Never mind trick or treat sweets, anyone for some tomatoes!
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]
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]
On Saturday Chris tactfully took me aside to break the news that half my precious crop of artichokes grown from seed seem to have mysteriously died ... after some discussion of foxes/birds etc. we decided someone must have accidentally weeded them out realised their mistake and tried to pop them back.
Today this email from Dasha "..I am sorry I have a bad news for you...I accidentally pulled out some of the artichokes from the central bed thinking that they were weeds (they looked like thistles). In fact Louis pulled some too because I told him that they were weeds and then we realised that they were kind of symetrical. So we quickly put them back but the damage is done..."
I actually think they might make it back, they have been through so much so far waiting indefinitely in pots for Danny and co. to finish their bed. Sadly they're quite tricky to grow from seed but we could try some more next spring. However, I have since read that it's in fact better to start them off by splitting older ones so we may want to try and find an allotment person with another type we can split from.
Sadly (for everyone else) this can only increase my manic labelling obsession, maybe I need a label each for them!!
Topics: [artichokes] [Harvest] [weeding]
Join us for a fascinating workshop with Margot Cooper, an experienced floral lecturer and demonstrator from the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies (NAFAS). Margot sits on the board of Flower Arranger Magazine and is now Treasurer of the NAFAS Woodford branch in East London.
She will help workshop participants select and pick flowers and foliage from the gardens, going on to guide you through making your own take-home arrangement.
This event on Saturday is free, no booking neccessary!
Meet at Abbey Gardens at 12.00 - workshop ends at 4.00.
Feel free to make a day of it and also join us for the morning Garden Club Session too.
Note Goldie the lone yellow courgette - three years I've been trying to grow these and finally Abbey Gardens brings me success. We were there so late harvesting tonight a fox joined us.
Really nice day at the garden today, a new volunteer who did LOADS of weeding (Thanks Julie!), I met Kathy Taylor from Newham Heritage Services who'd been involved in the archaeological dig, Tim and I planted out most of the remaining seedlings AND we took home an actual 'harvest' of produce ...
Seen here leaf beet "Bull's Blood" (grown by Andreas), courgettes, my Wiltshire Ripple sweet peas and some "Royal Family", radish I sowed (can't remember the name), some cornflower "blackball" (a personal fav.) dwarf french beans and some marigolds - not bad if I do say so myself!
Topics: [Harvest]
website design & build by dorian @ the useful arts organisation
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.
Joan, September 23, 2009 21:35