Daffodils, dandelions, and crocuses have been popping up everywhere and trees are starting to come to life after a long winter. Spring is the busiest time of the year in the gardens and we’ve been hard at work planting veggies and flowers for the year as well as preparing for post-lockdown events like outdoor yoga and therapeutic gardening.
Our team-leader gardener Steve and our essential volunteers Michael, Kat, Goura, and Felix have been occupied with a variety of jobs – planting, hoeing, weeding and composting. We’ve weeded around the base of fruit trees and mulched them with compost to make sure they grow nice and strong. We’ve also been sowing spinach and calendula seeds – we mostly used our own saved seeds from last year and we are looking forward to seeing how well these grow. Sowing saved seeds always feels like an exciting experience! We sowed seeds of leaf beet, broccoli, kohlrabi, brussels sprouts, cornflowers, larkspur, corn marigold, and lettuce.
We’ve also been transplanting marigolds and rocket salad into raised beds in the greenhouses, pricking out summer cabbages, asters, summer cauliflowers, peppers, vine tomatoes, bush tomatoes and strawberries, removing and conserving hyacinth bulbs to use next year, preparing beds in the walled garden for planting veg, hoeing and weeding the flower beds. Wow!
Moreover, we are happy with our new raspberries, blackberries, and black-currants plants in our walled garden, which will be ready for harvest next year! It is also worth mentioning that we’ve been potting up courgettes, planting out french dwarf beans in the raised beds in the greenhouse, and harvesting rocket, kale and leaf beet.
As you can see, we’ve been having a very busy spring here at the farm! Have a look through the photos below to see our volunteers working hard and other updates!
