Planting plans for 2013

Posted on February 3, 2013 by londonrdstationpartnership

SeedsThis page is dedicated to Daphne who loves raising seed and now has some extra south facing window sills.

I’m pretty useless at it, and I’m an anxious germinator. I love the moment when you see minute disturbance in the soil and you know the green shoots are pushing upwards, but I’m not very patient. But here are some ideas for us to think about for the next season which is fast approaching.

We’ll be getting some free seeds as part of the RHS Britain in Bloom ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ scheme: Chives, parsely, coriander, dill, garlic chives, thyme, fennel, redfrills mustard, nasturtiums, marigold, radishes, carrots, spring onions and spinach. We’ll be sowing them as part of the ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ events on Sunday 14th April: come along and help!

But once we’ve germinated all these seeds, where are we going to put them? And can we do effective crop rotation in our tiny gated plot? I’ve been thinking about our plans for 2013, looking back at 2012 – and checking the seed catalogues. Here are some ideas:

Raised bed 1. The salad bed

  • Bed for leaves
  • Partial shade
  • Needs moisture, but not too wet, and high nitrogen
  • Also needs protection from slugs, snails and caterpillars!

Early last year, we were picking cavalo nero and chard regularly from the salad bed. We planted more cavalo nero (a favourite ever since Jo from Shaftesbury Road left us some odd seedlings in 2011) chard and kale, but the garden suffered a major caterpillar attack in the summer which wiped out our brassicas. Meanwhile, the mint plants have run riot.

So the salad bed needs a bit of attention. It’s in partial shade, sheltered by the south facing wall. As Colleen Vanderlinden says “… a good rule to remember is that if you grow a plant for the fruit or the root, it needs full sun. If you grow it for the leaves, stems, or buds, a little shade will be just fine.”  As a leaf bed, it will require relatively high nitrogen and good moisture.

We mulched with manure in the autumn, which should help moisture retention and nutrients, but we’ll need to check both the soil structure and nutrient levels, as the saturation may have leached nutrients from the soil.

Ideas for planting

  • Chard ‘Bright Lights’
  • Cavalo nero ‘Nero di Toscana’
  • Lettuces: e.g. ‘Cos Freckles’ – read Naomi Shillinger’s wonderful blog on this  – and ‘Nymans’, a beautiful red variety. The frilly lettuces seem to be less slug prone.
  • We can also plant parsely, chives, radishes and spinach in this bed

Raised bed 2. The bean bed. 

  • Our most sunny central bed

The climbing beans worked well in 2012, producing a fairly good crop despite dismal sun. We also planted onions and courgettes in this bed. The onions produced a fantastic crop and the yellow courgettes were worthwhile.

We’ve already planted up this bed with onions (where the beans were) and leeks. I wonder whether we can place our bean wigwams where the courgettes were, at the south end of this bed? Courgettes are such reliable plants, it would be a pity to give up on them, but perhaps this year we could try growing them vertically, beside the cordonned pear trees? The variety Black Forest F1 produces dark green 6” fruits and needs to be trained, like a cucumber (see below).

Ideas for planting

  • Climbing French beans , e.g. ‘Cobra’ which grows to 1.80cm, at the opposite end to last year.

Raised bed 3. The raspberry bed

  • Partial shade, dominated by raspberry canes

Well, the raspberry canes have truly established themselves, sending out runners which we may need to dig up and pot up. We had kale in the raspberry bed last year. Beautiful though it was, it got infested by caterpillars. This bed gets a bit more sun than the shady leaf bed, so perhaps we could try beetroot on the opposite side to the raspberries?

I’ve found an interesting beetroot ‘Alto‘ which is more root than ball and is billed as a space-saving variety which is very sweet, and it has the RHS AGM. If it works, that’s just what we need.

Ideas for planting

  • Beetroot ‘Alto’

Mini-orchard beds

Our fruit trees are growing vigorously, as are the strawberries we’ve underplanted. We also sowed garlic in the sunnier bed, which appears to be growing well. So, these beds are  already spoken for, apart from odd spaces which will appear when we harvest (or give up on) the overwintering frisee lettuce. We can plant shallow rooting leafy veg seedlings  here throughout the season, depending on what we have spare.

Sunny area towards the gate

We tried tomatoes, chillis and peppers here in pots and grow bags, but 2012 really was not a fantastic year. I’m sure we’ll try tomatoes again. They are wonderful, but unless we have a good sunny summer, it’s quite hard getting them to ripen outside of a greenhouse. Perhaps we could try the vertical courgettes, planted in a large container (needs to be at least 18 in./45 cm in diameter)?

This is also where we would place pots of coriander, thyme and basil – the sun-loving herbs. We are also getting carrot and spring onion seed from the RHS. John Harrison in Vegetable, Fruit and Herb Growing in Small Spaces suggests sowing carrots and spring onions together in a trough to try to deter carrot root fly: they love the smell of carrots, but hate the smell of onions. He suggests that this is entirely suitable for container growing. We’ll need to cover it with horticultural fleece to protect from those flies who hold their noses against the onions. The only question is … where do we put the container?

Wonderful websites for advice, ideas, descriptions, inspiration

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Pruning the mini-orchard

Posted on February 2, 2013 by londonrdstationpartnership

Bryn pruning day 1 cBryn Thomas visited the garden to demonstrate winter pruning to LRSP members and the  group taking the Brighton Permaculture fruit growing course.

Our six cordoned trees – four apples, two pears – have been pruned and the position of the leader shoots has been adjusted.

 

side pruningThe stronger the leader growth, the more angled it can be: the angle slows down the growth.

Our trees are growing particularly vigorously, so no need to feed them – any nitrogen-based fertilisers to be avoided. What is important is watering.

The laterals have also been pruned – always to an outside or downward facing bud with an angled cut – to ensure a good shape for the trees’ second season.

Our plum tree, however, has not been pruned. This takes place from mid-May, to avoid bacterial infection.

Bryn pruning day offering secateurs Bryn pruning day 2 c on beds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pruned trees cThe orchard looked shorn and bare when pruning had finished. This winter pruning will, however, stimulate growth – and it looks like we may get a few pears this summer.It was cold in the garden, but there is a sense that the new season is just around the corner.

Ready for their new spurt of growth, I cut back last year’s shoots of our autumn fruiting raspberries right to the base. The autumn fruit is carried on the new green shoots which are already sprouting through the soil.

We also need to prune a red currant and a black currant, both in large containers.

With black currants, the aim is to remove between a quarter and a third of the oldest wood by cutting back to a strong shoot at the base. The young shoots carry the fruit for the next season. Here’s a lovely video of Markus from the Swiss horticultural grower, Lubera, explaining how to do it. Cut out the older – thicker, darker – stems, and leave the young ones. Cut out also the branches b

The same principle applies to red currants. The aim is to create ‘a goblet-shaped’ bush with an open centre. This improves air circulation, which reduces the risk of pests and diseases. The main idea is to cut out old shoots crowding the centre. As Markus says, ‘when we took away [the long branches], we always let a bit of the stem’ from which the new wood will grow. Then the remaining leader shoots can be cut back by half.

Monty Don also presents red currant pruning, with useful commentary on cutting out canker. He says not to prune black currants in the winter, but immediately after fruit in late summer and early autumn. The RHS book Growing Fruit, however, says ‘Prune in early autumn or at any time in the dormant season until March’. Hmm … Another gardening conundrum.

 

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Fruit tree pruning Sat 2nd Feb 1.15pm

Posted on February 1, 2013 by londonrdstationpartnership

Orchard 1.13 snow cIt’s time for winter pruning of fruit trees. Our cordons are growing well, but the leader stems are reverting to upright. While they are dormant, we’ll probably need to adjust them by attaching them to the diagonal canes. We’ll see …

Bryn Thomas from Brighton Permaculture Trust is out and about, planting and pruning. There’s a fruit tree planting course happening in Preston Park on Saturday 2nd February.

After that, Bryn’s visiting us at the LRSP garden (by the south side of the railway bridge) at around 1.15pm to show us winter pruning techniques on the mini-orchard we planted with him last March. Find out more on Brighton Permaculture’s site.

Everybody is welcome to come along. I know that at least two neighbours have planted cordon fruit trees since we planted our mini-orchard last year. My neighbour and I had already planted minarette fruit trees (plums and cherries) in our front gardens. It’s wonderful to think we’ll have mini-orchards up and down the Ditchling Rise. This should attract the bees to come and pollinate.

Here’s what the RHS advises on pruning of cordons and minarettes

Winter pruning oblique (45 degree) cordons

  • Neither the leader nor side shoots are normally pruned in the winter, except where the tree has grown a lot since summer pruning or you need to renovate a neglected tree
  • When the cordons reach the top wire they may be lowered from 45 degrees to not less than 35 degrees (as there is less risk of the stem breaking). This will increase the length of stem, and so the amount of fruit produced.  Once the cordon has reached the final length, prune back the leader to 1cm (½in) each May
  • Over-long or complicated spur clusters should be reduced to two or three fruit buds

Summer pruning an oblique cordon (at 45 degrees)

Summer pruning is carried out in August, or in areas where growth is strong, such as wet parts of the country, delay summer pruning until September.

  • Look for sideshoots over 22cm (9in) long, which grew earlier in summer directly from the main stem, and cut them back to three leaves. Those stems that grew from existing sideshoots or spurs can be pruned harder – to just one leaf beyond the cluster of leaves the base of that stem
  • Leave shoots less than 15cm (6in) long until mid September and then shorten to one leaf beyond the cluster of leaves the base
  • Prune growth that forms after summer pruning in September (or October if pruning later)

Encourage the lower buds to break on maidens by shortening the leader by one-third of its height each winter until it reaches the top of the stake

 

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Waiting

Posted on January 26, 2013 by londonrdstationpartnership

Gated plot 1.13 snow cWe are waiting. Gardens in the winter are suspended, resting …

It’s been wet, very wet since the beginning of December and we had strong winds. The New Year was wet again, and then last week, the snow came and stayed for a week. Today felt like the first day for a long time when the sun appeared and we saw greens and blues again.

Friends and London Road Station gardeners have all said the same thing, rather apologetically: ‘I haven’t been past the garden for ages’. But there’s no point trying to do anything. Nature is in hibernation, it’s pointless to interfere. The garden is asleep.

Orchard 1.13 snow cI ventured by just before the snow fell. It all seems to be surviving. I put plastic cloches over our leeks and our frisee lettuces, and over some of the onion and garlic shoots. If I remember rightly, the onions and garlic are both overwintering varieties; they should be fine.

In the orchard, the leader stems of the fruit trees are growing away from the diagonal, but Bryn Thomas from Brighton Permaculture Trust is coming to prune next week. We will need to prune the raspberries and the black currant soon, but not a good idea to do anything while it’s freezing.

Shady fatsia snow 1.13 cIn the shady triangle, our two shrubs, a fatsia japonica and a mahonia japonica are really doing well, thanks probably to the amount of moisture in the soil.

Everywhere the shoots of all the bulbs we planted are coming up. Our cyclamen have maintained their bright spots of colour against the washed out greens and browns.

It’s resting time, recovery time, planning time. Already, though, we’re planning events. Things happen quickly once winter ends.

 

 

 

 

 

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2012 in review

Posted on January 3, 2013 by londonrdstationpartnership

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

This blog got about 3,400 views in 2012. We’re delighted people have wanted to find out more about what we do. It would be lovely to have some more comments and find out what you’re doing out there, in community gardens, edible growing sites, mini-orchards and unloved municipal planters!

Click here to see the complete report.

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Space for Growing Food

Posted on November 30, 2012 by londonrdstationpartnership

You can tell it’s winter. The layer of frost on my raised beds is a give-away sign, but more than that, I’m indoors. At a computer screen. Catching up on all those interesting documents I haven’t had time to read, following all those interesting links, imagining all the funding opportunities we might bid for. Not getting out to check whether the frost has wilted the lettuces.

First up today was the incongruously benign guide Space for Food Growing from the Department for Communities and Local Government. Its tone is more the jolly encouragement of a self-help book rather than the dry prose of a government policy paper. Its message: “Go forth, gardeners, and take over unused land, for grow-your-own gardening shall contribute to community cohesion and protect you from climate change”.

It’s so easy: no need to wait for an allotment plot (for our nearest allotments, there are 389 people on the waiting list with a waiting time around 5 years!). No, you just “… find other land which could be easily converted into allotment plots or community gardens, such as derelict public or private sector land; green space surrounding social housing estates; or land owned by a school, a residential care home or hospital.” A great idea … but there’s something rather naïve about this guide.

It’s great that a government department appears to be promoting the idea of community land use, and encouraging us citizens to look again at the potential of the unused space around us. But very little of this is new, and very little is about concrete strategies or coordinated funding streams. The references to case studies are useful as are the links to helpful organisations at the end. For example, I only recently found out about The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens and the work they do on community leases. I’m really taken by the idea of Meanwhile Leases for using land temporarily where development has been halted by the recession, as appears to be the case opposite London Road Station (see earlier post).

So perhaps this is the point: all the useful stuff in Space for Growing Food comes from grassroots projects that have been driven mostly by the energy, investment and imagination of volunteers. I remain to be convinced that the Government has, in any real sense, ‘committed to measures that will enable individuals and communities to gain access to the land they need.’ (p.1). There’s a cynical part of me that is wary when a government department appears to jump on a bandwagon. Or perhaps it’s just that it’s winter …

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Update on the Preston Circus Planters

Posted on November 27, 2012 by londonrdstationpartnership

It’s been a year since we first started to talk about what could be done about the Preston Circus Planters. During this year, we’ve actually accomplished quite a lot. Thus far, our efforts have been temporary and experimental, planting mainly with annuals, but people did notice the colourful displays, and we were able to keep the plants going throughout the very unpredictable summer.

We now have a small grant from Community First to support the replanting of the Preston Circus Planters, so in this dark and dreary end of seaon, it’s a good time to reflect on the year.

First, back in March, we cleared the planters of weeds and sickly plants. Lavenders, red hot pokers and vincas were potted up to wait until we could replant them again.

At the end of May, we finally managed to get Brighton & Hove City Council to replace the growing medium in the planters, but just as the weather turned very hot and dry.

We planted up the two planters nearest the Duke of York’s cinema with plants we’d seeded ourselves – pink cosmos, orange and yellow nasturtium and marigolds – as well as the lavenders and vincas. We put generous amounts of water crystals in the soil, and covered the top with a permeable membrane to reduce the amount of evaporation.

At the end of June, wearing our yellow hi-viz jackets and masks to filter just a little of the pollution, we planted up the two other planters with a range of annuals and some of the remaining perennials we had rescued.

At that stage, Brighton was still officially in drought! A group of neighbours formed a watering rota, and could be seen in the summer evenings lugging full watering cans down to Preston Circus. Luckily, the Preston Circus Fire Station agreed readily to allow us access to water, so keeping the planters from drying out became a little easier.

Of course, from drought in the spring, we moved into the wettest summer on record. The cosmos, nasturtium and marigolds benefitted and grew lush, tomato plants appeared from nowhere in the planter by Circus Circus, and the straggly verbena bonariensis grew tall and architectural in the ‘purple’ planter on the south side of the Circus.

Sadly, the two planters nearest the Duke of York’s were badly damaged during Pride at the end of August, but the ‘purple’ planter (now with marigolds that had strayed in from somewhere) was still going strong even at the beginning of November.

Yes, people throw bottles, cans, cigarette ends and plastic bags into the planters. People have fallen against them, leant into them and squashed the plants. The sun and the wind are also unforgiving. But they did survive …

We now need to set up a good source of water before planting. The floral display needs to have height and colour in order to have impact. The planters themselves need painting. And we need a team of volunteers to care for the planters.

We’re planning now to clear the planters of the remains of the annual planting and mulch to improve the fertility of the soil, ready for planting in early spring. Unfortunately, the wind and heavy rain put paid to our good intentions this last weekend, and it looks like frost is promised for next weekend. The unpredictability of the weather this year continues …

Building on our experience this year, we now need to plant for a rather more long-term strategy – and think about how we can use shrubs, perennials and annuals to create an all-season display. Do get in touch if you’d like to be involved: pcplanters@hotmail.co.uk or through this blog.

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End of the season

Posted on November 6, 2012 by londonrdstationpartnership

It’s getting cold. It’s sunny out there but the blue sky belies the real chill in the air. The light is fading now at around 4.30pm. With the low sun blocked by surrounding buildings, the gated plot is in shadow much of the afternoon. It’s the end of the growing season.

We’ve cleared the beans, the leggy yellow courgettes (both successful this year), the tomatoes which never got beyond green, the peppers which went black, and the amazing squash in a 12″ pot which by rights should never have fruited. Last week, we harvested two squash.

We’ve lifted the beetroot and thinned the frisee lettuce seedlings which should survive the cold. We debated whether to cut back th lush leaves on the strawberry plants, but decided the cold would probably do this naturally. We’ve potted up plantlets for next year. 

The autumn-fruiting raspberries have been left to be expansive, some of their leaves turned to filigree by moths and caterpillars , still producing beautifully coloured berries but sadly with no flavour. We’ll cut back the tops of the canes now to stop the wind whipping through them (thanks, Sue, for this tip) and wait until the winter for pruning back to base. 

Meanwhile our orchard is looking very healthy. The trees have grown quickly and the leaves are still glossy dark green. And our salad bed is at risk of becoming a mint bed, as the mints run away gleefully with all the moisture in the soil. Madeleine cut them back last week, but we’ll need to keep them in check.

We’ve planted overwintering onion sets where the beans were, and two varieties of garlic in front of the pear trees. Madeleine used the skins to indicate where the bulbs were planted. We planted winter leaks back in late August. They were looking a bit straggly but should benefit from new mulch and a bit more space now the courgettes are gone.

And we’re mulching … I think the recycled vegetable waste mulch we were donated by Countrystyle last March has been the key to success this year, and we’ve still got quite a bit left. Or could it have been the stable manure, the nettle-rich soil from Brighton Permaculture or even Mark and Daphne’s old wool carpet at the bottom of the central raised beds? This year, of course, we also have our own superb compost (thank-you, composters). These last two weeks, Mark has been creating our own mixture – London Road Gold? – made from one part compost, one part Countrystyle mulch and one part spent grow-bags to dilute it.

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Harvest supper 2012

Posted on October 16, 2012 by londonrdstationpartnership

It’s harvest time again. This year’s produce was rather more substantial than last year’s but with different successes and failures. This is the basket of final pickings that went into our harvest supper last Friday.

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Fighting for Flora

Posted on October 4, 2012 by londonrdstationpartnership

At London Road Station, we’re gardening on two tiny plots of land. We’re getting to the point where we could certainly work with more land. Every Open Day we have, more and more people express an interest in gardening with us, and in composting.

The piece of land opposite us on the North side bordering the railway line used to be allotments. I can remember passing through London Road Station back in the mid-1970s and being amazed by seeing rows of sweet corn, beans, lettuces and beautiful flowers in such an urban environment, only two minutes out from the centre of Brighton. It was like arriving at a quiet oasis, almost lost in time. The original platform canopy was still there in those days, and I remember the impression was one of an Agatha Christie period film.

Sadly, the old canopy on the North platform was demolished in the 1990s. More recently, the ‘old allotments’ site itself was sold on to a developer. The proposal to build flats on the site right next to the railway, and in an area of very high housing density, was energetically fought (neighbours got together as FLORA – Friends of London Road Station Allotments), but was finally given the go-ahead at a national appeal.

So far, no building has taken place, but a planning application has been resubmitted for building flats on this site (you can find it on Brighton & Hove’s planning site here). The area has now grown up with trees and shrubs. It is acknowledged that the railway line is an important wildlife corridor.

We’d love to think… that in an area where there is very little green space immediately available, and where many households are living in flats without gardens, the ‘old allotments’ could become the much needed ‘new allotments’ – a focus for the local community, as our existing LRSP gardens have shown is possible.

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