Seed Storage

Where to store seeds? Over the years they have been in numerous containers, plastic boxes etc but we do have rather a lot of seeds and could never find the one wanted!

Storing in the house was not an option, no space and too hot some of the time.

In the shed was the only option but we had problems with mice eating the seeds.

For the last five years the seeds have been stored in the storage shed in an old broken freezer, in boxes in one of the drawers, almost alphabetically!

During that time we have been searching for an old metal set of drawers the right size for seed packets.

Last week were found some, on ebay and with the help of our son who knows how to bid on ebay we were successful.

Once cleaned up we were able to fill the drawers. I made laminated sheets to list the alphabet and in sections such as C made individual labels for the many crops in C. Cucumber, cabbage, celeriac, courgette, cauliflower, carrots, calabrese, chard etc.

Very pleased with the purchase so hopefully the mice will not get in, we can find the seeds we want quickly and get rid of the freezer to make more room in the shed.

Harvest during 2019

A few years ago we decided it might be interesting to record all the fruit and vegetables we harvest and see the totals at the end of the year.

This is the total from January to December 2019

Those highlighted in pink were measured in single pieces, the rest were weighed in grams

Sounds a lot of produce, we did not eat it all!.

Although we do eat a lot of it , we give some to friends and family and the rest we sell from a trolley at the bottom of the drive.

The money we raise we give to various charities at the end of the year.

This year we raised over £400 and gave the money raised on the NGS open day plant and produce sales to their charities. We also gave to The Ellen Badger Hospital in Shipston, Carers4carers Kineton, The National Eczema society and the Heritage Seed library Ryton.

February on the radio!

We were contacted by BBC local radio, Coventry and Warwickshire, asking if they could come and talk to us live on the Saturday morning gardening show. A bit scary but we said yes so on February 1st Keith Wedgebury arrived with his microphone. We chatted for about 10 mins waiting for our allotted time, 11.30 pm. As it was a very windy day we started in the green house, moving outside towards the end of the interview.

Keith was very good at asking the right questions to get us talking and the whole thing lasted around 7 minutes.

Later in the day we listened to the programme, the Mollie Green show, on BBC sounds.

We realised there was much more we could have said but we did manage to slip in our National Garden Scheme (NGS) Open Garden on 6th and 7th June this year and also events at our local community Orchard (WOT2Grow) . We are heavily involved in this project and were able to advertise the annual Apple Day, October 10th 2020 and the Wassail January 16th 2021.

Quite an experience, we are now back to working in the garden, it has been even windier this week so we were lucky with the timing of the broadcast.