Tag: Wisley
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Post savers
Have you ever noticed that when a post or pole rots it does so generally at soil level? Step 2 Step 4 Step 5 Step 6 Apparently, it is in the topsoil where soil organisms in the organic matter, moisture and air combine to cause the most damage. So someone invented “polesavers”, sheets of bitumen…
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The forage garden
Behind the Model Fruit Garden and on one’s way to the orchard, there’s an area that’s left wilder, with some tall trees and some brash, whose redevelopment has been undergoing for the last few years into a forage garden. Some edibles I find rather intriguing already grow in there: Arbutus unedo, Hyppophae rhamnoides, Lonicera caerulea,…
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Divided about rhubarb
RHS Garden Wisley holds the National Collection of Rhubarb and today we were taught how to divide and replant crowns. Autumn is best, because if you plant rhubarb in the spring, you are then required to keep watering the new plant to help its establishment. Adding manure to the hole The first step in the…
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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…
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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