Here are some photos showing some of the jobs I’ve been up to during the summer months so far.
I look after the vegetable beds at the Farm Shop in Walsingham. Some of the fruit and vegetables from the garden are sold in the shop.
You can see the porous watering pipe on the central bed inbetween the lettuces.
"Red Salad Bowl" lettuce
"Reine de Glace" lettuce
These tomatoes are growing outdoors in another customers’ garden:
Ripening Red Zebra tomatoes
Runner Beans (growing in an ex-fish pond)
Netting protection against birds, cabbage white butterfly etc.
Protection netting
Protection netting
Back in the Spring, two customers who bought Ready-To-Plant ‘Large Spring Vegetable Gardens’ from me, let me take photos of the plants once they had planted them in their plots. Here is a photo of the plants that they each received. There are 194 seedling plugs including lettuce, tomato, mange tout peas, spring onion, pak choi and rocket (for a full list see my main website http://www.thegardenfarmer.co.uk/id9.html ).
Plants for a 'Large Spring Veg Garden'
These customers have planted the seedling plugs into their allotment.
Allotment with 'Large Spring Veg Garden' plants
Another allotment view
This customer has planted the plugs into her small town garden raised beds.
Veg in town garden
Below are some photos from a large vegetable garden that I manage:
Globe Artichokes and "Red Baron" onions
Kale "Halbhoher Grun Kauser" and Cauliflower "Romanesco" under netting.
Celeriac "Prinz"
Courgette "Nero di Milano"
May was a busy month for Farmers’ Markets. The first Norwich Farmers’ Market was a great success, there’s a nice photo here on the Norwich Forum’s Flickr Site of me and Sarah Pettigree from Brays Cottage, one of the organisers of the market, by the Garden Farmer Stall.
Last weekend I attended the NatureFest event at Narborough Hall with the Garden Farmer market stall. The rain held off for most of the day and there were some excellent activities, information stands and talks, including a Q & A with Bob Flowerdew, champion of organic gardening.
Stall at Narborough Hall
Back in March a customer asked me to prune his apple trees which hadn’t been attended to for about 20 years. The work I did on them was quite dramatic even though I had decided to do it in two sessions, one in March and a further one in the coming winter. I recently took these photos of the trees, now full of fruit and looking very healthy.
Apple tree following first phase of restorative pruning 4 months ago
Bountiful apples
When I go back in the winter, I will also be pruning this negected wall-trained pear tree.
Pear tree prior to pruning next winter
Next weekend I will be at Fakenham Farmers’ Market and the following Tuesday I have a stall at the Sandringham Flower Show. If you’re visiting either, come along and say hello.
