Sunday 29th April   The Beginning

Welcome all to this new venture which defies time and space...  oh sorry that's the  wrong blog.... just joking  ..no but we will defy time and space.  Our little gardening project takes us  back in time when we really were in touch with nature   and space its about the use of land space to plant, nurture  and harvest really really useful stuff.. food

Fran, Theresa, Brenda, Helena, Sarah , Daniel, and Lisa

But back to the beginning a couple of weeks ago (April 10 to be exact  I remember as it was my birthday), Lisa put forward the idea of using some land in her family for what we would call an allotment  ie growing vegetables to be consumed.  This idea was raucously and enthusiastically greeted by all sat round the table as a damned good idea,  at this point I should mention some wine had been consumed.  However in the harsh light of the following days we amazingly all still thought it was a good idea,  So after an earlier brief inspection of the land,  last weekend we all met to lay the groundwork on Sunday.  So here a few photos from our first Sunday out which we will simply call the shit shovelling phase

So this is our little cabbage patch (except it will blossom with tomatoes cucumbers and the like)  with a huge pile of natural fertilizer which needed spreading

So the women got to work  and boy was it tough and ever so ever so smelly.  In fact if you look closely at the pictures you will be able to smell it too

The work progressed fairly smoothly  but smellily  (I really cannot stress that enough)  for a good few hours

So  shit shovelled and levelled,  time to get the water system down there.   Again women power to the rescue.

Uncurling the hose to get down to our field    watching for snakes in the grass.

Team work .  Now to get the main water pipe buried.

And so after hours of toil in the hot sun we are ready next week to lay out the water pipes and hopefully start planting.

Come follow us on this trip back to nature and over the weeks and months we hope you can share our joy as our little patch becomes a vibrant garden

WEEKLY TIP

Each week as we plant, prune, weed, tender, water, harvest and hopefully eventually eat, we would like to share a few gems of wisdom collected from our collective cooperative consciousness/  So here were go   (or to prolong the horticultural theme  earwig go..)

1.  Don't shovel shit wearing nice white socks...really not good

2   Aphids

Evidently these little chaps are avid non smokers.  How to kill them in an environmentally friendly way.
First you need to be a smoker a find a smoker  or nip into those outhouse bits of the pubs they reserve for smokers and collect a lot of butts...you know fag ends... Having then procured these  bung them in a bottle and let them seep with water for a week.  You will get a disgusting liquid that is full of wonderful anti aphid juice.
Spray on leaves and the aphids will run off to the aphid  hospital for their yearly check ups.  Anyway your plants will be free of them.  Voila.  fags to fend off aphids.  No cost.t patch of vegetable and herbs.  The task is fruitful in may ways  yes obviously we hope to eat our home grown organic  products and in these  tough times every little helps,  but also fruitful in the shared work, shared friendship and........ oy you share that bottle of beer... (did I mention the fridge yet)   OK more later.