Browned off spuds!
...how potatoes should look ie green not brown!
When is Spring really going to arrive? Today is a lot warmer but this week’s frost has had a bit of a go at my potatoes…they are well up and have out-grown the heaping-up several times but their heads were well above soil level when the frost struck. Imagine my dismay when I saw the green leaves had gone droopy and brown. I was as browned off as the spuds! I am being a bit of a drama queen here, cos they are not completely dead, there are green leaves around the base of the plants and I think they will rally and survive. But I should have raced down and heaped up more earth when I heard the weather forecast. (Mind you, I would have needed search lights or night vision goggles, as I had watched the half past ten weather…very poor forward planning!) I didn’t have the camera with me, so next time I’m down there, I’ll record, hopefully, the Potato Revival. It seems the frost has caught a lot of gardeners on the hop, so I’m not alone. But you live and learn…
Transition Ashtead will be having a stall at the Barnett Wood School Plant sale on Sunday 16th May between 1pm and 3pm.
It is held in the school playground. You can buy fruit, vegetables, annuals and perennials at the sale.
We will have some plants for sale and information about Transition Ashtead Garden Share.
Come for a chat and a browse!
Ashtead Garden Share
Come and ask us about Garden Sharing at Ashtead Park Garden Centre, on Saturday 1st May, 12-4pm
Have you got a large garden with space to spare?
Do you want to grow your own food but have no garden?
Ashtead Garden Share aims to put people who have spare garden space in touch with people who want to grow their own food. The idea is very simple – people with gardens they cannot manage, offer to share them with people who would like to grow food but have nowhere to grow.
The grower gets a free allotment, and the owner gets a share of the tasty produce grown in their garden.
Come along to Ashtead Park Garden Centre on May 1st and ask us all about Garden Sharing!
We hope to see you there!
phone: Derek Smith on 01372 378914 for more details
Donkey Aid
Donkey mulched raspberries...
The long-awaited delivery of donkey manure, courtesy of Judith and Don, has happened at last! Many thanks, J & D, for your patience – it seemed like every time we planned to meet at the allotment, something stopped it happening – if it wasn’t rain, it was holes dug in the access road to lay the new water pipes. And when the rendez-vous finally came, the Donkey Lorry (containing the 2 donkeys as well – they are so cute!) was too tall to go under the height barrier! I don’t believe it! Don ended up wheel-barrowing the bags of manure quite a long way…Molte grazie, Don! So the soft fruit (raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants) has had a good mulching of donkey doo manure (very special…), so they should do very well this year…Oops, forgot to put any on the rhubarb, but there is plenty left……
Cowboy asparagus…
Cowboy asparagus in the saddle...
Spring is such a busy time for veg growing – it’s all happening “down on the farm”! Since I last blogged, there’s been much activity on the allotment, both by me and the sun-energy-converting-food-producers (aka veg…)
The thing I’m most excited about is the arrival of my asparagus plants. I had mail-ordered them ages ago but they are only dispatched at planting time. Having not grown it before, I consulted my veg growing bible, which recommended digging a trench then creating a “saddle” (ie a ridge down the middle of the trench) for the long asparagus roots to straddle. It was jolly hard work – 20 plants, 4 trenches (5 to a trench) – it felt like a lot of soil to shift. Handling with care, I settled the roots on their saddles and loosely covered them with soil. And now, every time I visit the allotment, I add a bit more soil as the tips emerge. The trenches are nearly completely refilled now – there are 2 places where the tips are not doing so well, but hopefully they will catch up soon…
I have also planted garlic (doing well!), red onions (smaller than the garlic but sprouting well), 2 potato varieties (Cara and Charlotte, both now pushing up leaves and in need of earthing up). The inherited blackcurrants are showing signs of life, as are the gooseberries. I have butter nut squashes and celeriac in pots at home, all germinated. The carrots and beetroot Kim planted are up too.
Last years leeks still looking good and I take some home most days I visit the allotment – I may have to invest in a bigger rucksack to take my produce home in this summer, I’m hoping for bumper crops!
We hope you can come to The Brewery 8pm tonight Monday 10th May for Transition drinks.
Find out about Transition Ashtead Garden Share, how to save money on home energy and all things Sustainable!
An informal evening – a glass of wine, a few beers… no presentations, no agenda, just a drink or two and a chat!
Hope to see you there.
Transition Ashtead is One Year Old! Please join us for a Fund Raising Curry Night to celebrate!
It’s at The Moghul Dynasty, Craddocks Parade, Ashtead
On Tuesday 20th April, 7.30 pm
£15 per ticket
Contact Derek Smith on 01372 378914 to reserve your ticket.
The ticket price includes a starter, main course, shared side dish
(1 between 2), shared naan (1 between 2), shared rice (1 between 2), Coffee
Selections can be made from the normal menu-excluding any dishes with King Prawn. Drinks & deserts are not included in the ticket price
Funds are being raised to support the following activities – all of which are aimed at making Ashtead a more sustainable place;
Food Group, Energy Group, Ashtead National Bike Week Event
We hope you can make it!
You are invited to:
Find out how to save energy & money in your own home
A presentation by Russell Smith of Parity Projects
8pm Wednesday 7th April,
No entry fee. Tea/coffee and cakes available
With 27% of all energy in the UK consumed in domestic housing and 85% of our existing housing stock set to still be with us in 2050, we all need to act now to reduce our carbon footprint, and reduce our energy bills.
Russell’s company Parity Projects offers the full range of services required to reduce the energy use and the environmental impact of existing buildings. He won the DIY category in the Observer Ethical Awards 2008. He also won Building Magazine’s 2007 Award for Sustainable Refurbishment.
The Observer Award judges said: “Russell and his company Parity Projects stood out from all the other nominations for their new way of engaging with the public, giving them the tools to reduce their house’s carbon footprint in an innovative and inspiring way.”
In addition to the presentation there will be:
A display and demo of domestic power monitors
A display and demo of thermal draught detector
Displays of energy saving products
Advice on government grants and the new feed-in tariffs
Information about domestic combined heat and power units (soon to be introduced in UK)
Hope you can make it!
Anorexic carrots…
Fantastic – a sunny Sunday and a great day to get down to some planting. I’d arranged to meet Kim from my singing group at the allotment – she is a fairly new gardener and was coming down for the inaugural planting of the season, always a nice thing to do.
I was concerned that the digging part wouldn’t seem much fun (it is, believe me, I love it, but it may be an acquired taste…), so I was keen to finish the last bit before she arrived. I gave Kim the full allotment tour (compost heap, shed, freshly dug soil!) and then we got down to the business of seed sowing.
The target for the day was to get the beetroot and carrot seeds in. First things first, read the tips in the allotment books and then the instructions on the back of the packet.
Both seed types mentioned moist warm soil (tick!) not recently manured (tick – I had specially reserved an area for non-manuring last autumn, as I knew beetroot doesn’t like to be over-fed. Didn’t know carrots were also anorexic…) and finely raked (tick!)
We made a 1cm deep grooves and Kim sowed both lots of seed while I completed the last section of digging. What a team! A gentle rake over and a light tamping and seed sowing done! We retired to the shed for well-deserved sit down and cups of coffee and tea from our respective thermoses.
Ah, the luxury – who said gardening wasn’t glamourous…?
The meeting on 7 April I have just written about is intended to be the first activity in a plan of activities throughout the year that will promote the importance of reducing domestic energy consumption and carbon emissions to Ashtead residents.
We plan to have three public events – the first on 7 April to initiate interest, the second in June as a main event to have speakers and workshop/exhibitions on relevant locally available technology. The third event is to have a speaker and equipment display on home renewable energy options.
On top of the public events we intend to do the following.
- Set up a library of locally available energy efficiency equipment – some to show and some to loan e.g. draught meters, LED and low energy light bulbs, power meters so people can see and try them out.
- Get a small number of people trained in (a) draught proofing methodologies so they can train others to create a pool of people who can do this and (b) advising people on the grants available for domestic carbon reduction work and if necessary helping people complete the grant application forms. We plan to carry this out as part of the Ashtead churches Act10n initiative in 8-12 July, and so the main beneficiaries should be needy and vulnerable people.
- Research local suppliers of energy efficiency and renewable energy suppliers and identify those with real expertise and good reputations and create a preferred supplier list or get them added to the approved trade lists such as Checkatrade.
All this will need money and so we applied to Surrey County Council’s new Climate Change Fund for the money we think we’ll need. I’m pleased to say that we’ve been successful and so we should now have the money to do all we want this year.
Derek Smith
