Shopping Basket

Your basket is currently empty

Go to checkout

Click here 

		    $('#MainImage img:first').fadeIn(2000);
		    $('#MainImage').cycle({
			    fx: 'wipe',
		        speed:  'fast',
			    delay: 1000,
			    timeout: 10000,
			    next:   '#Next',
		        prev:   '#Prev',
		        pager:  '#Nav ul',
		        pagerAnchorBuilder: function(idx, slide) {
		            return '#Nav li:eq(' + idx + ') a';
		        }
	        });
    

            $('#Message img:first').fadeIn(2000);
		    $('#Message').cycle({
		        speed:  'fast',
			    delay: 1000,
			    timeout: 10000,
			    next:   '#Next',
		        prev:   '#Prev',
		        pager:  '#Nav ul',
		        pagerAnchorBuilder: function(idx, slide) {
		            return '#Nav li:eq(' + idx + ') a';
		        }
		    });

Garden Team's Blog - April 2008

The latest from the Garden Team, headed up by Simon Hansford, HQ Head Gardener. 

Spring has finally sprung (well, sprung-ish!) Fresh beginnings are popping up all around us like spring flowers and nowhere more so than in the land team. A new line up for the new growing year ahead.

And what a year it will be! We will be bringing new areas of Park Farm into vegetable production, so we can supply more and more of our own farm produce to the kitchen.

There is so much to write about, but where to start?!? I guess it's only polite to begin by introducing the new team personally, as well as the gardens where all the main growing action will be taking place…

The line up...

Simon Hansford (far right) heads up the garden team. He joined River Cottage last year, moving on from his job as Head Gardener at Wyken Estate in Suffolk. He has a degree in Horticulture from Writtle College in Essex and is highly knowledgeable in all aspects of gardening; being a Head Gardener is in the blood for Simon following a family tradition.

Emma Stapleforth (right), veteran of the team, has been gardening at Park Farm for almost 2 years. A local lass, born and bred on a small, family-run dairy farm, she enjoys making (and drinking!) the world’s best cider.

Caroline Lowery (that’s me!) joined River Cottage from the Magdalen project (www.themagdalenproject.org.uk); I ran an organic vegetable box scheme and encouraged children to grow and eat vegetables (and help me with all the weeding!)

 

To the gardens…

Farmhouse Garden
This is the main ‘showcase’ garden at Park Farm. It’s about half an acre in size, and joins onto the south side of the farmhouse. With a wall to the west side it has a peaceful, enclosed feeling. As well as being a highly productive space, it is also a beautiful place to sit and ‘be’ for the staff as well as our visitors. Made up of formal, (slightly) raised beds, with four main central beds demonstrating the classic ‘four bed rotation’. Other beds in this garden will mainly be used for providing perennial vegetables and herbs.

Fruit Garden
This runs along the west side of the wall of the farmhouse garden and already has pear trees cordoned up the side of the wall. Autumn and summer fruiting raspberries, as well as gooseberries, currants and rhubarb, are already growing in the beds. We are looking forward to planting more varieties of soft fruit and are about to plant up a big strawberry patch where we have just buried a ‘submarine’ (aka a 15,000 litre rainwater storage tank).

Polytunnel
This polytunnel has already been instrumental in keeping me sane over the winter months, allowing me to keep growing, even in the darkest coldest times. Although unheated, it has provided a steady supply of winter salads for the kitchens. It will also of course be invaluable over the summer for the tomatoes, sweet peppers, chillis, cucumbers…

Production Garden/Pig Pens
This is a new area of the farm, previously used by pigs and chickens as part of the livestock rotation. This will be an extension of the other gardens and where most of the produce to supply the kitchens will come from.

Climate Change Garden
Mark D, a contributor and honorary Garden Team member, has planted and developed the Climate Change Garden. The idea is to question the more exotic ingredients in our shopping, and to see if we can grown them here rather than importing them from overseas. So in this garden we have pineapple guava, olives, almonds, szechuan peppers… Watch this space to see how they thrive…

Local Produce Store, Axminster
We are also responsible for the café garden at the River Cottage Local Produce Store in Axminster, establishing a garden in the previously overgrown outside area.

 

What we are harvesting for the kitchen this month...

Salads (lettuce, endives, claytonia, corn salad, various oriental mustard leaves, radish, calendula flowers, sprouted seeds), purple sprouting broccoli, kale (curly and red Russian), leeks.

Wild food... Alexanders, wild garlic, nettles, cleavers, chickweed, bittercress.

 

Gallery

The Farmhouse Garden
The Fruit Garden
One of our polytunnels
As well as setting up our Climate Change Garden, Mark has his own Climate Change Farm in the Otter Valley
Working on the Store Garden
Picking wild garlic for the River Cottage kitchen

Comments

Love the photos, and background, during the course of the year I would love to hear about the little critters tht blight the RC Garden, with what and how you deal with them.  If you get anywhere near as frustrated as we do I expect some choice Anglo Saxon words in the blog too !

Rachel Davies

[report comment as inappropriate]