Calling all stag beetles

11 May: accommodation is ready for stag beetles. We might make the top a bit prettier for humans though...

We have made a habitat for you to live in - we know you are rather rare but you would be very welcome. Nice tree trunks half-buried in a deep hole so the wood will rot.

12 May. A very big, deep hole - you can see all the layers under the bowling green - and why some of our plants struggle: sandy 'dust', overlying clinker, hardcore and chalky clay.

Thanks to the hard work of Community Payback for doing this with our garden volunteers - and Guy for the tree trunks.

Cubs in the garden

Taking cuttings from our mint tea narrow raised bed, made out of an old wheelbarrow

On Monday 8 May we welcomed the 28th Cambridge cubs and also Alison from the RHS for a practical gardening skills - and fun - evening in the garden.

We sowed seed, took cuttings into gel pots, learned about compost and leaf mould, dug for compost worms and mulched strawberry beds. And drank hot chocolate - it was a really cold evening.

Tadpoles in the pond

11 May - sunny day in the garden

Very excited... just a few and no legs yet. they were by the rail in the sun - maybe they are hiding under the decking?

Sunflowers are coming soon...

Self-sown sunflowers in the broad bean and onion row. These might be dwarf ones.

We had two beds with sunflowers last year and were keeping the heads on them to harvest seed from (and for the birds). Then the squirrels found them, and made a mess... but it means we had lots of dropped seed and they have just started to germinate and grow strongly. Not exactly where we would like them but we can always move them around and we hope our visiting cub group will sow some more seed.

More self-sown sunflowers in the sunflower bed. We tie them to the metal coat racks.

Perennial meadow bed - coming to life

Little seedlings in the sterile mulch.

The Golden Summer mix is starting to germinate and grow now. The instructions say it takes a while to get going. If it is bushy by June, we are supposed to cut it, which will be very hard to do!

19 May update: we started some of the seed mix in a seedtray of sterile compost (indoors) and have just pricked out the unknown plants (see photo). 

19 May 2017: Some of the seedlings that germinated from the perennial Golden Summer seedmix, started in a seed tray indoors (sterile compost). Some were larger and potted up (but that photo was rather out of focus!). They seem similar to the ones sown in situ.

Mini-pond

Mini-pond in progress...

We had a really good visit from some community gardeners from Peterborough last Sunday - we had been very inspired by a visit to them last Summer. One of the things on our wishlist, recommended by them, was to make a mini-pond next to the main one for children to huddle around and take pond-life to and fro from the main pond. So, under expert advice from Becki, Simon dug us a pond in the mound and we cut an old black tub to shape and surrounded it with leftover playground felt. Julian than made a cover for it and we filled it with leftover gravel. We are too late for spawn this year but hopefully it will be good for other creatures later this year. 

Inclement weather

Alliums with frost damage, not helped by being so dry too. The geranium phaem are doing well though - and the bumblebees love the flowers.

This Spring has been good for gardening groups - we haven't cancelled many for rain - because it has been so very, very dry. And then we suffered a hard frost. Thankfully, we had warning and covered our salad bed with fleece cloches for a few days. Lots of plants in the main beds had frost damage though and or donated fig tree lost all its buds - we hope it will make some more soon.

We are lucky we aren't growing crops commercially, and have a mains water supply now but it is sad to see the plants struggle.

Bowls, balls... habitats

Red dogwood balls, made by garden volunteers, on the top of the sweet pea canes.

We quite like the idea of having 'bowls' or balls of different materials in the former bowling green - and they are easier to make than other shapes too. The Cornus (dogwood) was cut from the park by volunteers and used while it was still supple.

We were given these large hanging baskets some time ago and have been waiting to collect enough fir cones to stuff them. The ball also has some small terracotta pots, leafmould and straw in it, cabled tied. It should be a good habitat for creatures but is quite heavy - we need to find somewhere safe to hang it and a strong chain!

Spud planters

We had a request from one of our gardeners to grow some potatoes. Our soil isn't very suitable for deep crops so, we looked in a book, and made some pallet-wood planters instead. They are by the water trough for easy watering. 

One of our social walkers had some leftover chitted seed potatoes - one is Ratte and the other type lost its label. We planted them in some (posh organic) loam-based compost (from the allotment shop) and then added a layer of (not very posh) garden compost. As they grow (we hope), we will add extra layers of pallet wood and, hopefully, share the crop sometime soon.

Meadow sowing

Seeds mixed with sand to help even sowing.

On 23 April, we sowed four meadow beds with Annual Pictorial meadow mixes. The two nearest the gate have Patriotic mix (which should have the tall cosmos that everyone like so much) and the two to their right have Velvet mix, which is a new one for us. We decided to let two more beds re-grow from last year's sowing. None of the beds have had glyphosate this year, as a trial.

Two of the annual beds ready for sowing - they have just been cleaned with hard graft this year. We are also establishing new wide paths behind them and also perennial beds with plants - and lots of re-growth of last year's meadows.

One of the two beds we are allowing to just re-grow - it seemed a bit daft to clean the whole area of seedlings and then reseed them. We have a lot of regrowth from the seedbank in the soil, including fat hen. Rather that get too distressed by this we are going to try to harvest and eat it when it is bigger - apparently it is delicious. We might want to over-sow it later on though.