"A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins." -  Laurie Colwin I love tomatoes. I probably eat them every day, all year round. So it’s really great to be able to grow them in the summer and pick and eat them fresh. Our tomatoes in the garden are developing. We have all shapes, colours and sizes growing. Some yellow tomatoes in the yard have already ripened. We are busy trying to make the garden look as good as we can, ready for the Royal Horticultural Society to come and judge it on the 31st. We have won awards for the last 2 years. Something we are very proud of. It takes a lot of work keeping the garden tidy and interesting. This year we have the theme of children’s

A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except for learning how to grow in rows. – Doug Larson And our weeds grow everywhere. We have been trying to weed regularly, holding extra volunteer sessions each week. But it’s an uphill struggle, with the mixture of sunshine and rain we have been having, and that they seem to love. We had a weedathon session and filled a large bagful. New in the garden this week we have rabbit ears popping out of a watering can. This is all part of the Peter rabbit story theme in the vegetable garden. Beans are now ready to be picked, along with courgettes and lots of salad stuff. I also picked the first of our pak choi. I thought I’d better get to t

“Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?” – Douglas Adams I sometimes think our garden has fairies in it. Things seem to magically appear in it. And not just flowers. We’ve had cars, pots, trees, dinosaurs, woolly items and painted stones, just to name a few. And they just seem to appear overnight. So if it’s not fairies, who is it? We are still trying to keep weeds down, which seems to be one of our main jobs at the moment. Luckily there has been some rain recently, so not so much watering has been needed. The rain and watering has been helping the courgettes and squash in the garden to start producing. I re

“There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments”. – Janet Kilburn Phillips. And we do a lot of experimenting in the garden, you may have noticed. Particularly with our plants and how we do things. Having to put our plants in containers means we could be restricted in what we grow. But we don’t let it stop us and try to grow anything we want. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Our main issue with having containers is watering and feeding our plants. They only have what’s in the container unless we give it to them, as showers don’t seem to help. We have had to experiment with ways of water getting to the garden, which has resulted in a lot of team work. And we now have a lightweight,

“Gardening adds years to your life and life to your years.” — Unknown Gardening is generally seen to be good for people. Aiding with mental and physical health. I certainly find it helps me and I think this quote describes it well. Many people come and sit in the garden to un-stress or just relax. Helping in the garden even if it is only doing a bit of weeding when you pop in is quite therapeutic too. And when our volunteers meet up for sessions they have fun working together as a team as well as having a chat over tea. Volunteers are still having a busy time in the garden. We are gradually doing a bit of painting and trying to keep up with watering when we can. We are being judged by the RH