London Road Station Partnership Blog

We 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.

I 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.

In 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.