Second day at the Allotment...

The sun was shining all over Britain.... and we were off to the allotment once again. This time we were armed with the rotavator. Meet the beast...

Thank you to the wonderful people at Mayday Plant Hire in Thornton Heath for their kind donation. I must say i haven't ever had the pleasure of using such a fine machine, consequently i realised i had no idea how to even turn it on. But when you are on an allotment you never need worry. Their is always someone about to kindly lend a hand, allotments hold such a strong sense of community. Thankfully these two wonderful men were our nights in shining armour, who knew exactly what to do to help set us on our way.   

while i was being taught how to use the beast. 

Meanwhile the rest of the volunteers got stuck in the old fashioned way.

wow

Andrew smiling with joy at the treasure he found.

More treasure...

A well deserved break

Thank you Mark for baking us the most wonderful carrot and coconut cake. 
Yum it went down a treat.

The days progress. Very good i think. However, I did abandon the rotator idea after a short while after it took ME for a few walks.  I think the old fashioned way is best from now on....you've got to try these things out once, and i think once was enough!

Now for our walk back down the River Wandle. 

See you soon allotment.

Productive Poly and another sunny day.

The poly tunnel is already heaving to the brim with productivity.

many a plant and vegetable have been planted. Below you can see just one of our crates of sunflowers that will soon be ready for the 2012 Sunflower Competition and our sweetpeas which will be soon ready to plant in the garden and sell on our plant stall.  

Our chitting potatoes.

Pat, the chief bird feeding volunteer, hanging our new bird feeders.



Our Giant Fennel, which is just going to keep on getting

bigger and bigger!

A lovely day to be digging.

Tomorrow we will be down at the allotment with a rotavator......

I will keep you posted on how it all goes! 

Our first day down the allotment.......

The challenge

What a beautiful day it was yesterday to have our first visit to our new space on the Phipps Bridge Allotment site, working with Sustainable Merton. The allotment is just a short walk from the farm around the river Wandle....it could be even shorter if we got a boat across!! Below you can see a picture of the plot as we first found it. A little bit of work to do....

Meet the force of wonderful volunteers who came over to help make a dent with the digging.

Rose finding worms.....a very important job!

We found lots of and lots and lots and lots of rubbish.

But we also found TREASURE!......look......

To bring us good luck....this will hang in pride of place over the door of our shed, when we get it.

Old but new to us

These are just a few fine examples of our treasures. Many were red. oh.. and gold of course.

The rest of the allotment with our line of treasure

Our plot, the bigger panoramic picture.

Other plots...

I like this tree of watering cans 

After a busy day digging this was our progress. Very good i think. Not quite ready for the vegetables yet, but its not going to be long. I cant wait. 

Time to walk back now. We will be back.  

We will be back

Bike drop in surgerys are back!

History of the Garden Project 1

The Growing Gardens Project started in 2001 on a disused part of the farm. These two photos show the site after it had been strimmed and cut back of nettles and brambles. In the photo below there used to be a huge pond.

Back in those days we used to have our ducks freely roaming around the farm, they frequently visited the garden. With so much digging going on they would come and grab the worms from the soil as soon as they popped up.  

Many adults, staff and children came to the space to help create the garden.

You can just about see the old manager Ben propped up beside his spade in this photo. I think he looks tired but pleased in this photo!



Derek the peacock used to also visit while hard everyone was at work.

The garden was officially opened after many months of hard work by June Whitfield (of abfab fame!).