Blogs

Eight months into our new community project and things at Newbold are certainly lively. Indeed, it feels a little like we are coming to the end of a gestation period and preparing to birth something truly remarkable. Life at Newbold is certainly alive & kicking…

Well, I have to be thankful for one thing, there have been no more frosts, so all the tender plants are still alive. However it really has been pretty cold and one severe gale felled a large willow tree as well as breaking and burning the courgettes. Still most will recover and in the greenhouse the tomatoes are growing fast and furiously, already onto their second truss of flowers. Today we planted out peppers in the polytunnel. As always seems to happen we got much higher germination from the chilli peppers than the sweet ones. I must remember next year to buy extra seed of the sweet varieties.

All around the garden the lupins are vibrantly in flower. Mostly self-sown they pop up in all sorts of places and then provide their wonderful variety of colours year after year.

The resident Newbold bunnies went exploring into the wilds of the garden pond with their friend Sarah at the weekend and they found some amazing residents lurking in the depths! First of all they collected some tadpoles which had hatched from the toadspawn and Bunny got his nose stuck in the jam jar in his enthusiasm for a closer look! Then they caught a ferocious looking great diving beetle larva, who loves to eat tadpoles, so they were careful to put it in a separate jar.

Later on they caught a couple of amorous newts, who were a bit bemused to find themselves suddenly inside a jam jar. The bunnies apologised and quickly released them back into the pond.

This week I made the biggest decision in the garden year and planted out all the frost tender seedlings. So now the courgettes and french beans will have to take their chance with the weather. So far it feels like a good decision and it's great finally to have some rain as well as the warmer nights. We still need to build some cold frames so that all seedlings can be hardened off to reduce the planting out shock.  It's a good couple of weeks earlier than usual which should mean earlier and more abundant crops so long as we don't go back to night frosts.

 The dry, sunny weather continues to everyone's amazement and I'm just hoping that we don't have a repeat of  a few years ago when a hot April gave way to a long, cold, wet summer. On Saturday night we marked the beginning of Summer by celebrating the Celtic festival of Beltane. More than thirty people turned up for a magnificent potluck meal and ceremonial fire. A number of them, together with some members of the community returned on Sunday for a sacred pipe ritual and shamanic journey led by visiting shamanic teachers, Mark Halliday and Claudia Conçalves from Edinburgh. We are looking forward to doing more work with them in the future.

Welcome to the Monday Gardening Blog, your opportunity to share in the almost always joyful experience of Monday morning at Newbold when the community extends to include anywhere from 2 to 10 volunteers who focus their attention together on our beautiful vegetable garden.

Today the garden is fragrant and bubbling with apple blossom as we work in three groups. Some are preparing beds and planting them with baby beetroot and lettuce grown in module trays.

Others are working with seedlings in the greenhouse, potting on tomatoes, basil and french sorrel destined for the herb garden whilst the third group is hoeing the established rows of peas, broad beans and spinach.

Over the Easter weekend Newbold House's resident rabbits enjoyed the wonderful weather by spending some time out in the garden helping with the planting of some of this season's vegetables. The garden is full of abundant life and a sense of renewal with all the planting going on and blossom on all the fruit trees.

They were also delighted to take a break in the kitchen and sample some home-made hot cross buns made by Christopher.

As I write this there are many people working hard in our garden this morning. There are the usual group of local volunteers who generously and enthusiastically give their time to nurturing and tending the garden, and there are also three wwoofers who are staying with us for a couple of weeks. All three wwooffers are young French men- Samuel, Quinton, and Thomas, they are strong and eager and we are delighted to have them here. We celebrated Thomas’s 21st birthday last week, James made a beetroot and chocolate cake which was a hit with some of the community (including Thomas I am happy to say) but not with the others. The cake had an interesting earthy taste and a brownie/dumpling type consistency with a light creamy topping- yum!