28th October, Gardening sunday!

And this one here holding a potential design for the GPUFG is Gary! He is a very enthusiastic guy that started, along with David and me, to get the Wildlife area into shape. You might be thinking: What is a wildlife area and why would you have one in a garden? Don't be ashamed, I had to ask David and Gary and I also had to google it. 

There, at the corner of the Garden we have set up the wood, under a tree that provides cover. You can see Gary working in the Wildlife spot. You should all have seen David's and Gary's happy faces when they spotted a first fungus and some insects!  

Basically, having a wildlife area made with natural stuff like leaves, wood, cartons will allow insects of all kinds to live there and species like fungus to grow. Some of the insects are bad for the plants, so a natural way to keep them away from them without having to use chemicals, is to provide a space in the garden for them to live. I read something very nice online that said something like "by having a wildlife area in your garden you are correcting the balance of nature, damaged by humans". So, here we are, our own wildlife spot, I can't wait to see more insects and fungus growing there, it will mean that we are succeeding. 

And here is David bringing wood from somewhere to place it in the Wildlife! 

Here's another picture of the potential design of the garden, that is of course Gary's offering and any suggestions or discussions or praise or whatever will be very welcome, since as you all know this is Our project and we are up to make everybody feel happy and confident and good about it :) 

So far, I have to say I only worked two or three days in the garden and it has been very funny, I've learned a lot of stuff and we had a very good time. So from this humble blog entries I invite you all to come over some time and help us with whatever you can, I am sure we'll have a ball! (I just love that English expression) 

So, keep in touch with us either through the blog, email or phone! 

Kind Regards, 

Lorena  

Growing Plants

 HELLO!!! Last Sunday was a very productive day in GPUFG at Priory Street. Do you remember the oriental lettuce, cabbage and parsley planted by David, Paul and me? So here they are! They're growing. David is a professional gardener but for Paul and a garden-ignorant like me, the simple task of re-planting something in a bigger pot and all the compost mix thing can be tricky. I've never done anything like this before and I am very glad I joined the project. Once I saw how much the lettuce grew in only three weeks I realised the work, hard or not, is worth it. 

Here you can see how much a cabbage grows in about 3 weeks. 

So, last Sunday we had to separate the cabbages and lettuce so that they can have more space to grow and for that, we had to use bigger pots (this is getting exciting). First of all David needed to explain that we use :
1. coir (coconut fibre), which has no nutrients but provides drainage
2. topsoil with mushroom compost. The mushroom makes drainage and nutrients acquisition better
and 3. Multipurpose compost, that can be use mixed with the other two to provide drainage and nutrients that the newborn lettuce need. This third kind of compost is used alone for tomatoes or zucchinis because they need extra water and nutrients. However, this is too technical right now for me, so in the next weeks David will explain more about this. And I thought to grow food required only water and just simple and plain compost...   So, yes, my hands ended up brown instead of green and, as a result, and with the help of Gary and David we could improvise a new spot for the plants, see photo above, a bit far away from the highway. (to prevent our babies to get too much pollution) 

First Plants (and a cute bit of vandalism)

David, Paul and Lorena have set the first plants in motion! Oriental Lettuces (letti?) and Hamburg Parsley.

I rocked up a bit later with my distinctly lacking (as yet) green fingers but I did espy this rather cute pic of the Queen on the wall - a belated nod to the Jubilee perhaps? 

Sitting in the sun in our log circle, we also got to grips with some of the more organisational and constitutional based elements of the project - well done us, we are becoming a mini, bonafide community org as each week passes!

We are currently organising a meeting to elect our Management Committee members (which is likely to be in the week beginning 15 Oct - Contact us to get involved... :)