Never mind trick or treat sweets, anyone for some tomatoes!
We had a really good Autumnal garden club today, to break the tedium of bindweed (careful!) removal from the back wall, we also potted on some of the strawberry runners for next year. The used bio-degradable spoons from the Harvest Festival came in handy to pin them into pots!
Topics: [propagation] [strawberries]
I'm hugely enjoying the meticulous research into the best fruit varieties to choose for our 35m of south-facing wall at Abbey Gardens. We will plant circa 30 trees to be trained as single stem cordons, this winter - date TBC.
I found this appletastic site - OrangePippin.com which aims to get users to catalogue their apple trees for an all over the country (and world!) map. It has a way to go but I like the idea.
Autumn is really here and now the clocks have changed we are tweeking our Thursday night garden club times.
Chris will continue to run the Garden Club until the end of November, Saturdays and Tuesdays remain the same but we are moving the Thursday night session forward. So until the end of November the times will be as follows:
Saturdays 10.00 am - 2.00 pm
Tuesdays 10.00 am - 1.00 pm
Thursdays 4.00 pm - dusk (at present about 5.30)
Of course the garden is now open to the public everyday so you can visit at any time, but if you want to get into hands on gardening these are the best times.
As Chris is on holiday this week I am running the sessions - on Thursday night we have a group of students visiting so I'll be giving a talk about the garden if anyone would like to join. On Saturday we have plenty of harvesting to do plus weeding and a few more 'choice' jobs! Hope to see you there.
Despite the Autumnal feel there is still a lot to see in the garden and in fact harvest. For anyone with an innovative tomato recipe (green or otherwise) now is your moment to visit or add it to the plant database!
This Tuesday Shahan and I spent a gorgeous sunny morning weeding and harvesting, we had so much excess produce Shahan took a box back to Mind's office for the other staff!
A big belated thanks to Andy Findlater and Bam Nuttall for the amazing portacabin they donated to the project which now forms our very posh shed.
I've been waiting to post a picture until Karen and I's 'pimping' of the beast was complete. As you can see it now looks great and the Plaistow Landgrabbers can watch over us as we garden!
Topics: [Abbey Gardens] [landgrabbers] [shed]
You'd have thought that the Harvest Festival last weekend where we fed at least 100 if not 150 people from the garden would have left it slightly bare, but not a bit of it! My Dahlias have at last come into bloom and we still have an excess of produce.
This is the veg Tim and I took home just for the two of us on Saturday - although we stopped off at our allotment to share some with friends - including Poppy - here seen making short work of some fresh peas!
Topics: [food] [Harvest] [picnic]
There are loads of nice pictures of the Harvest Festival event, including all the competition judging and Moro's lovely cooking. I've put a good selection up on Flickr here.
If you like to follow progress on the site you might also want to join our shared Abbey Gardens Flickr Group.
Topics: [festival] [food] [Harvest]
Lovely pics - especially of our children and their prize winning cake of course! The pictures really capture the spirit of what was a lovely occasion. Our fridge is still full of veg coloured marzipan but, unfortunately, no more curly wurlies. Thank you so much for providing the opportunity for a real village show.
I think we can say that the Harvest Festival was a triumph! Great weather, wonderful food cooked by Sam Clark from Moro, the garden looked great, and the competition entries were fantastic.
This year's lucky winners in the competitive classes were:
101 A Vegetable Sculpture - 12 yrs of age and under
1st prize - no. 46 Emily Copley (Sad Octopus/Jelly fish)
2nd prize - no. 58 Finn Farnan Walsh (green pepper frog)
3rd prize - no. 55, 54 & 53 The family Farnan Walsh (for an impressive aubergine penguin family)
102 A Vegetable Sculpture - 13 yrs plus
1st prize - no. 1 Maria Benjamin
2nd prize - no. 7 Nelly Ben Hayoun
3rd prize - no. 4 Tilly Blyth
103 A Floral Arrangement on the theme of "What Will the Harvest Be?"
1st prize - no. 1 Dasha French ("excellent use of cauliflower")
104 A Garden-themed Home-made Cake or Traybake
1st prize - no. 1 The Keating Family
2nd prize - no. 7 Cath French
3rd prize - no. 4 Gilly Waller
FANTASTIC!
The only word to describe the event.
They say the sun shines on the righteous, and I think even the GOD`s & Mother Nature supported you yesterday with the weather.
Well done on winning the West Ham Trophy, and it was nice to both see and hear the support from local councillors.
Amongst the crowds all you could hear was praise (even down to the winning cake which I think all felt it had truly captured the theme of Abbey gardens)!
As somebody said of the event, `It created a small county show, bringing the flavour of the Country-side to the people of Newham`.
The cooking went down very well, and I spoke to a couple of people who said they had leaned a few new ways to cook vegetables.
It was nice that the gaps between the flower boxes was wide enough to allow a wheelchair, (although Mulch is not exactly Wheelchair friendly!) but by the nature of a Garden that is something that cannot be helped.
We're REALLY pleased and excited to announce that Sam & Sam Clark the owners and chefs at the fantastic Moro restaurant will be cooking live at our Harvest Festival event on September the 12th. We can't wait to see what they will do with all our fresh veg! They recently published a new book 'Moro East' with recipes inspired by the produce grown on their own East End allotment so I'm sure they won't be short on good ideas ... they even seemed excited by the mention of our challenging Kohl Rabi mountain.
Topics: [cooking] [event] [festival] [Harvest]
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