch me in the playground for a chat.

It's going to be a short blog......

It rained.

A brief taste of Summer.........

A carrot was dangled this week, with three days of beautiful sunny days.......but at the wrong end of the week!  By the time Thursday and Friday made an appearance, it was more horizontal rain and everything damp and miserable.

It's not making a very exciting blog, this weather and not very exciting gardening either.  It's not fun planting outside with rain running off your anorak and the end of your nose.  So, we retreated into our polytunnel to finish the tomato planting in the Growbags, give them a good water and generally tidied up.  We rescued a few more sunflowers and planted out some nasturiums in some planters to add some colour to the garden - it is very green at the moment!  There's not much you can do with weather like this - next week I'm bringing my waterproof trousers and probably a snorkel!

So to make everybody feel happy and get that Friday feeling, I'm posting some photos taken a couple of weeks ago, when the sun shone and everybody smiled and we were getting warm in the polytunnel planting our tomatoes.............and here I will leave you until next week.



Thailan planting his tomato plant



Brooklyn preparing the soil



It's a bit back breaking, Billy!



Raindrops keep falling on my veg........

I had been struggling today, trying to think of an apt title for this blog - something that sums up the whole soggy situation.  Lots of songs have gone through my head with keywords like 'rain, wet and drip' being quite prominent.  I think my final choice covers it.

I changed the blog's background too. Fluffy white clouds scudding across an azure blue sky are but a hazy memory (about March actually). It was a nice background to study too and lose yourself, albeit briefly, in that image, but I feel that the green, overgrown jungle look of the chosen background, in reality, is a truer reflection of the garden at the present moment.  The other options of dark, menacing rain clouds were too depressing to display - you just need to look out of the window for that.......

So you probably figured out that it's been a touch wet in Leeds this week.  The slugs are having a field day, munching their way through our crops and the grass is becoming a bit of an issue as it KEEPS RAINING!!!

Yesterday (Thursday) I took the children up into the polytunnel.  With half term last week, the weeds took advantage and started to invade the interior of the greenhouse.  So the children did a grand job of weeding and tidying up. I had been to the Garden Centre and bought several Growbags for our tomatoes and had dumped them in the car park.  Armed with the wheelbarrow, the children brought the bags in to the greenhouse and laid them out in rows.

We then went outside to rescue our sunflowers from the slug onslaught - a lot of the sunflowers had to be thrown on the compost, eaten to stumpy stalks, but we managed to save quite a few.  Edie was delighted to catch slugs red handed munching their way through the stems, and equally delighted in peeling off the offending anthropods and re-homing them.  The rest of the children, including the boys, were rather squeamish, wringing their hands in disgust and picking up pots rather gingerly and passing them onto Tom who emptied the poor plants into the compost.

Today, Mrs W and I had four boys come up who brought in the remaining grow bags from the car park and started to plant the tomatoes in the bags.They did a brilliant job and worked very quickly.  The heavens opened and the rain was so hard, that we were unable to talk, such was the noise of the rain beating on the plastic of the polytunnel. At one point we wondered if we would get back into school!  It did ease off for us to make a dash.

The persistent and heavy showers spoilt the rest of the afternoon as the tomatoes were the only job in the polytunnel and it was too wet to work outside - though there is tons to do.   Several of the bean beds have been attacked by our unwelcomed visitors - the slugs and need replacing.  Hopefully this time next week, my blog title will be more optimistic, the background a lot sunnier and the garden will be back on track and Leeds will be basking in a Mediterranean climate!  You can always dream.........

Half term

Sorry for not blogging this week, but it's half term holidays so there's not much happening in the garden, apart from the weeds growing madly in this very wet weather.

On the last Thursday before we broke up for the hols, Mrs W and the children cleared out the polytunnel - most of the seeds are planted outside and there only remained the tomatoes.  Mrs W has taken them home to look after, saving us going to school to water them.  Next week we are getting grow bags for our juvenile tomato plants and letting them mature in the greenhouse.  We'll probably also start another round of seedlings to prolong the season.

On the Friday was our Jubilee Celebrations day and with so much happening, we suspended gardening though Mrs W and I still got our hands dirty.  Mrs W dug a hole for our Jubilee Tree in the playground and later, together with Miss Bergmanis, helped 300 children plant their individual lobelias into their hand painted Jubilee pots to take home. It was lovely to see quite a few of the children expertly transfer their flower from one pot to another with hardly any guidance from us - we have taught them well!

The weather for our week long break has been awful to say the least.  The rain has returned with a vegeance and it has rained almost every day (my house looks like Widow Twanky's and lost count how many times I've got soaked dog walking!). Dread to think what the garden will look like - six foot weeds, but hopefully our vegetables will have taken off and thrived - at least it's been warm(ish) rain..........