Marvellous meadows and wonderful weeders

Volunteer extraordinaire Ray has long held an ambition, to lie in a tall-flowered meadow and look at the sky. He noticed that we have a meadow... and asked if we'd help him achieve his ambition. The meadow is just starting to look amazing, full of red and white campion, and ox-eye daisies amongst other things, but we found a corner of it that we thought would accommodate him without leaving too much of an obvious hole.

How long have you been working in this field?

So Ray got his wish. The verdict? Nice but would be good to try it on a sunny day. If you want to try it for yourself, left us know and we will be happy to help you use the specially-flattened spot!

Jade and Ray put in the purple brussels

Apart from that little bit of fun, we also did some good weeding (oh the excitement!), with Merion (a much welcomed return volunteer), Jade and Ray doing sterling work. They also found time to add some purple brussels to the brassica bed, along with a little catch-crop of beetroot, and to extend the tunnel so that the pigeons don't stop things working before they've even started, like they did with our crop of red amaranth, which is sadly just a few stalks now. That surprised us, as it's related to callaloo, which the pigeons don't seem to touch, and when the amaranth was stripped, the next-door horseradish leaves were too, which again is very unusual. It can't be caterpillars as the damage happened overnight and there are no tell-tale caterpillars or signs of them having been there. We suspect we'll find a very hung-over pigeon if we look in the bushes.

Merion gets to grips with the weeds in the
herb garden

In the afternoon, the Nottingham University Samworth Academy group arrived after school, to help us do some weeding and planting. We are always happy when groups are willing to do that, and took the opportunity to help the group find out more about weeds as well. Jade and Merion stayed on to help, so we had a really good crowd and they made a huge difference, weeding the paths and the fire-circle and even attacking the horse-radish that refuses to die because it's roots are over 3 feet long.



We'd like to thank the NUSA group for all their hard work and we're hoping to see them again soon for some harvest, cook and eat sessions.