Delicate work?

Another early start today. Am at Allens Gardens for 9am. Bit of a difficult day for me as not feeling 100% full of energy. If the sun hadn’t been shining when I woke up, I definitely would have given Ru a call to say I wouldn’t be able to make it in. But the sun IS shining (though not for long!) and I leave home early so I can pedal slowly to the site.

Ru is very understanding and we decide that I am only going to do ‘delicate’ work today. Delicate in a job where everything is outdoors, no matter what the weather, means no hard digging. I drink lemon balm tea as we walk around the site deciding what tasks there are to done and what’s to be harvested for this week’s salad bags. There’s not too much planting for today and the soil is very wet from all the rain. Lots and lots of weeding to be done!

Ann-Marie arrives and takes on the hard labour – clearing a bed of overgrown nettles and other weeds, digging in a barrow load of compost (or two) and then planting up the chard ( = kind of like spinach). I finish weeding the beds where I had left off last week and then move to the celery bed. This is the last week we are harvesting celery, so once the final leaves are picked, I pull up all the celery plants and every other weed in the bed ( = these go into the compost so I don’t feel bad about pulling them up), rake it smooth and broadcast a green manure mix of seeds over the soil.

Broadcast? Green manure mix? Green manure????

I’ll start at the end. Green manure is plants that are grown which help to fix nutrients in the soil, primarily nitrogen. As we are certified organic at Allens Gardens it’s crucial that we use green manure to help increase the fertility of the soil. We have a five year crop rotation cycle at the site which helps us to manage pests without using horrid chemicals. I’ve slowly been getting my head around the whole system since I started here, but trying to explain it has made me realise that I need to devote more than a few sentences to the subject. More on that soon!

Green manure mix, in this case, is red clover and rye grass. The red clover is a great fixer of nitrogen: simply put, it takes nitrogen from the air and puts it in the soil where it can be used by other plants. Rye grass, on the other hand, is known as a lifter: it has very deep roots so it can access the subsoil and bring nutrients up to the surface. By using a mix, it means both these activities can take place at the same time. Other uses to us include suppressing weeds and improving water retention in the beds.

And, in the good old-fashioned sense of the word, broadcast means to cast the seeds out in a broad action. So it is just a case of taking a handful of the seed mix and scattering them across the bed. You then rake it in a little.

I leave some of the celery plants in the bed to grow to seed. Although we do collect the seed, the main reason we do this is to let the plant flower. This attracts the hover fly, a beneficial insect because it likes to eat aphids, so another form of natural pest control. A nice little fact, I learn, is that hover flies have short tongues. The flat flowers of the celery are, therefore, perfect.

This all takes till lunchtime amid some unwelcome cold showers. It is such a cold day for end of May. Ann-Marie leaves and Precious arrives, then Bruce and Farah. A good showing for such bad weather. The support workers come next to get started with the harvesting. And there I will leave them, and you, as I think I have used up my word quota for today…

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 4 | Support workers: 2 | Family wandering round: 1 | Dogs: 2 (one came with the family) | Fox: 0

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 15kg | Rhubarb: 2.1kg | Water Mint: 100g | Oregano: 20g | Tarragon: 100g

Leaf of the Week

This week’s leaf is one that I have been trying to get my tongue around since I started working with Growing Communities: Shingiku.

Aside from its hard-to-pronounce name, it has a unique strong flavour, maybe a little too strong for some. Shingiku is an edible Japanese chrysanthemum. Yaensuk, the general support worker who helps with the harvesting, tells me that it’s called sukat in Korean, with an emphasis on the the ‘u’. She likes it best on top of a soup. Ru likes it but admits that ‘it is the kind of flavour that lots of people might not get on with.’ I think it is great. Such a sweet looking leaf and really adds to the overall flavour of your salad.

When can getting up earlier be better?

Today I get to the site at 9 rather than my usual 10am start. This change to my schedule is a result of a post-work drink at the pub last week ( = read 6-week debrief session ). Arriving at 10am is great as far as late starts to the day go but I had begun to feel that I was missing out on something…Ru always arrives earlier so when I get there he has already mapped out the day, figured out what needs doing, what’s to be planted, what watered, what quantities will be harvested and how to carve up the tasks. So by the time I get there the list is already written into the book. Basically, as an apprentice, I wasn’t getting the full experience! So, I drag myself out of bed and onto my bike an hour earlier. And wow, it really makes a difference.

Carrying a cup of steaming rooibosch tea, we walk around the site and look at the week’s growth. Lots of planting to be done today - two whole beds need lettuces planted. Also the spring garlic bed, which had been harvested a good two, three weeks ago, is sitting empty so could do with some bulking up on the compost front and planting up. Only a few of the beds need watering along with those in the greenhouse. And Ru has brought some lovely Cape Gooseberries over from the Springfield site to trial at Allens Gardens. Also loads of weeding is needed, especially right up next to the plants where the hoe can’t get to – the plants are put in a plank’s width apart which enables us to hoe between the rows. They are so cheeky those weeds, they grow right within the salad leaves we plant, vying for all those precious nutrients.

Only a few specific tasks today but all quite labour intensive so we get stuck in quickly. Ann-Marie arrives and works on one of the longer beds, I take the other and Ru alternates between the two. He really storms ahead on the planting up bit – leaving me way behind! I guess it’s just knowing how much vigour the young seedlings can take. They are grown in trays with each one in its own little section ( = plug ), so you have to push the plant out from a hole in the bottom. The soil often falls away especially if the stick you use is too thin, it’s so easy to push them up unevenly. And once you’ve got it out of the plug, you have to be careful not to pick it up from the stalk. This is because they are so fragile that they might snap. If they do, then you kill the whole plant. So, always hold the seedlings by the root structure or by the leaves. When you aren’t so used to doing this it means you take quite a while to plant a whole bed – no bad thing if you want healthy plants but just very time consuming. You’ll be pleased to know, though, that I am quickly gaining confidence – you would too if you planted up over 50 lettuces / plants each week!

With all the planting, lunch arrives quickly, despite the extra hour on the day, and with it comes Precious. We sit out in the sun and eat fresh leaves (as well as our home-made lunches, of course). Such fine weather that I am beginning to feel sun-kissed on my bare shoulders. My prayers for a dry day delightfully answered.

A pleasing plate of leaves, picked there and then for lunch. Can get no fresher!

The afternoon sees yet more planting. Precious and I share the garlic bed and the support workers and a friend of Ru’s come to do the harvesting. By four o’clock when it is time to head over to Springfield I have a fine sense of achievement – everything we had planned to do in the morning has been ticked off. Early start next week then? For sure!

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 1 | Volunteers: 3 | Support workers: 2 | Helpful friend: 1 | Dogs: 1 | Fox: 0

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 15kg | Rhubarb: 2.8kg | Mint: 60g

Leaf of the Week

This week it has to be mustard. A wonderful purple leaf which has a fantastically hot flavour - just like…yes, you got it…mustard. It runs away with the title this week, not only because it’s so delicious, but also because it’s the last week that we’ll be harvesting these spicy leaves.

Next week the mustard is making way for something new. It departs in good favour as it’s done really well on the Growing Communities sites over the last few months - certainly has for the time that I’ve been apprentice here. It’s the kind of leaf that works brilliantly for the salad bags - you crop it by plucking the leaves one by one. Quite labour intensive but it means that the plants continue to grow and give plenty of leaves week after week. A great leaf on all fronts, unless you don’t like the taste of mustard…

Can a rainy day send me packing?

First day of serious rain. Ride the whole way to the Allens Garden without waterproofs, deluding myself that despite the drizzle the skies will clear and I won’t have to spend the day in the rain. But the rain it does continue, pretty hard at times, and I have to pull out my cycling jacket on arrival to try to keep somewhat dry throughout the day.

Following on from Compost Awareness Week last week, rather aptly my main job for the day is clearing all the pathways of weeds. Bucketload after bucketload of fresh green matter for the compost bin. I keep having to check with Ru that I am pulling up the ‘right’ stuff. Weeds are tricky when they don’t seem like weeds - feels wrong to tear out edible plants, like the stray spinach and flowering rocket which escaped from the raised beds and is resolutely growing on the paths. But ultimately, since it’s composted, it all goes back into the vegetable beds so there’s no time to be sentimental. And as, even on the pathways, it competes for the nutrients in the soil our crops need, it’s a job worth doing. A few of the leaves do sneak their way into our lunchtime salad though…

Not too much planting required this week and certainly no watering. Ann-Marie deals with the half bed of new rocket plants, first spending the morning doing the back-breaking preparation. A new volunteer gives her a hand with the planting. And after lunch, Precious and I plant out some ceylon spinach – a climbing variety that I’m excited to see grow up the stakes we set out. Then onto harvesting…Yes, I’m skimming over the finer detail this week because I finally want to tell you what goes on at Springfield. Saved it for a rainy day…

Once we’ve harvested what’s ready at Allens we go across to Springfield. A 10-minute bike ride across the bottom of Stamford Hill with trailers loaded up with produce. 9kg comes from Allens Garden today, so with a target of 15kg this week, we only have to pick 6kg at Springfield. Once we hit the total we go inside the greenhouse where ‘the mixing’ takes place – sometimes this can be done outside but if it’s raining its best to be indoors - good for salad, better for me! A third of each quantity of picked leaves, i.e spinach, mustard leaf, mint, green oakleaf lettuces, chicory etc. etc. is mixed by hand in a trough lined by a plastic sheet - it’s like tossing a massive salad.

Ru mixes the salad - although delicious, long stemmed chicory can be challenging to get into the bags.

After the mixing, there are different jobs to be done. We make sure a good selection goes into each 100g (sometimes 80g) bag. One or two people stuff the bags, carefully so as not to destroy the leaves. Someone weighs them, adds an edible flower for good measure and wonderful colour, and then they are sealed and placed in a crate. Each crate takes 15 bags. Once we get to the end of the first mix – around about 45 bags – we do another and then a final one. It’s amazing how quickly you learn how much each leaf weighs to get the bags exactly right! At the end of 150 bags – and this can go up to 200-250 at the height of the growing season – the crates are loaded up on the trailers or Ru’s brox ( = a carefully crafted pedal-powered vehicle with a large carrying capacity, pictures still to be taken ) and taken to the Growing Communities HQ to be included in the week’s veg boxes.

A salad bag - packed with care and ready to find its way to a Hackney dinner plate - no food miles racked up here.

By this time everyone is definitely ready to go home – weary but a good long productive day, even though more than a little damp. Next week I wonder if we’ll see the effects of all this rain in a greater harvest, for the day though, I’m praying for sun…

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 3 | Support workers: 2 | Dogs: 0 | Fox: 0

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 15kg | Rhubarb: 800g | Asparagus: 250g | Oregano: 30g | Mint: 60g | Coriander: 30g | Tarragon: 50g | Sorrel: 60g

(All herbs are in addition to the leaves used in the salad packs. They, along with the asparagus and rhubarb, are packaged up and sold at the stall where people pick up their veg boxes.)

Leaf of the Week

We grow so many weird and wonderful types of salad greens at the Growing Communities sites, I thought it would be fun to do a leaf of the week feature in addition to my usual blog. So…this week…I present to you…the delightful RED ORACHE.

Here it grows beneath a protective netting amongst its more humble relation, garden spinach. It’s also known as mountain spinach and although not particularly outstanding on the taste front, it really brings some lovely colour to the salad bowl. Andy, one of the regular volunteers, disagrees with me. He was sure he could taste subtle seaweed flavours, so you’ll have to be the judge of that. Apparently red orache is also grown as an ornamental plant, so if you want to get the most from your flower beds, this is your leaf!

Lettuce grow

Thought you’d like to see how the lettuces I planted on the 24th of April are doing. Coming along really well I think.

Ru says they should be ready for harvesting in a couple of weeks, maybe even next week, depending on how much rain we get in the next few days…

Smells like rain…

First day of rain today. Though I guess that’s really an overstatement. It actually felt as though the skies were easing me into the idea of rainy days at Allens Gardens – drops of rain, followed by sunshine, warmth, then a cold breeze. Sweater on then off, then on again, sunglasses following suit. It was only at lunch time, when we were legitimately allowed to go indoors that the rain really came down. By the time lunch was done, the sun had come out again. April’s temperamental weather in May? But stop me, I’m jumping ahead a few hours…

Again I arrived on time, to find Ru and Ann-Marie already hard at work. Ann-Marie was digging compost into the bed that I had covered over with Precious a couple of weeks ago and then got onto planting red orache (don’t ask! I’ll explain what that is soon) into half of it – a very long bed, the other half still covered ( = really allowing all the plant matter that we had dug into it, to rot and bulk up the soil’s nutrients). Ru and I walked around the site, looking at the various jobs for the day. Not too much rain since last week so top priority was to give most of the beds a good soaking. That’s a job that ran alongside other chores throughout the day, changing the watering system from bed to bed, half an hour on each.

Next priority is planting. My job is to do half a bed of chard. Planting them out in rows a plank’s width apart ( = about the span of my hand, a very helpful measurement for you! Will measure the plank next time!) so each plant has enough room to grow. First of all you dig a small hole, fill it with water ( = we use water mixed with liquid fertilizer, which we have made by ‘drowning’ weeds pulled up from the plot in a big tank and letting them stew for weeks on end) and then plant the seedlings, which Ru brought over from the Springfield greenhouses. I then covered each one with a cut off plastic bottle – a homemade cloche – with a piece of copper wire wrapped around it to deter the nasty slugs. I planted up 6 viola on the very end of the bed – a sweet little pansy-like edible flower, that attracts ‘good’ bugs and livens up any green salad.

Yaensuk arrived then with Anthony, her husband, in tow. She’s a general support worker at Growing Communities and helps with packing the vegetables for the box scheme. Her husband was volunteering for the day. They got going with the harvesting. 20kgs to be collected.

Yaensuk harvests salad greens while Ru explains to volunteer Ann-Marie how far apart seedlings should be planted.

Other jobs: helped Ru with putting netting up for the soft fruit; weeded out the ground elder on the pathways between the raised beds; watered the patch where the rhubarb had been and covered it with compost ( = acts as a mulch to keep the moisture in, though nothing has been planted there yet). Ru left at 3 to get to Springfield for harvesting taking Yaensuk and Anthony with him.

We had a few more things to finish up in our final hour at Allens – Precious on mint-picking duty, Bruce harvesting spinach leaves as well as sweet flowers for the salad bags…

… and me to complete the watering and pack up all the tools. Then I locked up the classroom and the shed and Bruce and I cycle over to Springfield. Lots of work to do over there, but, though I promised last time to tell you what goes down at Springfield, I think I’ve come to the end of this week’s word quota – you’ll definitely have to come back to find out next week!

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 4 | Support worker: 1 | Husband: 1 | Dogs: 2

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 20kg | Rhubarb: 2.8kg | Asparagus: 630g | Spring garlic: 100 bunches | Mint: 60g

The fox…

One of you wanted to see a picture of the fox. Most obliging, he posed for me. So, yes! He really does exist!