Heaven is a Walled Garden

After an incredible series of coincidences something amazing has happened this week. As from the 1st January we will be the tenants of what could be the most beautiful Walled Garden in the world. (Superlatives are acceptable in this situation). About one and a half acres in size and situated in the centre of the the gorgeous village of Mells, Somerset it will be the perfect new home for BOB.

Until very recently the garden has been the home of the lovely Meadows plant nursery but Sue and Eddie have recently moved on leaving the garden in need of new hands. It's actually two gardens with one half being laid out to established perennial borders and plant standing out areas and the other half essentially empty, just waiting to be planted out with rows and rows of cutting flowers

We'll have to wait for a couple of years for the garden to become certified organic so will continue operating mainly from the farm until we move down properly in Autumn 2010. In the mean time though we have some exciting plans for the Walled Garden including running workshops on growing and arranging cut flowers from your own garden and holding some Open Days throughout the Summer so you can come and share a cup of tea and piece of cake with us and maybe buy some plants for your own cutting patch.

Watch this space, I'll keep you posted.

At Last!

Pretty things

Bits of BoB

My lovely, nutty husband spent ages throwing this long lost and newly found horse shoe into the air just to get a photo for the blog...so here it is. The other photos have me staring quizzically back at him seriously wondering if he's losing the plot.

We started September thinking we were winding down and immediately proceeded to become really busy with phone, internet and postal orders. It's been great cutting the flowers to order rather than carrying out the twice weekly massacre for markets which characterised August. That little bit of sunshine has really brought on the Zinnias which have now extended their stems in response to the warmth so they can be cut long enough to be included in hand tied bouquets.

I'm in hand tied bouquet heaven at the moment with all of September's orders. With so little floristry training ie. none I started the summer arranging all my bouquets in the vase first and then wrapping loosely sometimes with cellophane and sometimes with brown paper. as I became more brave I began to experiment with hand ties and was pleasantly suprised with the results. Finally after a short course with Rachel Lilley in Bath I now can't stop hand tying everything. The first half of the bouquet usually feels like a failure and just as I think I'm going to have to start again suddenly the duck turns into a swan and I get goosebumps at how beautiful it is....and that's every single time...that's a whole lot of goosebumps.

Packaging is also at the forefront of my mind at the moment. We've made lots of good packaging decisions this year ie using biodegradable cellophane, brown paper and string as the basis for all our flower wrapping but I think we can go further. I've now found somewhere I can order recycled brown paper at the weight and size we use so will be ordering that for next season. I also had a bit of a worry about Jute string as Jute tends to be grown in India and I know nothing about the environmental impacts of it as a crop in that country so I had quick look at whether Hemp string would a viable alternative. Unfortunately I found out that none of the UK grown hemp is used for making twine so I managed to find an organic source of Jute 3 ply instead. At least I can feel more confident that an organic certification body is monitoring the impacts of production on my behalf even if it is still being imported. If anyone has any twine sourcing experiences feel free to share. Cellophane is a natural polymer made from cellulose and is totally biodegradable and is the best choice I've been able to find so far. Next on my list is vegetable inks for printing and organic sheep fleece instead of cotton wool for hydrating postal bouquets...watch this space!

What else is going on? The Anenomes and Ranunculus are in, tulps are still waiting for me to find them some space, I've planted out some lovely black cornflowers, Cerinthe and Malope trifida today. I've never grown Malope before, it's a bit of a Sarah Raven special so I'm looking forward to getting to know it. The weeds are making me shudder in horror but I keep telling myself that we've got 6 months to get completely tidied up before Spring...the worst thing about weeding is that it's giving me time to think and grow ideas. Soon I'll have so many I'll be hand tying them with organic twine.

Party Time

I'm one of those slightly sad people that quite likes clearing up after a good party and that's what this week feels like. Bleary from a lack of sleep and too much excitement, peering at all the debris, remembering all the glamour from the night before and wondering where to start with the big tidy up.
The rain finally beat us this weekend, we had two lots of wedding flowers being picked up on Thursday and the plan was to spend Friday cutting for the Farmer's market at Midsomer Norton on Saturday and The Tobacco Factory on Sunday. The wedding flowers were fine thank goodness but I could feel the plants slipping into Autumn as we slipped in September, if the sun had shone for any significant length of time I'm sure they would have picked up and given us another three weeks of cropping. As it is they've just had enough of being rained on with no time to dry out in between soakings....except the Dahlias that is...they are loving it. If we could just do a market stall of Dahlias we'd be laughing. Hence sadly no, so we had to cancel our market pitches and decided to finish the season a couple of weeks early.

Words cannot describe how nice that lie in was on Saturday morning and as if on cue just in case we should think about relaxing too much Royal Mail delivered a box containing about 4,000 assorted Spring bulbs which will need planting over the next couple of months. Before they go in beds will have to be cleared and the list of winter jobs is extending daily.

It's a good time to stop and take stock of what's worked and what hasn't over the past few months and realise how much further forward we are now compared to this time last year. Thank god we don't have to put up any more polytunnnels this winter. If I squint I almost think we might be able to get everything weeded, manured, dug, sowed and planted in time for next April.

In the mean time...Dahlias anybody?

Recession and Downturn

As it's been nearly three weeks since we've posted anything, I thought I would weigh in with some sombre musings on how the impending recession, downturn and credit crunch coupled with some comical and amateurish governance might conspire to pull the rug from under B.O.B before she's even built up a head of steam. But then I thought better of it. I'll leave Jo recount the latest markets, weddings and other opportunities which have cropped up; it's been really busy, ontop of the growing needs to prepare, sow, cultivate and get ready for next year. We're both looking forward to a long weekend down on the Gower at the end of the month, getting wet, covered in sand and best of all; sleeping . . . . Meanwhile we push on. These two pictures are of the landy stuffed to bursting point last Sunday morning as we went off to the Love Food Festival at the Paintworks. It started slowly, but turned out great in the end.

The Sweet Pea tunnel is cleaned out now and we've started digging in the manure that we were given, hopefullywill get that all finished in the next week or so and covered up with Mypex. Then go to work humble Lumbricus terrestris, do your magic!

Great Elm Physick Garden

A few days before this seemingly endless rain started pouring down I had a phonecall from Liv O'Hanlon from The Great Elm Physick Garden. Liv's company makes gorgeous organic skincare products (www.greatelmphysickgarden.com) and is based about 6 miles away from the farm.

Liv contacted me because we had both attended a Soil Association workshop about growing and supplying organic herbs to the health and beauty industry which is a burgeoning sector of the organic movement at present. Currently over 85% of the organic herbs used in health and beauty products are imported from overseas, some are gathered from the wild and some are farmed in countries with much lower labour costs than you can find here.

I had attended the workshop because I had a surfeit of Calendula (English Marigold). In fact I had loads of it and a bit bright on the eye it was too. Anyway, I thought there must be someone who has a use for organic Calendula and maybe for some of the other flowers that we grow. The day was very interesting but I realised that supplying herbs for other uses would probably involve drying them first and that I would have to find time (and space in my head) to put together a drying system. I also thought that maybe the winter would be a good time to do some more homework and contact some of the manufacturers to see which crops they might be interested in.

A week later Liv made contact to ask if we knew where she might be able to find a large quantity of fresh Marigold.......what a perfect circle. The next day she came to the farm with her two teenage sons and quickly and efficiently picked 4.5 kilos of fresh flowers. She then took them back and dried them to an end weight of 0.8 kilos dried flowers and preserved them in Almond oil
Liv is thrilled that she has found a source of English Organic Calendula so close to home and I am very happy that our flowers can have two roles to play in the outside world. We are both now very excited about working together on crops for next year.

Bath Life Magazine visits BOB

A couple of weeks ago a lovely journalist came to visit the farm and I spent most of the time trying to stand between her and the weeds.
Anyway she can't have been too shocked because she wrote a very nice column about us which is available to view online... if you go to http://www.bathlifemag.co.uk/ and navigate to page 14/15 you can read for yourself.

Market Marathon

Keynsham yesterday; Southville, Bristol (Tobacco Factory) today; we're filled with weekend market madness! We've been sales-happy flower-drenched retailers, hawking our wares (or bearing our hawks) like career carnies this weekend. Keynsham yesterday had the feel of the Roundabout Zoo about it (ref: BBC League of Gentleman)) but we covered our pitch and diesel. It looked gorgeous though; colourful, structural and exciting on the eye (there are only so many ways that pork chops can be shrink-wrapped and stacked in polystyrene, and I speak as one who respects his pork). Sunday morning and Jo was up at Hackmead cutting by 0530 hrs; I wobbled up at 0800 and off we went to bring the BOB experience to Bristol.

A slow start, a gentle middle which eased off to a stately and quiet end. Hmmm. It hit us both at about the same time; around about 11 a.m.; we'd had lots of interest and lots of well dressed window shoppers; but everyone seemed to be looking at us as purely 'sellers' and not 'growers'. At the farmers markets it's evident that Jo grows everything on our stand but today we just looked like a hungover florists (I speak for myself there, and in fact; just hung-over). It was only a couple of customers who had worked or trained in floristry that recognised what Jo's blooms represented; I reckon about 80% of our sales were purely 0n visual impact alone; which is great in itself, but begs the question that does the fact Jo coaxes these things out of our own ground in fact matter? Does it matter how, where and why the flowers have arrived? It does to us, obviously, but does it to whoever hands over the folding and chinking stuff?

U.S.P. Unique Selling Point. I think we have to work on it before next weekend's market; we know what it is, but we maybe have to spell it out more clearly for potential customers? Although I'm not that confident of my ability to spel corecttly.

USP:

or proposition - this is what makes the product offer competitively strong and without direct comparison; generally the most valuable unique advantage of a product or service, for the market or prospect in question; now superseded by UPB.
www.bizjobs.com/business_glossary.php

Abbreviation for selling point. A differentiating factor that makes a company and their product or service better than a competitor's.
www.tractionsearch.com/se-dictionary.co

A Unique Selling Proposition is a statement that identifies what makes a person, product or organisation different from competitors.
www.simply.com.au/glossary.php

Let's get spelling!
JPx

The long winding toad . . . .

Check him out! Bufo bufo in the sweet-pea tunnel! Started lifting the spent plants on Wednesday, clearing out the docks and preparing the three beds with the lovely muck John Wyatt gave us. This chap was tucked under the mypex against the tunnel rail, and had been raining righteous wrath on the dozens of slugs which I'd also been finding (I like to think, at least) It's another sign that a pond or two might be a good idea; I think we've got two obvious spots for them, we've got the clay for puddling (just a bit) and we know how it drains now after 9 months on site. He was a great find, and along with the myriad of bees, wasps and hover-flies that cloud the blooming beds (and which followed around our displays at the festivals this year) , shows how diversity can generate diversity. It will be interesting to see how the plot matures (in wildlife/biodiversity terms) over the coming years. It's small and its connectivity to the wider landscape is relatively tenuous, and as we've discovered; it's exposed! I'm looking forward to getting to know personally the various genera which adopt each one of Jo's plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_toad

N.b. No toads were harmed in the making of this blog and associated images. All parties were consensual and were released back into appropriate habitat as per EU Habitat Regulations (Media Wildlife Clause 862) Annexe 3 2004.
Jp x

Grown in Britain, sold in Bristol

Hurrah for Bella and Fifi www.bellafififlowers.co.uk, for waving the flag of British flower growers. This new florist enterprise will ONLY be stocking seasonal flowers grown on these shores thereby giving the good people of Bristol the opportunity to fill their vases with beautiful, ethically sourced flowers which haven't traveled half way around the planet. Needless to say they will be stocking a wide selection our blooms, so look out for them in Clifton and Montpelier on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Eastnor 2008

As soon as I've got a spare second; I will write about the Big Chill and publish the hundreds of glorious photos we took of our flowers around the festival (err, three dodgy cameraphone shots, two of which are taken of Jo from the wrong side of a heras panel; she looks like she's in a detention centre)

And can whoever nicked my neon-blu-boy-racer valve caps off our landrover please post them back to the address on our website; come on you lot, you know who did it. It's not big or clever; but then I guess size and intelligence are relative, not absolute attributes, and it may well be a pinnacle of achievement for you, in which case, keep them; adorn your wagon with my blessing and pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

More later. .

WOMAD Festival 2008 at Charlton Park

We've just got back from a wonderful weekend basking in the sunshine at WOMAD where we were providing the flowers for the artists' dressing rooms. In the photo you can see me putting together the vases ready to get buggied around site to the various stages.

I was a bit worried that they might succumb to heatstroke and keel over by Saturday afternoon but they did us proud and looked great all weekend although they certainly needed their water topped up a couple of times. So now we can sort of say that we have done flowers for Martha Wainright, Squeeze and Eddie Grant.

We're off to do it all over again at The Big Chill this weekend so fingers crossed for some more sunshine.

St Swithin's Day

St Swithun's day if thou dost rain

For forty days it will remain

St Swithun's day if thou be fair

For forty days 'twill rain na mair

He may have been a 10th Century Bishop, misquoted by generations of 'scholars', but at least it's good to see one of them attribute a rubbish Scots accent to him, just to make his big moment scan. And only in Britain could we have a patron saint of 'weather lore', along with his contemporary; St Cuthbert; Patron Saint of Comfortable Shoes, St Wesley, Patron Saint of a Good Sit-Down and Saint Franklyn, the Patron Saint of Orderly Queuing. We don't care, any scrap of half-baked pagan theology, re-branded and re-cycled to the masses; if it says blue-skies ahead, count me in, that's good enough; where do I buy a flag and badge, a headscarf or a briar whipping-stick? He's my saint now.

And only three drops of rain so far today, I know there's three and a half hours left, but we can make it.

With Festivals coming up (WOMAD, BigChill), more stalls and orders, we need sunshine, by the KiloPascal, and by gods, or his unwitting misrepresented contemporary figurehead, Swithun, we're going to get it . . . !

Definitions of sunshine on the Web:

sunlight: the rays of the sun; "the shingles were weathered by the sun and wind"

fair weather: moderate weather; suitable for outdoor activities

cheerfulness: the quality of being cheerful and dispelling gloom; "flowers added a note of cheerfulness to the drab room"
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

JP

Okay, it can stop raining now!

What is going on with this weather? It seems to have rained continually for a week now. I had to slosh along the paths between the beds this morning to cut flowers for a delivery this afternoon. Thank goodness we raised the beds, otherwise I dread to think what state the plants would be in. Two things that don't seem to mind the wet at all are Docks and Chickweed. If there was money in Docks we'd be lying on an Antiguan beach right now.

Yesterday I was staring at a bed, scratching my chin sure that I had planted something in there when I realised that there were a hundred young Solidago (Goldenrod) plants struggling to out grow the encroaching Docks. So I downed whatever I was doing and spent the next couple of hours clearing some space for them to breathe and grow. Actually, strange though it may sound I'm quite happy with our choice of weeds on the farm. Dock is the only perennial problem we have and as weeds go it's quite upfront about things. Basically as long as you get the root up when you pull the plant and stop any of them from seeding, job done. I'm optimistic that as we loosen up the soil structure over the next couple of years we'll get on top of the docks.

Absolutely the worst weed I have had ever had the misfortune of working with/against is Ground Elder. I defy anyone to be organic and optimistic trying to defeat Ground Elder. It's roots are so persistent and it forms such a dense matt of growth. We tried everything , even attempting to smother it with African Marigold Tagetes erecta which releases a chemical from its roots which inhibits the Ground Elder's growth. I don't remember it working particularly well but I don't think we tried it for long enough.

Another really difficult weed, particularly with flowers is Bind Weed. It sneaks up when you turn your back and the wraps itself around all your precious flowers making harvesting a tortuous and impossible affair, and by that time it's too late to do anything about it. So no, I'm happy with Dock, it's there, you pull it, it's gone.

A summer, purging . . . .

Sunday afternoon; and while we should be pulling docks and tending flowers up at Hackmead; here we are cowering indoors at Whitelands as thunder, lightening, rain and gales thrash the living daylights out of everything outdoors. This will test the mettle of the plants up there; open and exposed as they are; faces up and open to the beating of the hammering rain!

Midsomer Norton Farmers Market

We are not stopping!!!!

I love these - We had a bunch of Acrolinium left over from a wedding a fortnight ago, so I took some in for the reception of the Wool Hall, the business centre I work at in Bristol. And with some grasses, they've been fantastic, lasted almost two weeks and only now the heads are starting to lower like they've been too long at a party. The colours and vivid brightness remain, its just the necks droop and they look like they've fallen asleep. You can almost see them panting, when you lift them up with a delicate finger. They don't look like they are dead flowers, just resting, waiting for the next party.
JP

Eunice's Husband's Sweet Peas

Earlier in the week, a friend Claire phoned to say that her elderly neighbour, Eunice, was finally moving out of her cottage after 55 years. Her husband had died about 8 years ago and Eunice now needed the support of her daughter and son in law.

Eunice's husband used to exhibit Sweet Peas and Chrysanthemums at local and national shows. In fact she proudly mentioned that he won a Bronze at the National Sweet Pea Show in the 60's, no mean feat. The shed at the bottom of the garden was full of all his paraphernalia of industrious enthusiasm which, was in danger of becoming landfill if not found a new home.

Claire wondered if I might be able to use these wonderful Sweet Pea exhibition vases and I immediately said yes. I took Eunice an enormous bunch of Sweet Peas and her eyes lit up as she recognised familiar varieties of a flower that she knew so intimately. She pointed to a stool in the immaculate, untouched, original 50's kitchen with it's sky blue, curved melanamin cupboards and told me how her husband used to sit for hours before a show straightening the petals on his unruly Chrysanthemums and how there would be flowers all over the house carefully placed at different temperatures in order to slow or quicken their development. She also offered me a small leather pencil case whose zip was rusted shut which contained the little tools and brushes he would use to groom his flowers on the show bench. As I took them from her hands , I wanted to turn her kitchen clock back and have him sit there again.

I promise to look after them for you Eunice and who knows, maybe the show bench might beckon some time in the future.

Frome Farmer's Market, another successful day and no Robin's nest dramas this time.

Sumersettle down in the back there . . . . .

Frome Farmer's market this Saturday and hopefully no repeat of the Dr. Doolittle-meets-Swiss Family-Robinson fiasco of Keynsham a fortnight ago (actually, what would happen if they did meet? Maybe at a Disney re-union . . would they have anything to talk about, or would it be stilted and uncomfortable? Maybe Lassie could break the ice and introduce people?) Anyway, as I write this looking out down the Wellow Valley; all the signs of mid-June are there; rich and complex verdant greens, swallows and swifts Torville-and-Dean-ing about, flashing Cow Parsley, Meadowsweet in the ditches, diesel fumes from a grid-locked A37, Police helicopters, sirens, the sky orange with flames, sheets of gray-black rain tomb-stoning across the sky and desperate, wet, hungry people on the news. yes; it's Glastonbury weekend again. After sullenly watching Si, Jacks, Nath, Nettie and Rose convoy off the Rank in the sunshine earlier, I wished we were going too. . . . but, as the hinges rattle and the trees bend supplicant eastwards in the fizzing wet gloom, for now, I'll take the hot bath. And while I'm fast asleep in the early hours, dreaming of pulling nettles and magic jet-packs, they'll be there; dancing in the mud with Nuns dressed as Ladybirds and the Welly-sellers will be ecstatic . . .
JP

Definitions of fiasco on the Web:
A hand blown, round bottomed bottle, wrapped in wicker generally associated with Chianti. Not generally used today because of their expense.
nickgardner.wordpress.com/food-dictionary/
debacle: a sudden and violent collapse
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Happy Solstice

This morning we tumbled over the top of the year and can now begin to relax and enjoy, quite literally the fruits of our labour.

Dyrham Park goes organic!

The gorgeous National Trust property, Dyrham Park which is found on the northern flanks of Bath has asked us to provide them with a regular supply of blooms to adorn various rooms throughout the house.

The house staff felt that it was important that the flowers they used were similar to those that would have been gathered from the gardens during the 18th and 19th centuries. These are exactly the kind of flowers that we grow, relaxed, informal country garden flowers. We will also be able to reflect the season as different flowers become available throughout the year.

The National Trust, as an organisation is actively committed to reducing its carbon footprint and in developing projects that can enable people to learn about adaptation and efficient resource use. Their "Small Steps, Big Change" project encourages staff, volunteers, members, visitors, schools and community groups to 'green up their acts' by using their daily decisions to make the small steps which together make a big change.

Congratulations to the staff at Dyrham for taking their small step.

BOB at Keynsham Farmer's Market

I know this should really be a photo of our stall at the farmer's market yesterday but somehow we managed to corrupt the photos as we were getting them off the camera. This it such a shame as the stall looked brilliant. This is the mock up that I did in the shed on Friday to make sure I had enough buckets, flowers and things to put them on.

What an ace day, the sun was shining, our market colleagues were welcoming and friendly and all the Keynsham folk were really lovely. Things couldn't have been better really, we sold lots and lots of flowers and what was really pleasantly surprising was that some of the flowers that I thought wouldn't do well were really enthusiastically received. English Marigold Calendula officinialis was a good example of this. I've sown and planted almost a whole bed full and to be honest I thought they would just be too bright and unglamorous to appeal to flower buyers....how wrong I was. They looked fantastic when arranged into small bunches with the lime green Euphorbia and the purple Atriplex with a dash of pink Strawflower and everybody loved them, so they've won a reprieve and I'll henceforth show them a little more love. Talking of the Pink Strawflower, they are so wonderfully prolific (and I suspect they are only just getting going) that I'm picking at least 100 a day and bunching them in 20's to dry. None of the florists have been particularly interested so I only took 25 bunches just to decorate the stall. Everybody loved them and one bride to be was so enamored that she took 15 bunches to decorate the ends of the pews at her wedding next weekend. I bet they'll look beautiful, really simple and old fashioned.

The best thing about being at a market is being able to talk to people and it was great to feel the support for locally grown flowers that haven't traveled half way around the world and also see how much people LOVE Sweet Peas. There is something about this flower that turns people inside out and reminds them of being a child. It must be something to do with the way memories are triggered by the senses, particularly smell. There was much reminiscing about grandparents' gardens.

The drama of the day couldn't have been more "Farmer's Market". Whilst I was setting up the stall at about 8.30am, Jon was unpacking the trailer and heard lots of tweeting. After some investigation he realised that there was a Robin's nest with three young chicks which was tucked away in the frame of the trailer. The chicks and the nest had miraculously survived the 8 mile journey from Radstock to Keynsham and were all calling for their breakfast.

You can just about make them out in this photo. Poor Jon had to drive them back to farm and unhitch the trailer and hope that Mrs Robin wouldn't have given up on them in their absence. This left us with the challenge of getting our table back at the end of the day as it doesn't fit in the Landrover. Fortunately, we discovered that another stall holder Dominic, from the very tasty Chocolate Workshop is coincidentally based at the farm just up the road from us and he was kind enough to help us out.

When we got home, after we had unloaded our flowers and counted our takings for the day we waited to see if the chicks had survived and were still being fed by their mum.

Yay, here she is!

Jo x

June Blooms

Here's a jug of Sweet Peas, Corncockle, Cornflowers, Gypsophila and Acrolinium that we wrapped for a birthday bouquet yesterday.

This year I've had to grow more annuals than I would like, because although they are very generous and prolific in their growing habits many of them have a fairly short vase life. This is easily extended by removing any dead flower heads as they go over and a vase like this should last for 6 -7 days before being relegated to the compost heap.

Being Soil Association certified means that I need to grow most of my perennials from seed which means I'm sowing seeds that I would otherwise probably never have tried. This is having some really satisfying results, I was puzzling over a seed tray without a label which Charlie had knocked over months ago but had been put to one side to see if anything survived the trampling. I was thrilled to see a tiny little Eucalyptus gunnii had emerged which was one set of seedlings I hadn't expected to see for a while. I've also got Sage, Hyssop and Rosemary emerging which I would never have thought of growing from seed.

I've realised I'm a splurger when it comes to buying seeds. Chiltern Seeds have such a fantastic catalogue and website that it is so easy to get tempted. I've just ordered my biennial seeds for next year so as well as Sweet Williams I also wanted to try Alexanders (Smyrnium oluastrum) which is a lovely architectural wild flower often found near the sea and that led me on to a variant called Smyrnium perfoliatum which is similar but where the leaf encloses the stem and then to another variant, although a different genus, called Zizia aurea or Golden Alexanders.

Another thing I'm going to try by seed are some ornamental alliums, they are great as cut flowers with their blue spheres. All these seeds will need a period of cold known as stratification so iI will sow them in the polytunnel and then after about three weeks they will be moved to the bottom shelf of our fridge for about a month and then back to the cold frame (which isn't actually built yet).

These are sweet little flowers, I've bought the seeds from the Organic Gardening Catalogue as Acrolinium but actually their proper name is Helipterum roseum. They are incredibly prolific and last ages and ages in a fresh vase arrangement. They also dry beautifully and as I'm cutting about 60 a day at the moment the shed rafters are already beginning to look very decorative with drying bunches. I think these would be really pretty flowers for a simple country wedding, you can just imagine them threaded into bridesmaid's hair.


The Ammi majus is almost flowering now, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some sunshine this week to bring them on for our very first Farmer's Market at Keynsham next Saturday. I'd really like some more Euphorbia to take aswell but alas that seems to be settling in slowly. I hope we have enough flowers to make a really pretty stand and I really really hope that people want to buy them.


One last picture of the red cornflowers. I initially wasn't convinced of Centaurea cyanus "Red Boy" as it just wasn't blue enough but Jon absolutely loves it so it's gone up in my estimations . A number of florists have also made encouraging noises about this one so maybe we'll keep it on the list for next year.

Jo x

June - oh . . . . !

After a few weeks of working away, seeing the field yesterday was incredible. It's teetering on the second week of June and we haven't been mugged by weeds or doused with failure, or at least if we have, I haven't felt the effects, having been swanning around paradise in Llandeilo all week.

JP x

A trip out to Jekka's Herb Farm

Yesterday I navigated the numerous junctions of the Bristol Ring Road and hastened a short distance northwards to an open day at Jekka's Herb Farm. Jekka has been growing organic herbs really very well for what seems like forever and has just won a 13th gold medal at Chelsea Flower Show. It's a mail order nursery but has two sets of open days a year one, around about nowish and one at the end of the summer.

My reason for going was to stock up on some organic herbs to use as foliage, plants like mint ( I bought 7 different varieties) will do really well on our damp, heavy soil and hopefully will spread vigorously and produce lots of aromatic leaves and pretty flowers.

I was trying to be disciplined in choosing herbs only suited to my purpose but I succumbed to an irresistibly beautiful cream coloured French Lavender It would hate to be planted up at the farm so I'll put it in a pot and gaze adoringly at it.

Jo x

The times, they are a'rainin' . . . . .

Went to water and 'weed' this morning, and all's in-one piece, thank the lord (or lady) of your choice. I was worried yesterday evening with the warm sun which expands the skin on the tunnels all day, then the winds then get under the extra flappage; these were the incoming booms of yesterdays post. I pushed a hoe about for an hour, like a sullen janitor being teased by his unruly class of Docks, then came away to get ready for another week away (and those weeds so recently disturbed, shaking their roots, climbed happily back into the soil to start sledging the Cornflowers all over again)

Definitions of nutter on the Web:

A foolishly insane person, but one who is generally harmless. Also, a person may be called a nutter if they have done or are planning to do ...
www.rebeccarose.info/about_british_and_american_slang.htm

An insane person (as in "you're nuts").
www.hkfilm.net/terms3.htm

JP x

Red Sky at Night; We're in for a fright . .

Big, booming easterlies are pounding the farm, like artillery before the rain comes over the top. I wonder if we'll get any sleep tonight?
Right, that's the last time I'm working away for a week (err, until tomorrow that is) What'll I find when I come back next time?

Definitions of optimist on the Web:

a person disposed to take a favorable view of things
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The Optimist is a small, single-crew sailing dinghy.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimist (dinghy

JP x

Growing Organic

I realised when weeding today that recently I've written very little on the blog about the practicalities of organically growing cut flowers, we've been swept along with the glamour of photographers, websites and postcards.

When it comes to the more muddy side of the job my main preoccupation is compost! There are two types of compost in my head (probably quite literally) The first is a growing medium for seeds and young plants and the second is that what you add to the surface of the soil as a mulch to seal in moisture and smother weeds.

Cleverer people than I can make compost which is good enough to raise plants in. My composting results are usually only just good enough to be used as a soil conditioner and this is something I need to work on over the next few years.

For seed sowing and potting then I need to buy in compost. Peat has previously been a bit of a guilty secret that I had carried around with me. The extraction of peat both from the Somerset levels on our doorstep and from the Baltic States and Russia is directly destroying what remains of the lowland raised peat bogs which are a unique habitat supporting thousands of species which are not found anywhere else.

I was quite suprised when we joined the Soil Association to find that they do allow the use of peat in propagating media although they recommend that alternatives are used where possible. I was determined to be rid my guilt and find an alternative. At first it all seemed very daunting and looked as if it was going to involve buying in ingredients like composted bark chippings, perlite, grit and some kind of approved base fertiliser. I was prepared to give it a go but was worried about making expensive mistakes with the ingredients and ending up with no plants at all.

Then I found Fertile Fibre.....it's fantastic! It's based on Coir which is a waste product from the coconut industry and actually performs better than any peat based compost I've ever used. It doesn't dry out particularly quickly which is the usual concern with coir and all 5000 of my plants this spring look very happy in it. They do a seed compost which is finely shredded and a potting compost which contains a bit more composted bark.

I suppose the downside (and there usually is one) is that the coir is shipped in from Sri Lanka but I can't help think that this has got to be better than shipping in unsustainable peat from Russia.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that, so if you still have a peat habit then now you know how to kick it.
Jo x

Happy me

Letters stuck on the side of a vehicle shouldn't make me feel this good but they do...I can't stop grinning.

Big hugs to Nathan (the best graphic designer in the universe) for painstakingly peeling off the backing paper instead of watching the football last night and for sorting out the wiggly "m" with a pin and lots of patience.

I almost felt a bit shy driving around today but also ridiculously proud.

More pictures please.......

Yippee, New Shed. We couldn't afford it but did it anyway. A necessity for conditioning the flowers, and somewhere to put the radio.

Jon said I couldn't have a chair but I've sneaked one in whilst he's been away.

Shed's are great and I love it already.

And Finally...........Flowers in Shed. I've just cut these for Leslie's Flower Shop in Frome for an organic wedding on Saturday. I had a lovely time cutting them and Karen is coming to pick them up early in the morning. It's beginning to feel as if the planning stage of this business is over and things are finally beginning to happen.

Busy weekend!

Lunchtime

This is Little Wood, just over the gate and into the next field, is where we go to have lunch, get out of the heat of the tunnels and run the dogs where they don't worry so much game. It's a small piece of ancient/semi-natural woodland with what looks like some Victorian Scots Pine planting, probably some oaks were extracted before WWII, but very little disturbance since then. It's absolutely pristine.

What a brilliant week its been. Not only has the weather been completely gorgeous but we've sold loads of flowers, in fact we've sold every flower that our hard working Sweet Pea plants have produced this week, about 250 in all. Most have been sold through Miller-Ashman florists in Midsomer Norton as bunches of 12 and have been snapped up within hours of being delivered. I can't quite put into words what a relief and satisfying feeling it is after all these months of hard work to have produced something that people want to buy. I'm looking forward to taking another 100 to Rachel's shop in Bath on Thursday because I know she's going to love them, they smell so gorgeous.

We've also had an order from Lesley's Flower Shop in Frome for 150 next week. These are destined for an organic bridal bouquet which is a lovely thought. I'll enjoy cutting those next Friday morning.

We've managed to help out Henrietta for her wedding as well. She tracked us down through Google in her search for a back up plan in case her first plan of growing her own wedding flowers didn't succeed. As it turned out, chickens escaping into her flower garden have put paid to her best intentions and fortunately for her we should be well and truly blooming by her wedding day in July.

Ripples

That was it - I remember now! It was a conversation, long ago with the one and only eco-visionary Liam Egerton (now measuring cow-flatulence for the Australian government in Melbourne) To put him in context, Liam appeared so far ahead of everyone else, he got bored waiting and moved on. When everyone eventually caught up, all they found was a pair of trainers, a Rush CD and some fluff. His take on 'transitional ethics' seemed brilliant to my troglodyte Welsh brain; i.e. how does one gets from A to B (where A = Bad, B = Good)? Easy, by substituting letters for integers and increasing the range i.e. from 1 to 10 (where 1 = Bad, 10 = Good) How does that relate to flowers, clay, Docks and beauty? I'm not sure, but I need to be at work . . . . . . .

visionary (adj.)

"able to see visions," 1651, from vision (q.v.). Meaning "impractical" is attested from 1727. The noun is attested from 1702, from the adj., originally "one who indulges in impractical fantasies."

Sweating like a . . . . (add your simile here, best answers receive a free bunch of sweet peas) . . it's been so warm?! Saturday, and Finn and I were up with Jo at Hackmead today, me; digging out the paths and raising the last of the usable beds, Finn potting up in the sweltering polytunnel heat, Jo planting out. It's all becoming real, the two dimensional idea ('let's do this!) into three dimensional actuality ('we WILL do this!') turning into 4-dimensional madness ('how the HELL are we going to do all that?!') Two days ago we cut all the sweet peas that were ready or nearing ready to go; 48 hours later; 142 new long stems, vase perfect and looking like they'd been there all the time and we just hadn't noticed them (like trying to watch the moon actually move across a night sky).

But the beds are getting there, we've lost a few that we've had to cover with mypex to the south, and some we've made mistakes with their construction, but most should all be ready to plant this week. And now it's the selling, the marketing, the pricing, the haggling, the valuing, the guessing, the hoping, the trusting and the luck (or is it skill?) of turning this all into revenue. I think that's as exciting as growing them all in the first place though!

....and for the next task

....you will need a trowel and a strong back. Over the next couple of weeks we'll be planting approximately 5,000 plants by hand, preparing the base for a new packing shed, picking and pinching out the Sweet Peas and trying to remember to breathe in between jobs.

The weather is absolutely perfect this week, it's been sunny enough to dry out our soggy old soil and remind me why I like working outside. The plants are behaving as if someone has just turned on the switch and doubling in size each week so once they are established them in their final growing space I can leave them to get on with it.

Oh yes, I've just remembered ...I'll have to start cutting then, won't I?

Best find my trowel.....

These are the sweet peas on Monday, just before cutting, which went to David (Ion Acoustics in the Wool Hall) for his wife Moira (Congratulations!) for their wedding anniversary and birthday. They had to compete with two shop-bought bouquets and a long hunt for a vase, we hope they didn't get bullied at night and that they hold their own this week. He probably looked a great sight, cycling through Bristol with them under his arm, like an extra from a Hugh Grant movie?! They've only been in the ground for 3 weeks (the sweet peas, not David and Moira, what they get up to in the the solitude of their own house is no business of ours) and Jo has to stand on a stool to pinch out some of them; there's fear in her eyes in the evenings these last few days. The sunshine has catapulted the plants into a higher state of growiness, potting on and planting out has jumped to the top of the list, in fact it's not a list any more, but a very long stream-of-consciousness sentence, with no punctuation. She's already sun-burned like a cowgirl with fingers twitchy for her mother-of-pearl-inlaid Trowel. It's not the Railroad that's coming, but the Rotavator, one cylinder, 4-strokes and spiked wheels of destruction . . . .The Tilth and and the Fury.

Bank Holiday Weekend! And it's been raining . . . .

Congratulations to.....

The Woolhall, Bristol for being our first customer and receiving our first bunch of Sweet Peas yesterday. It felt a bit like sending a child off to boarding school for the first time, all wrapped up in new clothes and a name sticker stuck to their lapel.

I hope they behave themselves and smell gorgeous all week.

Taste of Spring

Apart from the Sweet Peas none of our plants are flowering yet so I was delighted when I came across this patch of Wood Sorrel yesterday lunch time when walking Willow and Charlie down by the stream which bounces along the bottom of the valley. it was thriving on a mossy mound alongside Wood Anemone, Bluebells and Wild Garlic under the dappled light of Wild Cherry in flower.....sigh.... a more beautiful sight is hard to imagine.

As I stopped in my tracks and took in this perfect image of spring, inevitably the dogs thought I must have found something particularly tasty and immediately set about searching through the foliage to locate it. Fortunately, I managed to distract them before they did too much damage. Wood Sorrel is actually pretty enough to eat although only advised in small quantities and has a delicious sharp lemon taste.

As I walked back along the valley there were more flowery delights to be enjoyed with Primrose, Violet and Greater Stitchwort all escaping from the woodland edge
to catch some of the spring sunshine.

Despite how much I enjoy growing flowers, there is a particularly satisfying feeling to be had from seeing plants growing naturally in the place that nature intended for them. Suitably inspired, I called the dogs and rushed back to the polytunnels to get on with nurturing some of our domesticated lovelies.

Digging out the paths now and raising the beds slightly; hard though on the rotavator (and Jo's back)

If a word can paint a thousand pictures..

Friday morning at the end of a slightly fiddly week. As Jon said yesterday lots of things to do, all vying with each other for the position of "most urgent".

Thankfully all the seeds are now sown (physically as well as metaphorically) so sunshine and spring warmth can be our business partner for the next few weeks and start to pull their weight a bit. This leaves us a little time to put together some marketing material to accompany the flowers on their journey into happy customer's homes. Easier said than done methinks.....It seems that whenever one tries to write something down to communicate a small amount of information in a cool and stylish tone every word assumes the weight of a small car. The idea is to write a few lines to go on the website and the back of a postcard outlining the provenance of the flowers and the care with which they have been nurtured and we may as well be writing a final year thesis on agricultural politics in the 21st Century. We've sent off our desultory rantings to be looked over by a clever friend who writes prolifically for gardening magazines and is much better at this kind of thing.

In the meantime I've been searching for some images to adorn both the front of the postcard and the website homepage. We're looking for .....stylish, rustic twee....no not twee, with flavours of summer picnics and distressed oak dressers and hints of lost cornfields. Hmmmm ...should be easy. Surprisingly I haven't been able to find such images so when to my delight a mutual friend informed me that the brilliant John Loman was taking a photographic interest in flowers I hastened to his side. So this weekend Jon will be creating summer in his studio and hopefully you will see the results shortly.

Once we have married images and words we will hopefully have website and postcards ready by the end of April thus giving us the means by which we can spread the message. . . . .
Buy fresh, local and beautiful organic flowers for a new day.

Jo x

Into the second half of April, already? Saw the first Swift today, panting on the TV antenna; know how he/she feels . . . . The lists get longer, and the "must do's" gallop along to an invisible finish-line, all neck and neck. Good move this week though, bringing in the one and the only Mr. John Loman (www.rookywood.org) who is, coincidentally, already working with Rachel Lilley of Bath in a photographic capacity. Eyes like funeral pyres and a wit to skin a cat at 100 paces, but with the legs on the wrong way round, John is skilled, sharp, unpredictable and generally utterly fantastic; he knows he is a genius and is just passing time, quietly, until the rest of us work out how much of one and what to do about it. Can't wait to see him add claws to our colour and bones to our flesh!
JP

Let's put in on eBay; The first outdoor bloom, it looks like a Quality Street has escaped its tin and gone native!

Saturday evening and the view from Whitelands after a heavy shower over to Writhlington and Hackmead beyond; it must be an omen! Off to water (and to load up the Landy with the gold)

Organic witchery

Last Thursday and Friday morning, the moon was in aquarius apparently. This was pleasing not only because I'm an aquarius but also because this meant that these two days were "Biodynamic Flower Days".

If you are a biodynamic gardener you are meant to divide your activities like seed sowing, weeding and planting up around the moons travels through the various constellations. Dfferent constellations are associated with either flower, leaf or root plants and to sow and tend to your flower plants on flower days is meant to reward you with a super bumper crop of those in question.

Now to be honest, over the years I have not paid much heed to the moon's travels other than to be wary of the full moon in May which often brings a frost just at the point that you are wanting to plant out tender plants. My science head has always bossed me into thinking that getting the plants raised and into the ground with enough support, food and water whilst fitting in the millions of other things you have to do in life is enough of a challenge.

This year in darkest December I bought the Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar by Maria and Matthias Thun and to my dismay found in completely incomprehensible. I think that's me being a bit impatient and dim but this did put Biodynamics on hold for me for a while other than getting very excited by all the preparations you can make which involved filling a cow's horn with cow dung and burying it. I asked for a cow's horn for Christmas, apparently you can order them from a biodynamic website but alas Santa did not oblige.
(Note from Santa: "I only had Reindeer horns last Christmas")

Then a couple of week's ago by chance I found a nice website called www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk which has a lovely simple approach to the whole thing and will email you every week telling you what day is which. I'm wondering whether the "knowing" will actually govern what I do that day but certainly last Thursday and Friday I managed to fit in about 7 hours of continual seed sowing and also made a push to split an enormous clump of Giant Scabious into about 54 plants and get them planted. Feeling that I was working in harmony with the moon gave me a witchy feel about the day which is probably what made me kick off my sweaty wellies and pad around the polytunnel in bare feet all day.

The weather's been a bit wild over the past few days, we snunk off to the Gower for what will probably be our last weekend away until October and left dear Charlotte to water seedlings and wrap them up from the frost at nights. I think the responsibility was a bit daunting but all was well on return.

We're not using heat at all up at the farm, infact other than petrol for the rotavator and diesel for the Landy we're not using energy at all. This is both intentional and circumstantial as I only want to grow plants that don't need that extra energy input ie. those that will grow unforced and "naturally" and also quite frankly it would cost more than we have available to put in electricity of any sort. I've concocted a Heath Robinson style arrangement of poltunnnel inside polytunnel for some of the half hardy plants like Dahlias and Zinnias and so far they seem happy enough.

We'll just have to wait for that frosty full moon in May.
JI