Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden

Welcome to the Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden website! We are committed to organic gardening. Using the best practices from the Victorian days (i.e. lots of horse manure) and knowledge gleaned from the Ryton Organic Gardens we have set out to tame our Warwickshire clay. It’s all about sustainability, so as well as organic gardening, we’re always looking to better ways to work with our environment.

On this site you can find out about our history and the projects we are working on. You can come visit the garden and learn about organic gardening. Follow our blog to see what’s on our mind in the garden this month.

For the first 8 years all the work was carried out by just the two of us. Now we have help and are passing on our knowledge to students on the WRAGS (Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme).

We also find time to be involved with the WOT2Grow Community Orchard in Tysoe and have planted a 3 acre wood close to Tysoe, just over the border in Oxfordshire with a grant from the Woodland Trust.

Tuesday, January 8, 2019

January

We check the weather forecast daily to see if it will affect plans in the garden. Also to plan ahead if certain jobs need to be done if it is forecast to be dry/wet/cold etc.

Early last week it was forecast for -5 degrees over night. Action was required. Most plants that are frost sensitive are already being protected in the greenhouse. There are however a couple of things that needed attention at this time.

One is the Celeriac. We have not harvested it all yet but a heavy frost will turn it soggy and unusable. If left in the ground it can have a thick mulch of straw for protection, or, as we did, cover over with fleece when temperatures are due to drop.

The other plant is the Globe Artichokes, again they can survive some cold but too much or they will also go soft and rot to a slime. With the warm autumn and early winter they have unfortunately put on a lot of new growth which makes it a bit more awkward to cover. Out came the fleece for them also.

Globe artichokes protected from the frost
The remaining celeriac harvest under cover

A lovely sight this week was the blackbird eating the Cotoneaster berries. Some years they have been stripped in a matter of days well before Christmas. This year there must have been better pickings elsewhere. But now January comes and they appreciate the feast in our garden, but it will not last for long. They are also enjoying the Pyracantha berries around the garage.

Blackbird eating the Cotoneaster berries

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