Dome making

One of our group has donated the funds to buy a Hub dome-making kit, and another couple have donated the broomsticks (from Ebay).

Over the past few weeks, Julian and Justin have spent a lot of time cutting the sticks and leftover plastic wood blocks to size and drilling holes in the ends for the connectors.

Last Sunday, we assembled it for the first time with help from some local families. It is quick to assemble - about 20 to 30 mins.

Next step is making a doorway, and also we think we will paint the short and long sticks different colours (or stripes of). Then it will be ready to play with over the summer in the garden and also at the Share Fair on 8 September at Wulfstan Way. We won't leave it up unattended though because it is very tempting to try to climb on and isn't build to withstand that. They can be used in gardens and plots as fruit cages or greenhouses. 

September update: so we painted stripes on it and decorated it for the Queen Edith’s Share Fair, which we had to do inside a local sports hall because rain was forecast. Thanks to Emma, Sophie and Lucy for the exuberant and joyful decorations, including tiger disguise masks.

Japanese moss balls with the cubs

Last week, we had two evening sessions with the 28th Cambridge cubs. They completed their gardening badges learning about food growing and seasonaility, some did other badge activities (environment?), we made simple watering devices with plastic milk bottles and learned how to water plants. And we also made these Kokodama (moss balls), with succulent cuttings, John Innes No 2 compost, sphagnum moss and string. We have also made the with garden volunteers since then too. They are big fun.

Spudtastic

It has been ages since we put anything on this blog... I blame the weather, which hasn't been very garden- or gardener friendly.

On 16 July, we harvested our two planters and one green bag of spuds: Arran pilot and Charlotte. We had a much better harvest that last year. The pallet planters yield more than the small green potato bag. We even had some surprise pink ones, grown from unidentified ones we must have left behind last year. We will do these varieties again next year I think - but with fresh compost. It was really fun digging them out!

Adele the hedgehog - a good news story

Just found out (via twitter) that Adele the hedgehog was released from our local hedgehog hospital on 7 April to a secure garden. Last Autumn, we found her wandering slowly, in daylight, at Nightingale. She weighed only about 300g and had every kind of parasite. The hospital volunteers and staff gave her some amazing care and she was more than 1600g by the time she was released. Go Adele!

She is the third hedgehog we have found during volunteering sessions at Nightingale and had to call for help. One didn't make it but the last two have done very well and have been released to safe locations.

We have recently seen some hedgehog poo in the garden so we hope we might be a happier night-time habitat for these very popular animals. This is one reason why we lock the garden at night to give the wildlife a rest from visiting humans and especially dogs.

Meadow sowing and blossom out

Finally, we found the right conditions and time to sow the annual and perennial Pictorial Meadow beds. We have Velvet and Pastel mix in the triangular one; Velvet in the two annual beds (to the left here) and Tuscan Hills in the two perennial beds (to the right). We are a bit short of hills here, and probably Tuscan weather too... but it was the best mix for Spring sowing.

Really good to see the cordon apples coming into blossom.

This photo is surprisingly, for me, in focus.

I like the apple blossom when it is still in tight buds too.

More things happening

Our big rhubarb bed is looking very good at the moment. Underplanting with a few bulbs and lots of pulmonaria (lungwort) seems to work well. 

The recycled bulbs are looking great at the moment - we had no idea what they would look like but planting similar looking ones in blocks works well. Some of them even smell nice too.

Almost ready to sow the meadow beds... 

If you are in the garden, look out for this kind of plant - they are full of bumble bees at the moment. I think the black one here might be a male 'hairy footed flower bee' - I hope so anyway because it has such a good name - they especially like pulmonaria, which seems to like our funny soil. As do docks - which I have just noticed needs weeding out next to it...

Busy afternoon seed planting and other things

Lots of seeds for delicious veg and herbs started by our seed-sowing dream team.

We needed to move last year's parsley to make room for the sweet peas - I hope we will get a bit more crop from it before we replace it with new plants.

The other sweet pea wigwam, with a few bedding plants... hope they won't compete too much for resources.

The living willow in the circle (aka 'Reggie's tent') is alive and starting to sprout leaves. Will be good to see it green and a bit less twiggy.

We have started a second raised bed for squash and courgettes - our aim is to make an arch between the two to grow some of them up. All recycled wood from air conditioning deliveries. And a lot of digging from our dream digging team.

Pond news and things blooming

The newt is camera shy, but we have some pretty native pond flowers in bloom at the moment.

We don't have any frogspawn at the moment but we saw our first newt today... very excited. 

The wet week has brought on lots of the bulbs (and weeds).

We planted our sweet pea plants out, which is always exciting. And then followed on with some direct sown peas, as an insurance.

Lovely to see so many people in the garden this afternoon... and even a new puppy, which is possibly why there were so many children in the garden.

Happy Easter holidays

We were nervous about waiting until Easter Monday to share cake - due to the dire weather forecast - so got a bit festive today instead/as well. Not many gardeners or regular tea drinkers. But lots of families (some running off the sugar rush from eating too much chocolate earlier on) - very nice to meet you all.

Ribbet

One of two frogs found in the raised bed hole - it was a bit muddy and not very interested in our dogwood hoop making...

We had a lovely afternoon in the garden on Monday - with two new people joining in and old friends coming back to see us. One of us dug out a new raised bed and started to make the walls. Several of us cutting dogwood in the park and learning how to make hoops with it. We will use the hoops, of different sizes and colours at one of the local primary school's garden on Thursday and maybe at events later in the year. We tried but failed to make a bird for our throne nest with the dogwood but it isn't long, or flexible, enough for the armature we have started; we will need to find some willow instead...