Website updates

Working this weekend and suffering from lack of trade due to cold wet weather has at least allowed me time to get up to date with our website, www.fairweathers.co.uk. We are currently working on getting a section on our site for visitors to find out more about local attractions and events along with what else Beaulieu can offer. It is somewhat surprising that the Beaulieu villiage website has not been kept up to speed at least we can fill that gap for visitors and hopefully attract others to the area.
We had a meeting on Saturday with some of the Learning garden team to set out for next year a range of drop-in courses on vegetable gardening. Our intention is to provide simple workshops on a regular basis where visitors can come along and learn some practical advice on grwoing veg in their own garden or allotement. These will consist of about a 10-15min talk followed by practical experience so that the theory can be put into practice.
We will be posting details of the program up opn the website once we have finalised it, places will be however limited and if you wnat to come along we suggest an early booking. These workshops will be FREE but if you want a more detailed and thorough course we are aiming to offer these later in the year. There will a charge for these but we can assure you that your money will be well spent.

Sowing now

Even though the weather has taken a turn for the worse, night temperatures here have fallen to a chilly -2C, and believe you and me that feels cold to us soft southerners, and even to the point that last Monday we had a hail storm that coated the ground white for a while, there are plenty of jobs to get done in the garden.
In the learning garden we are planting out garlic and red onion sets along with sowing a nice early crop of Aquadulce broad beans.
Clearing off the dead foliage of crops like pumpkins and marrows etc that have succumbed to the ravages of cold nights has opened up great areas of bare soil just waiting to be dug over and restocked with manure ready for the next crops.

Free daff bulbs

This weekend saw the end of our give away of a bag of free daffodil bulbs to our garden reward card holders.
This has been very successful and measuring the volume of bulbs we have given away this part of the south coast should look great next spring. Give away rewards are great for us , we love doing them, but we need more applicants for our reward card, so why not sign up. its free and we just love giving you things.

Sunny weekend

At long last we have had a sunny weekend.
Gardeners have been out in force this weekend and what is encouraging are the number of first time gardeners who want to grow fruit and veg.
We had families coming in who were encouraging their children to try and sow and grow, this is great news as the skills of gardening need to be transferred. It was a pleasure to help advise and encourage these people. Long may this last.

Big bug attacks Garden centre

We had a infestation of a big bug today at the garden centre, it seems even the bugs have heard about our Gardening with wildlife day on Saturday

Getting tidy for grand opening

Friday morning 20th June and we were rushing around to get the site clean and tidy ready for the grand opening that afternoon. The weather forecast was grim, looking like heavy rain.
Chris Pack and Steve Trotter are the guest speakers. We have also been given an Hampshire heritage apple tree 'Beauty of Hants' to plant from Sparsholt College.
In the end it turned out fine and dry and about 100 guests turned up.
Many children who first came to garden back in April also came along and a good time was had by all.




We thought as something different we would get Chris to pull a beetroot instead of cutting a ribbon, we felt this was too ordinary.
We are now official, so lets get more people into the garden and teach them how to grow their own fruit and veg.
Thanks to everybody who helped on the day, it was a great success.

Eel worm attack

It looks like we have discovered the first signs of eel-worm in our Chinese radish today.
Planting out Borlotto beans that have been raised in our nursery poly-tunnels.
More courgettes and sweet corn being planted today again all raised under-cover to be in the perfect condition for planting.

Clay glorious clay

What a dilemma when you clear a green field site with a plan to create an educational garden and discover that the top soil is limited to max 30cms and the sub soil is solid clay.
But we want to build a cob wall around the field - yippeee we have more clay than we are likely to need.
But how should we approach soil improvement when we want to grow some delicious vegetables this year?
I am planning well rotted manure but what about the weeds if its not been well composted