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