Blog posted by Dominic Murphy

Finally, we started gardening club this week – I meant to get going after the half term break but somehow that didn’t happen.
It’s a time to take stock and do some planning for the weeks ahead. This year, we might try leaving some crops in the ground over the summer holidays, for example – I’m thinking leeks, but please get in touch with any other suggestions. As always we would like to have the bulk of our cropping done by the end of summer term in July.
I would also like to work towards a gardening club display at the summer fair in June: perhaps we can sell some basil plants and show off a few of the things we have grown.
But dreaming aside, what of the present? The garlic is thriving in one of our raised beds; the onions beside it have fared less well, but a decent amount has survived winter. I don’t suppose many of the children will be excited at the prospect of eating these crops, but they’ll love it when we come to pick them.
This week we sowed some early carrots (‘Early Nantes’) in the gaps around the onions. I know, I know – I’ve said before that our heavy soil is not the best for carrots, but I live in hope.
And the cabbages that I’ve recently come to treasure (see blog of 29/9/08)?
They made it through the winter, the netting above them keeping the pigeons away. But with the recent mild spell, the slugs are back, the cabbage leaves displaying their tell-tale holes. So we weeded around the plants, as you do at this time of year,  fed them with a seaweed feed and topped up the homemade slug traps (see blog of 31/10/08). To judge from the gooey mollusc remains inside them — which the children find both repellent and fascinating at the same time — they have been doing their job.
This time though, the bait is sugar and water, not expensive cider. I don’t like wasting a good drink on such pests – and we are in a recession.