This last week has been a busy one in the Prep Garden. With the hint of better things to come weatherwise, it was time to get out into the garden to prepare it for the growing season ahead. With choir members off singing in Bury, and the netball squad out for the day too, the remaining members of Prep VI donned their gardening gloves and set to work.
This year, we are going to be following the plan set out by Huw Richards who, in his book Veg in One Bed, offers a whole year of growing in an area 3m by 1m. Our beds are a bit shorter than this, so we have split ours into two. This area is split into ten separate sections, and Huw offers a planting scheme throughout the year to fill them. So far, we’ve lettuce and radishes in two of these sections, and we’ve got potatoes ‘chitting’ ready to go in at the end of the month (never put your potatoes in before St. Patrick’s Day is Mr. Sister’s top tip).
The morning obviously inspired our Prep VI gardeners, as fourteen of them came back for Friday’s Gardening Club, together with our regular younger stalwarts. We’ve turned our compost bin, planted spring bulbs and aquilegia outside, and the greenhouse is now heaving with seed trays and seedlings for tomatoes, chillies, marigolds and calendula, broccoli, cabbage, and a whole host of herbs. At this rate, we’ll be digging over the front lawn, in true WW2 Dig For Victory style! What a great time to be outside!
