Friday 26 October 2012

Bean hair and bean moustaches


It was time to pull down the runner beans at Armitage as we want to save some of the beans for planting next year and we don't want them to get frost damage. The Gardening Club found there are more uses for beans than I realised.

We picked most of the beans quite young but left a few pods to dry out so the beans inside get nice and hard. We'll store these over the winter. You can also cook them like you would any dried bean.

Friday 5 October 2012

Another good thing about the wet summer

The strawberries at St Chrysostom's really seemed to enjoy the wet weather and have matured into magnificent looking plants sending out runners in all directions. We are trying to capitalise on all this growth and pot the runners to create new plants.

If you have never done this before, the idea is to place the roots of the new plants on the runners into relatively small pots, wait until they have established themselves and then separate them from the main plant. They can then be planted out. It can be a little bit fiddly to get the runners to stay in the pot but the idea of more strawberries is a strong motivator!

It's a carrot!

One bad thing about the cold, wet summer meant that lots of things we planted at St John's were not ready to harvest before the summer holiday.

One good thing about the cold, wet summer was crops that we planted in the spring were well watered over the summer holiday and were just waiting there for us when everybody got back to school.

These little carrots are an Italian variety (Franchi seeds) and grew very well in a relatively shallow container. Yes, they really are carrots.