Homeschool Garden Club - Jobs for September

Welcome back to learning. the Garden Club has been running through the summer holidays and we have already started the clean up this year because the heavy rains brought many plants down. Both the potatoes and tomatoes were hit by blight this year.

The weather this year has been a bit up and down and many of our crops have struggled to ripen on time or gone to seed very quickly. However, saying that we have had kgs of apples, pears and plums off the trees and the raspberries and blackberries are coming in and their harvest too will be a big one. The cookery club ran out of freezer room with the apples. So we are learning to bottle and can the pears. We are experimenting with different recipes too. we have found a very nice chocolate and pear pudding which we all like and that has used up the first quarter of the harvest.

We are only now starting to harvest the beetroot, carrots, celery, courgettes, cucumber, beans and some of the onions. The pears are also beginning to come in too!

You may remember that back in the spring we labelled up the leeks, the red onions, the white onions and spring onions. However, the wooden labels rotted. So, when we were potting on we need new labels. There was a bit of cross-communication as to who would make the labels and we had lots of unlabelled trays of seedling and we were unable to identify which was which. We eventually planted them out in small rows and we have a mixture of the leeks, red onions, spring onions and white onions in small blocks. It has been fun this week harvesting them and finding out which is which.

Many of the summer crops are coming to an end but we have been able to save much the crop with Orchard Training Homeschool Cookery Club, freezing, pickling and drying once again this year. The compost bins are filling up nicely, we have had an unexpected help with the compost bins as a guinea pig owner has joined the group and the old bedding is going in to the various compost bins as it becomes available. It appears to be speeding up the process of decomposition over the summer months.

Some of more experienced gardeners are starting to show the new joiners how to sow and this week we are sowing more lettuce (some of this is going to the back to the guinea pigs to thank them for their contribution to the compost bins) pak choi, radishes and spring cabbages.

Those who have signed up again this year have been able to share in the harvest partially in the apple harvest. We have been offered access to an old apple tree in exchange for picking the apples we help tidy up the area under the tree, so composting the fallen apples and cutting the grass. Extra bonus fo the new learners going us. We have had some mixed result with the sweetcorn but everyone has enjoyed growing it.

We have been told a top tip by one of our friendly allotment grandads. He has told us if we stop watering the tomatoes it will help the plant ripen off the green tomatoes. we are doing a test some will some won't and we will see if it works. Unfortunately, for many of us our tomato plants were hit by blight. while we have had no tomatoes in some gardens other have had a good crop of the Money Makers. So this is the seed we are all looking out for and I am sure if we get any in the January Seed Swop it won't take long before the haggling will get going.