Month: November 2014
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Plans taking shape!
Another great day’s work in the Cottage Garden as I got our intern and one trainee to help too. My proposal for a new path was accepted, so I marked it out with bamboo canes and string and we dug in (literally) first thing in the morning. By teabreak time, we had already finished the…
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Fig dressing
The preparations for winter continue, and today it was the Model Fruit Garden fan-trained fig’s turn to be put to sleep. The fig, ready to go to bed The first step was pruning the tree, untying it from the frame. Syconium inflorescence, with inward looking florets and fruits Figs (an inflorescence called syconium giving origin…
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Digging
Digging. An activity I have traditionally quite enjoyed for the pleasure of physical exercise and that I have regularly undertaken on my plot, which is ridden with perennial weeds (couch grass, bindweed, creeping buttercup). It is also an activity I started to question when studying soil for my level 3 exams, the reason being it…
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Cane management and training
Berries of the Rubus genus cross liberally, and today we learnt how to deal with blackberries (R. fruticosus) and its hybrids, some of which I have tried to research in more details… a mammoth task, I suppose because in the search for the better berry, yielding more and more disease resistant – or even the…
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Gooseberry aplenty
… as over the last couple of months I have had several stints at pruning the cordon collection, and there are still a few to go. Cordon gooseberry pruning is, as of now, the only skill that I feel I really had time to practice long enough to master. I have also tried to time…
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Preparing for winter
It is late indeed as the season has been so mild, but the time has come to puts plants to rest for winter while cheering the place up with some winter bedding. Today we put up the lean-to frames, made of wood battens and clear plastic sheeting, to cover the fan-trained peaches and apricots and…
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Learning, weeding and improvising
The Herb Garden at Wisley is a lovely little area that opened back in 2003 and where my colleague experiments with planting of old and novel herbs, some of which are used in the restaurants on site (they share some of the recipes online that might be interesting). The area is divided by use of…
About Me
M.Paola Andreoni
I got the first allotment in 2007 (in the UK) and started growing my own food for the first time. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied some horticulture. I am striving to abide by organic principles. Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, and two new plots by a nature reserve.
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