The garden party was a success!

At the beginning of July we received a visit from our funders, Ecominds. They were very pleased with our garden and vegetables. Art volunteer Leon led a workshop to create lanterns out of reused glass jars. Everyone was happy with their creations when we placed them altogether and lit them in the dark. Wonderful!

The weather was dry for a few hours, just enough time to cook some burgers in the BBQ outside in the garden. All the residents and volunteers gathered around the new garden table to share some nice food. We will have another garden party in September so keep checking our website for more details. www.naturalrecovery.org.uk

Beds in place

I must confess that the gardening people have been a bit lazy with regards to the blog. But we’ve been doing a very hard job at the garden!
We have received help from plenty of volunteers who came on different occasions: Wednesday’s regular meetings, digging days specially planned for Saturdays and a planting seed session with the residents. We are very thankful for all the help we received and remind everyone if it hadn’t been for each one of you who came to help, we wouldn’t have been able to remove the lawn, build and fill in 5 raised beds, set up the fruit cage and start the seedlings.
We still have plenty of work to do, so get some inspiration for the photos below and the nice weather, and join us every Wednesday from 2pm to 4pm!

Saturday 19th Feb — Digging Day!

This is a very important time for our Sensory Garden. We have finished the garden design, cleared out the place but we still need to do a lot of digging! We must build the raised beds and the fruit cage before the end of this month. We also have to create the pond, sort out the pathways… There is a lot of work to do and we need your help!
You can pop in anytime between 11am and 3pm. There will be loads of activities, many of which will involve getting dirty hands, so fine clothes are best left at home. Tea and coffee will be provided (and some cakes too!)

This is what we have been doing in the last few weeks

Volunteers needed!

We have cut down a tree and the garden looks like a real mess! We need people to help sort out branches as we will keep the big pieces of wood and chipped the rest.

Volunteers welcome tomorrow Wednesday from 2pm to 4pm at Syrian House!

Garden Design

Thanks to Bees and Karl who took down the tree… our vegetables will get a lot of sunlight this year!

This is the basic garden layout (Thanks Carolina!). We are now working with residents and volunteers to agree on the plants and flowers we will include on the “green patches”.

Famous People

You might have seen the article about us in the September edition of the Hale, Altrincham and Sale Independent. Great News! This Wednesday 22nd September, people from the Trafford Metro are coming to take a photo of our work and of ourselves! You just know what you have to do if you want to be famous!

Harvest

Our vegs managed to survive the unusual dry and hot weather we had in June and the United Utilities hosepipe ban. They are ready to eat now!!

Last week, Erica Dave and Nicholas helped peeling the peas while Trevor and his boys took out the lettuce and rhubarb. If we are lucky, Fay will be cooking rhubarb crumbles next week 🙂

Unfortunately, we were not so lucky with the cucumbers, that dried out some weeks after we put the in the greenhouse. Broccoli plants became “stressed” and started to give out flowers. Anyway, Bill insists that we can still eat them and I am about to try it. We are still waiting to see the brassicas come out and the green tiny tomatoes to get ready for the salad! Herbs are doing well; we have plenty of mint to prepare some “mojitos”!

Thanks to John Burden we have 3 mushroom grow boxes that we keep in the cellar, where it is dark and humid. However, we only managed to get a few mushrooms from it. It’s Colin and Dave’s responsibility to water them and check their growing.

Is this Manchester’s weather?

I arrived in the UK for the worst winter in the last 30 years… and what about this spring? Would this be the hottest summer? I really wouldn’t mind, it feels like home 🙂 (for those who don’t know, I come from Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Anyway, the good thing is that our crops are really happy with this warm weather and have been growing strong in the last week. We have finally managed to sort out the greenhouse with the tomatoes and cucumbers. Some small pots with herbs and peppers are temporary at the greenhouse too.

In the last meetings we have successfully engaged many residents of the house. Shivani came some weeks ago but we are positive she will come back to help! We count on the loyal help of Colin who always attend our gardening sessions. Nicholas is starting to have a good time with us, even though he only comes and watches. Last week Erica and David did a great job watering the crops and helping at the greenhouse.

Crops go to bed

It was only one month ago when we received the 1.5 ton of “well rotted” manure. We also tried going to a stable and collect the manure ourselves… but it was not a friendly job getting really FRESH horse manure into plastic bags! So the easiest way out was having it delivered for £40

The only problem was that it wasn’t as rotted as we would have expected and the truck unloaded the smelly pile just in front of the kitchen window. It took us a couple of weeks to carry it to the back garden as we only had one wheelbarrow… hard work for volunteers and Youth Offenders who came to help!

We managed to dig the 4 beds, incorporate the manure, spread some blood, fish and bone fertilizer and we are already planting some vegs. Our beds will be designed as follows:

Plot A: Permanent bed with Rhubarb, rosemary, thyme, parsley, oregano, mint

Plot B: Root crops – Carrots, parsnips, onions, leeks, shallots, garlic, courgettes
Plot C – Peas, French beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, spinach, lettuce
Plot D: Brassicas – Cabbages, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, calabrese, broccoli, radishes

Greenhouse: Tomatoes and Cucumbers

As we won’t be able to grow everything in the permanent bed this year, we have just planted rhubarb, that Bill donated from his garden, and potatoes to break the soil. The root crops bed is almost finished and the lettuces and peas are already in plot C.

Let the sunshine in

Thanks to the wonderful job of Charles, we have a nice and tidy tree that will let sunshine into the vegetable beds… and chipping for our compost 🙂

Blue Oak – Tree Services – info@blueoakonline.co.uk – 0800 756 6569